post-class email

Why pick up the camera?

What is the purpose of art? A simple transposition with no audience in mind? Does he care what people think, what their interpretations are? What is more important, the filmmakers purpose (does he think the filmmaker should have a purpose, or is the point simply to make art?) or the viewers experience being lost in the harmony of the medium?

So he doesn’t think it is simply a sensation, that its purpose is to be just a sensation.

The narrative is not the highest artistic form we can achieve, a focus on the aesthetics of the medium instead accomplishes this. Film versus cinema.

what i have been left with is the feeling that Arnheim's narrow view of film as an art form doesn't discredit my desire to pick up the camera because I want to tell a story, and do that using all of the tools available to me. maybe film as an art form has to be bound by the strict rules and ideals he describes in order to put it on the same level as a great painting, but it doesnt have to be bound by those rules to have a meaningful and relevant purpose. I am worried that in class I came across as a huge proponent of the american film machine that is hollywood. I enjoy a lot of what comes out of it, but I hate a lot of it as well. My attempt at drawing a possible distinction between film and cinema (modern or not, american or not) was simply to let Arnheim have his film art and me my narrative (or purpose driven) "cinema". I do not want to enjoy the medium with the ultimate goal of enjoying the medium, but with the purpose of achieving some higher appreciation of some aspect of the human condition. maybe I'm misinterpreting with that statement, and correct me if i'm wrong.