Cinematic Writing: Thinking Between The Viewer And The Screen

This practice-based research project explores modes of thinking and writing that are generated during and after my encounter with one film, Christopher Petit’s Unrequited Love: On Stalking And Being Stalked (2006). As opposed to a frame by frame analysis of film, this project explores how the anomalous affects and after-effects engendered by film, for example, the disorientations in time and memory produced by camera movement, might generate forms of ‘cinematic writing’. This project approaches these affects as an integral part of the film viewing experience, and asks how they alter the way we think, feel, see, remember, and write. What connections in thought and memory can be provoked and engendered by them? How can our experience of being captivated, disoriented, and absorbed by these filmic affects be enveloped by, rather then represented in, writing? With the aim of developing a practice-based written response to these questions, this project investigates the visual and text-based cinematic techniques used by three writers: William S. Burroughs, Don DeLillo, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. It establishes how cinema has impacted on and been used as a resource to alter and transform their writing practice. The central claim of my project is that the visual and text-based cinematic techniques used by these writers make a valuable contribution to the development of a practice-based mode of writing that is engaged with, but that is not representative of film. I call this mode of writing cinematic writing. This research project claims that a theoretical and practice-based investigation into the anomalous affects and after-effects generated by film could contribute to our knowledge of how film can alter and transform the way we think, see, feel, and write. It explores what cinematic writing does in being read/seen by a reader, and asks how cinematic techniques in writing could impact on and alter our conventional literary reading habits.