The dispassionate mirror : towards a transcendental narrative in film practice

Knudsen, E

Abstract

The use of Zen - advertent or inadvertent - in the practice of artistic creation is not
new. From Japanese Haiku poetry, the early poetry of Wordsworth and even aspects
of Shakespeare's Hamlet, to the paintings of Cezanne and Dali, to the novels of Ben
Okri and the work of Samuel Becket and Peter Brooke, we see differing efforts to
transcend the dominant mode of understanding ourselves and the world around us:
namely that of the duality of thought, of the kind our conscious, logical intellect can
comprehend. One could even point to contemporary physics - and in particular the
physics emerging out of quantum mechanics' - to see that efforts to transcend the
limitations of our own intellect in the quest to understand the phenomena of life are
not confined to artists. One could describe this quest as spiritual, in that it is
concerned with understanding life predominantly through feeling.
As a relatively young art form, first conceived and developed within a mechanistic
paradigm, the film medium does not have a tradition that both filmmakers and audience
alike can relate to in terms of transcending modes of dualistic thought and exploring
our spiritual nature. With some notable exceptions who remain on the whole on the
fringes of popular film culture - Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer and Tarkovsky being the most
prominent of these - filmmakers have been confined to working predominantly within
the idiom of cause and effect, conflict and resolution, and the logic of psychologically
explicable character motivation and consequent plot development. With relatively few
reference points, the process of examining and exploring the film form beyond this
psychological realism is difficult, not least because of the economic restraints that have
traditionally hampered innovation within filmmaking. While our conscious thoughts
and emotional lives are amply studied within the bounds of largely Freudian and
humanistic psychology, there remain aspects of human experience - feelings connected
to our transcendental natures - which film does not adequately explore or express.
Here, I shall seek to illustrate and evaluate the efforts I have made as a practicing
filmmaker through three films - One Day Tafo, Reunion and Signs of Life - to explore
and develop a film form which seeks to reveal a truth about myself and the world in
which I live: a truth which goes beyond what may be psychologically and
intellectually explicable, a truth which is essentially experiential and devoid of
traditional concepts of meaning. I am tempted to refer to this as `Zen and the art of
filmmaking'? For me, this work is only the beginning of a life-long process, the
outcomes of which I hope others may be able to use for further research and
exploration.

Citation

Knudsen, E. The dispassionate mirror : towards a transcendental narrative in film practice. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Sep 26, 2011
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 26, 2011
• Award Date: Jan 1, 2002