The passage connects architecture and film with time. The writer demonstrates this relationship by illustrating light, weather and human movements which creates a space of architecture, an inner space that is unpredictable. Film freezes the moments of changes here, bringing out an abstract but modern technique—-“zero degree of cinema”.
“no acting. But space acting out; no sets, but locations unraveling in reel time. Real stories of place.” I think “zero” means the distance between real time and photographic time, there is no compression or extension of time in a zero-degree cinema, in other words, “zero-time difference”. I think “Zero” might also mean “zero” perspective. Different from many movies filming selected shots with a subjective pace, zero-degree cinema offers audience an experience of going through the same seconds with the protagonist, or maybe the architecture in the film, featuring the most realistic and probably objective view. A good example of zero-degree cinema might be live broadcasts. The new wave of technology has brought us this opportunity to view live races, games, blogs, or even concerts, here I think viewers enjoy experiencing real time, the sensation of engagement and connection with the other side on screen. Although “zero-time” technique doesn’t involve any editing technology, it is a silhouette of modernity.
Interestingly, the writer then further explains “zero degree of cinema” as “the space of movie-going—–a geography that takes place in the architecture of the movie” house”.” I think the writer here uses “zero” to describe space, the inner space of the cinema where the architecture exists. I would use vacuum to illustrate “zero” space, particles don’t exist in vacuum, it is space which needs someone to fill it up with different particles. What are the particles in cinema then? Light particles. light creates and frames a space in the theatre, by shining different white beams on the white screen, the atmosphere varies. Just like architecture, creating a space that affects people, driving people into emotions, creating an impression for them. The cinema provides a “vacuum” place to broadcast any movies, or a place of “zero-degree” of architecture.
The obsessed focus between architecture and time inspires me a lot. Not just looking at buildings as a solid, but seeing it like the sea, with tides and sparkles.
Jing Hymn Joseph Wong
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Excellent reading on “zero-degree of cinema”! However, the use of vacuum and particles to further explain the notion of “zero” is not really clear yet, this point will be enriched if the elaboration is as well-referenced to Bruno as the paragraph before. Bruno noted “in a history of long durée, on moving screens, moving images have thus come to “architect” the very mood of inner life – a landscape of temps mort, a geology of passage. […] an important aspect of modernity and modernist aesthetics: a radical temporal refashioning of subjectivity. A politics of time means giving space to time” (2004, 94), it would be helpful to delve deeper into what it means. You have mentioned that zero-degree cinema attempts to feature the most realistic and objective view, how does that objectivity converts to the said subjectivity? What is its relationship with time in this sense?
“In this architectonics of time we are neither voyeurs nor detectives who spy on characters […] Witnesses, we are made to exist in space […] Reaching for a closer spectatorial position, we can stay there to take part in a scene, becoming participants” (2004, 89).