Still/Moving: Photography and Cinematic Ontology

Abstract

As a medium grounded in photographic technology, cinema retains a deep fascination with photographic images. Focusing on films by François Truffaut, AgnèsVarda, Guy Gilles, Jean-Luc Godard and Chris Marker, this chapter explores the intersection between cinema and photography in New Wave film in the context of wider theoretical debates concerning the two media's relations to time, memory, death and what Raymond Bellour calls the new type of 'pensive spectator' created by still images in film. It also analyses the use of photographyas a privileged intermedial tool for grappling with questions of modernisation, colonialism and revolution at a time when France and the world were undergoing a period of major change.