Quoting Motion: The Frame, the Shot, and Digital Video

Abstract

The tension between the still and the moving image has always been a central issue for film theory. In the early writings on cinema, when the medium was new, motion was usually identified as the distinguishing trait of cinema. Still today, in an age of conversion from analog film to digital files, film theory grapples with the issue of movement. The reason why motion remains a key issue is that it is, and has always been, a very slippery concept. There have always been multiple concepts of motion in film studies, a fact which derives from opposing philosophies of movement. The various concepts of movement have often been the fuel for film theory in the history of cinema, and remain an issue for theory in the age of the digital. The various approaches to movement, either as perceived by the spectator or as produced by the cinematic apparatus, cut through the classical distinction between formalist and realist theories from Munsterberg to Bazin. The elusive phenomenon of motion became central for film semiotics in the 70s, and remains the distinguishing feature of, for instance, the image typologies in Gilles Deleuze’s film philosophy