Psycho. #37
Does digital cinema need defending?
It’s seemed popular for a while now to dismiss all digital filmmaking compared to the grainy textured analogue images of the past. I can’t help but feel suspicious though of any attitude that is so resentful of the future. It feels like a bad habit that should be resisted. I also saw Familiar Touch this year and thought it was stunning to look at in a way that could not have been achieved on film. What do you think about this anti-digital tendency, and which other films, directors or cinematographers are doing exciting things with digital pictures?
Yeah, I feel like I come across this stance a fair bit and it’s such a pain in the arse, as with any point of view that is so uncritical, so dogmatic, as to wholly ignore everything that could counter it. I can see how it comes about, because that analogue-promulgating view exists as an increasingly necessary bulwark against a creeping and creepy anti-art movement that’s all about cutting costs and getting the job done in a cheap, efficient way. Digital, framed in this way, alongside the alarming rise of AI, is part of a growing soullessness in cinema — but not just in cinema, in print journalism and music, in art, our understanding of nature. To feel a ticket stub in your hand and sit in a darkened room, your attention engaged by something that has been made, now needs to be fought for — so is it any wonder that the cinema diehards over-egg it a bit, and tip too far in the other direction?
