the fate of the cinema subject

The main theme of this chapter is the relationship between the director's motives and how they affect the audience. In the section about entitled "compound visions," MacDougall, introduces the idea of two premises, the first one being the perspectives of the film maker and the audience are different; no viewer usually has the same view as the director. One can then assume that the true meaning and purpose of the film as the director intended it, is never completely absorbed by the audience. As noted by MacDougall, the director and audience are affected differently by the film, "For the filmmaker, the film is an extract from all the footage shot for it, and a reminder of all the events that produced it. It reduces the experience onto a very small canvas. For the spectator, by contrast, by contrast, the film is not small but large: it opens onto a wider landscape." (page 27) The second premise mentioned is that film making is a form of expression or even extension of the filmmaker. The purpose of the film is closely attached to the filmmaker and the relationship of the filmmaker and the subject is that they are "apart" of each other; "in these moments, the subject's existence and the filmmakers are closely interwoven. To speak of the film subject at all is to speak of this shared space, willed with such intensity into the camera." (page30)
MacDougall makes a really interesting point on page 29, stating that "...the act of making a film is a way of pointing out something to oneself and to other, an active shaping of experience." This was one of the most profound statements in the reading for me because it is consistent with how we as the audience absorb what we see-creating assumptions and ideas based on what we take for the truth, after that he continues to break down how our knowledge is either transposed or displaced as we make sense of what we are viewing. It is through the motives of the filmmaker that our experiences when viewing are dependent on. How can we be sure that the footage we are seeing as close to the truth and "real" life as it can be?
Continuing to the section "the stars grow old," MacDougall examines that films can have consequences due to revisiting and "interpreting the reality to reflect my own perceptions" (page 37), no matter how hard you try to make something real and unbiased, there will always be someone who gets offended. Along with the discussions we've been having in class, it raises the question of why continue to use film? Can we depend on the filmmaker to give an accurate account of their subject while knowing that they are ultimately editing raw footage to get their point across?