Films Lie

filmslie.com lies (pun unavoidable) on the intangible intersection of cinema, philosophy, art, post-modernism, literary theory, and lies (the broader definition of which includes anything that pretends to be what it is not).

In the documentary 24 Realities per Second the Austrian director Michael Haneke famously said, “Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth.” However, according to his own theory, there is no reason to believe him—he said it in a movie.

Film is an artificial creation, a work of the imagination, and a lie that becomes real only within the context of itself. As experimental director Hollis Frampton put it, “It seems that a film is anything that may be put in a projector that will modulate the emerging beam of light.” Cinema, therefore, is simply a projection, an illusion of light. And yet, this is the paradox of movies— we still want “a real ending.”

filmslie.com examines this paradox by discussing experimental, avant-garde, documentary, animated, and art-house movies.

Category: