final provocations
ON
PHILOSOPHY
(Aristotle, Ancient Greek Philosopher, Metaphysics)
"A sense of wonder started [hu]man[s] philosophizing, in ancient
times as well as today. Their wondering is aroused, first, by trivial
matters; but they continue on from there to wonder about less mundane
matters such as the changes of the moon, sun, and starts, and the
beginning of the universe. What is the result of this puzzlement?
An awesome feeling of ignorance. [Humans]....begin to philosophize,
therefore, to escape ignorance..."
ON FILM & HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
(Krzysztof Kieslowski, Film Director, 1941-1996)
"Real artists find answers. The knowledge of the artisan is within
the confines of his skills. For example, I know a lot about lenses,
about the editing room. I know what the different buttons on the
camera are for. I know more or less how to use a microphone. I know
all that, but that's not real knowledge. Real knowledge is knowing
how to live, why we live, things like that."
ON EDUCATION AND CRITICAL
INQUIRY
(Paulo Friere, Brazilian Activist and Philosopher of Education,
1922-1997, Pedagogy of the Oppressed)
"Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate
the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the
present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the
practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically
and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the
transformation of their world."
ON THE CRITICAL POWER
OF FILM
(Mark Crispin Miller, Journalist and Media Critic, from "Hollywood
the Ad")
"The movies at their best have reminded us, forcefully, that things
should be otherwise--which is why advertising urges us to laugh
them off, to 'see right through them.' Those movies have to be suppressed,
revised, their power forgotten, because they don't just bedazzle
us with a blurred, promissory vision of utopia but actually enable
us to see, through them, the real workings of the very system that
produced them, and that is now degrading them and us."
ON THE "NEW HAPPY
ENDING" IN POPULAR FILM (Miller)
"Whereas the movies once could dramatize a painful choice, the new
fear of loss prohibits such a story; and whereas prior movies could
at times reflect, albeit obliquely, on dark forces outside (and
inside) the theater, the new taste refuses any such bad news. Indeed,
the fear of loss seems so intense that it now rejects not just a
downbeat story but any story whatsoever, as if the crucial difference
between fiction and reality were just too much to bear. Whereas
narrative requires that you maintain some sense of distance from
it, what the movies offer, and what their viewers seem to crave,
is the infantilizing promise of no distance, no separation, never
any feeling of exclusion--not even from the spectacle itself…Hollywood
now offers to fulfill that longing by ending movie after movie with
the same upbeat moment…an image of euphoric melding, as the audience
within the frame looks on and cheers."
SCORSESE ON THE ART
OF FILMMAKING
(Martin Scorsese, Film Director)
"I made it [The Last Temptation] as a prayer, an act of worship.
I wanted to be a priest. My whole life has been movies and religion.
That's it. Nothing else." "I guess the passion I had for religion
wound up mixed with film, and now, as an artist, in a way, I'm both
gangster and priest."