Space & Time in Cinema

"Space and time in cinema are constructs"

---- Cinema is a medium, a realistic device through which the spectator looks at the objective reality. A filmmaker may represent this objective reality in an apparently objective way; or he may foreground his authorial presence, or the spectator's presence, or the camera's presence in various ways. Generally, in a fiction-film the frame acts as a window through which real life is portrayed. Here, a particular type of suture is made where the characters' look inside the frame is equated to the spectator's look; thus involving the spectator in the flow of events inside the frame. In some experimental films this suture is broken through frontal address and foregrounding of the cinematic device [as in The Man with the Movie camera (Dziga Vertov, 1928)]. In such cases, either the spectator's look onto the screen or the camera's look onto the profilmic is given prominence. In most of the documentaries the first happens, while the second happens o...