Raul Ruiz

Meditations on cinema and method from the acclaimed Chilean director of City of Pirates and Life Is a DreamThis volume gathers excerpts from the diary of celebrated Chilean experimental film director Raul Ruiz. A continuation of Poetics of Cinema 1 and Poetics of Cinema 2--his seminal volumes on new narrative modes--Notes, Recollections and Sequences of Things Seen follows the late stage of Ruiz's career, from 1990 to 2011, in which he realized more ambitious productions. These new films generated significant economic and aesthetic challenges, and he observed the increasing distance between his dream of a handmade, nonindustrial, shamanic-inspired cinema--as set out in the Poetics of Cinema--and his reality.Selected by Bruno Cueno and Erik Bullot, friends of Ruiz, the writings also express the filmmaker's pragmatic side, such as his prescriptions for implementing the theoretical concepts outlined in Poetics. A preface by Bullot and notes by Cuneo contextualize the excerpts.Raul Ruiz (1941-2011) was an experimental Chilean filmmaker, writer and teacher who directed more than 100 films, including Dark at Noon (1992) starring John Hurt, Three Lives and Only One Death (1996) starring Marcello Mastroianni, Genealogies of a Crime (1997) starring Catherine Deneuve and Time Regained (1999) starring John Malkovich.

I bund og grund taler jeg ikke om andet end en filmkunst, der er i stand til at udtænke en ny grammatik hver eneste gang, den bevæger sig fra én verden til den næste, en filmkunst der er i stand til at skabe en særlig følelse foran hver enkelt ting, dyr eller plante ved ganske enkelt at ændre rummet og varigheden. Men dette indebærer en konstant praksis, der på én og samme tid er opmærksom og adspredt, evnen til at gå i gang med en indspilning og straks efter vende tilbage til en tilstand af kontemplativ uvirksomhed. Kort sagt en filmkunst, der er i stand til som det første at berette om mangfoldighederne i erfaringen af den sanselige verden. Det er let sagt.

"Eleven years separate these lines from the first part of my "Poetics of Cinema." Meanwhile the world has changed and cinema with it. "Poetics of Cinema, 1" had much of a call to arms about it. What I write today is rather more of a "consolatio philosophica." However, let no one be mistaken about this, a healthy pessimism may be better than a suicidal optimism." Following his research in "Poetics of Cinema, 1" on new narrative models as tools for apprehending a fast-shifting world, Ruiz makes an appeal for an entirely new way of filming, writing and conceiving the image. 'Light, more light, ' were Goethe's last words as he died. 'Less light, less light, ' Orson Welles cried repeatedly on a set--the one and only time I saw him. In today's cinema (and in today's world) there is too much light. It is time to return to the shadows. So, about turn And back to the caverns "