ABSTRACT
The concept of materialism cannot be covered by the concept and concrete reality of physicality. The attempt here is by fits and starts to elucidate a materialist process. The questions pertaining to representation-systems and codes has to do with the physical reproduction and transformation of forms, a reproduction, at some level, of the profilmic, that which the camera is aimed at — a transformation to the filmic, the filmic event, so to speak. This transformation has to do with codes of cinematic usage which for the most part are not yet clearly delineated in the case of experimental film. for example, there is no questioning that the dissolution of imagery through extremes of darkness and light also (and equally) has to do with the flattening of the screen-surface, bringing that screen-surface-ness into play against the (however momentarily) held depth-illusions, i.e. representation of the real world via cinematic photochemical means. It is thus unquestionable that a certain usage of grain and contrast can produce itself vis à vis, and through, the image. The duration of that “image” and that image's transformation, always preceded by other images, always effecting other images, and their meanings and uses, is inseparable from the material-physical support. This is in no way to say that what is materialist in film is what necessarily shows, or that it is camera, lenses, graininess, flicker per se, etc. But an idealist negation of physicality in toto can only lead to a blindness.
