...cinema is unsuited to document the empirical real

Nature and social life are perceived by cinema as a sequence of events that can be remembered. Moving images produced outside the world of fiction give identity to the viewing experience as fragments of empirical evidence, but they can prove nothing unless there is some explanation of what they are. Be it ever so eloquent, the moving image is like a witness who is unable to describe an event without an intermediary. The ability to transform it into evidence, true or false [...], is inherently linked to a decision to preserve, alter or suppress the memory of the circumstances under which the image was produced. (p. 31)


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