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Themesicon: navigation pathArt and Cinematographyicon: navigation pathGraham
 
 
 
 
 

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relationship to this theory of the cinema, then one finds oneself directed on the one hand towards the affinity between Deleuze’s concept of crystal and the structure of the «Cinema.» Deleuze himself implies that the notion of crystal has an architectonic structure when he remarks: «Exchange or indiscernibility thus follow each other in three ways in the crystalline circuit: the actual and the virtual (or the two mirrors face to face); the limpid and the opaque; the seed and the environment[…] The crystal is a stage, or rather a track [piste], before being an amphitheatre.» [30] The «principle of uncertainty» that directs this exchange is expressed in Graham's «Cinema» in his architectonic arrangement and the relationship of two audiences to one another. This exchange—as the two-sidedness and mutual referentiality of the same image—takes place under the condition of a strict incommensurability, foreign to the classical cinema.

The True and the False: Deleuze and Benjamin

A further possibility of linking Deleuze’s theory of the cinema to Graham’s «Cinema» is offered by the concept of «world memory,» which Deleuze links with the question of truth. «We are no longer in an

 

indiscernible distinction between the real and the imaginary, which would characterize the crystal image, but in indiscernible alternatives between sheets of past, or ‹inexplicable› differences between points of present, which now concern the direct time-image […]the past is not necessarily true.» [31] Deleuze dedicates a whole chapter of his theory of the cinema to this «power of the false.» However, In order to understand how this equation of world memory and historical truth is posed in relationship to Graham’s «Cinema,» we cannot simply apply Deleuze’s concepts to it, for they remain trapped in the film medium. The starting point for Graham’s «Cinema» concept is instead Benjamin’s concept of history, which Benjamin would like to apply to the cinema. Deleuze’s notions only become relevant in this context.

Graham begins with the assumption that film has the power to change the structure of historical memory. He points to the parallels which the film theorist Thierry Kuntzel drew between Freud’s «mystic writing pad» model of memory and the technical arrangement of film: Films have the character of «memory traces» or «dreams» that are «implanted.». [32]

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