Peter Kubelka: Metaphoric Cinema

When you make film,
you make film.

And the first commandment is
that it is a good film.

And a film were there is a commentary
from the outside, in the background music

can never be a good film.

So, because… film has to speak
with its own means,

not with the department of litera… out…
literature outside a higher speaker

with a higher text.

It must speak with what you have.

So this is my concept of
film language.

If I have as material for departure

elements which echo reality.

How does the material articulate?

It articulates between image
and next image.

The most strongest,
most simple articulation.

It articulates between
image and sound.

At the same time, ja?
Synch, synch.

It articulates between image
and next sound.

It articulates between sound
and previous image.

It articulates between sound
and next sound,

and between sound
and previous sound.

And not just previous this sound,
but all previous sounds

since back to the beginning of the film.

This is like in a good poem,

in a good piece of music,

you can not come in the middle
and try to understand it.

Because, when you miss one word,

you have missed an essential thing.

Film can give you totally two
different elements at the same time.

And you, of course, can not scape
the thought that what

occurs at the same time and
has a similar form, ja? Belongs together.

A piece of paper, yeah?
Now you watch

and you listen.

That's truth, because you see this
and you hear…

Nature can not separate this from this.

So, whenever I hear this,
I know paper is torn.

Proof.

This is reality.

Now comes cinema.

See?

¡No!

¡Sí!

So simple is cinematographic language,
you see?

Because, as other language does,
plays with your brain.

And then you have, so to speak,
not two sensations, but four at least.

But in reality you have 20 here
and 20 there.

What are you doing?
The usual process comparing.

Thinking is nothing but comparing.

You compare A to B

and you make sense out of it, ja?

It's also called metaphor. Metaphor.

Comparing A to B.
And all art, all communication,

is based on this kind of metaphor.

By the way, this is today one of the…
of the greatest filmmaker killer

is the new digital system that

you always have the sound
already perfectly there, ja?

And there you are stuck, because the thing
sound isn't worth anything.

You can't not… You lose one of the
main posibilities of saying something

when you have from the beginning
on synch sound.

The greatness of sound cinema is not that
you can precisely present this with this.

The greatness of sound cinema
is that you are freed

from this law of nature that
events come in synch.