1 - Retying the Threads
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 December 2020
Summary
Abstract
An introductory essay to the collection Mysteries of Cinema, outlining author Adrian Martin's path as a film critic and cinema scholar from the early-1980s cultural scene in Melbourne (Australia) to writing for the Internet and making audiovisual essays in the late 2010s. This introduction explains Martin's method, developed over these years, of “tying threads” between the numerous films he has seen, and the cinematic theories or cultural ideas he has encountered along the way. Martin’s particular involvement in, and unusual position in-between academic and journalistic modes of discourse is explained. The introduction ends by speculating that, while conventional critical writing constitutes a singular “personality”, the newer, collaborative form of the audiovisual essay disperses this subjectivity and opens different possibilities.
Keywords: Film criticism, film theory, popular culture, Australia, audiovisual essay
It is an alternative life, freed from the tyranny of “that old devil consequence”, from the limitation of having only one life to live. One's favourite films are one's unlived lives, one's hopes, fears, libido. They constitute a magic mirror, their shadowy forms are woven from one's shadow selves, one's limbo loves.
– Raymond Durgnat, 1967This book covers 34 years of a writing life, so far. (I plan for a Volume 2 in 2050.) It is not a “collected essays” that contains all my work to date (far from it), nor is it a “selected essays” that tries to represent all the different areas and modes in which I practice (again, far from it). It is not quite a book of film criticism, because it lacks articles on specific films or directors's careers; nor is it a book of conventional academic scholarship, since I have worked within the tertiary education system only for a couple of relatively short periods in my life, and none of the essays contained here derive from university-approved publications.
So, what kind of assemblage is this, exactly? It is a book of general, transversal reflections – clusters of associations, each time around a different centre or theme. It is, as I would like to describe it, a book of threads. There are threads that accompany all of us as we make our way through time – historical time as well as personal, subjective, lived time.
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- Information
- Mysteries of CinemaReflections on Film Theory, History and Culture 1982–2016, pp. 13 - 28Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2018