The Invisible Cinema used to be a real movie theater, created in the 70s by Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney, and Jerome Hill. It is described as having black walls, black ceilings, black floors, & black chairs with little black side flaps that kept the vision focused on the movie.
When I began the Invisible Film Series at Millennium Film Workshop, I had never heard of invisible cinema. I was extemely interested in Dziga Vertov, and really, I thought that invisible film sounded punk rock. I was lost back then, but I was on to something. It was like hearing the sound of water splashing and then discovering an enormous ocean. Once I began to pay attention, the invisible world was everywhere, in language, in poetry, in cinema, in nature, in science, in memory . . . Yet here I wonder if invisible cinema was actually a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Peter Kubelka et al. had it right. Cinema and darkness. The unknown with terrible and beautiful gravity, pulls us out there, even when we don't want to go!
I ask myself, when will I get to the experimental film/video artists? When will I say how great they are? How will I describe the things I see that were never before visible? How will I create the biggest fan letter ever?
And when will I finish my film?
xoxo
-J.M.
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