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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Critical Editions of Films on New Digital Techniques
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
6
Projects & Abstracts
2006-10-01
2023-10-10
2006-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
2006/10/01
2036-461X
8
en
Critical Editions of Films on New Digital Techniques
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/21415/19015
6
CRITICAL EDITIONS OF FILMS AND NEW DIGITAL TECHNIQUES




                                           A critical edition is both the process and the product,
                                   a close analysis of the text according to well-known methods,
                                                               and the final results of this analysis.
                                                    B. Bentivogli, P. Vecchi Galli, Filologia italiana

                                                          Every edition is a form of interpretation;
                           there is no model-edition, because every edition is bound to its times,
                                                        while it opens itself up to a certain practice
                                                        as it follows a variable kind of teleology [..]
                                            mechanical reproduction has become so sophisticated
                            that it can be responsible for an equivalent of the original document,
                                               thus releasing the mental value of a critical edition
                                                                    G. Contini, Breviario di ecdotica



   Besides a definition of critical edition based on closeness to the original source, it is
possible to envision a critical edition as a work-in-progress meant to deliver an other-
wise lost text. This work-in-progress type of critical edition can also be called an "open
text" in the sense that every reader/viewer, through the tools (generally labeled as "crit-
ical apparatus") offered by the critic/editor, can repeat, re-evaluate and even revise a
whole philological itinerary. This kind of edition is, therefore, a process and a product,
a method and a goal, a work and a concrete object.
   Our contemporary age is characterized by a strong destabilization of the filmic text's
canonical status. Despite the notion of an allegedly single text, more and more versions
and editions are available, not to mention all the changes that have taken place in the
areas of production, distribution, exhibition, reception, and consumption. In the wake
of the digital revolution, even film-making has changed along with the gradual disap-
pearance of certain techniques of reproduction. Thus, the philological labor of the crit-
ical edition has taken on a different value, by opening itself up to a more flexible under-
standing of textual production. It is time to reassess: what is a critical edition? Its func-
 tion? Its methods? Its goals? Its limits? Its intellectual history? By trying to deal with
 these questions, we would like to propose a general orientation and not a definitive
 method. For instance, no matter which kind of critical edition are we dealing with, the
 subjective interpretation is always involved.



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CINEMA & Cie, no. 8, Fall 2006
 Critical editions in OVD


   Should we embrace or abandon the DVD format for critical editions of filmic texts?
 using literature as a model, what are the points of contact and the points of divergence
 with the critical edition of a film on DVD? Is it useful, for instance, to present the filmic
 lext with an introduction which might tell the viewer/reader how to handle the various
 materials gathered around the text? Is it necessary to desclop a standardized sign system
 through which the viewer/reader can navigate inside the critical apparatus? Is it uscíul
 to offer to the reader/viewer the possibility to explore the historical witnesses opinions
 used for the critical edition? Are we looking for a standard or for a critical cdition hased
 on a closed model? Should a critical edition avoid generalized guidelines and follow the
 requirements of each case based on the cditor's vicws and the kind of film at hand? Is the
 DVD the only and the best kind of technology to produce critical cditions?



 Critical and Documentary Editions


    We need to distinguish between critical edition and documentation. We are dealing
  here with two different projects. The documents themscles must be evaluated in the
 light of certain visualization techniques, because even their reproduction is a critical ges
 ture. The first question is whether a certain edition should be based on texts surviving in
 the original documents or should also include corrections, revisions, and interpretations
 based on a critical intervention. For instance, in the case of a film on DVD, no matter how
 much the so-called "extras" may be valuable, these additional materials do not necessari
 ]y constitute a critical edition. The documentary method is focused on the past revisited
 through the lens of surviving physical objects, by contrast, the critical edition method
 calls for a level of creative interpretation due to the fact that even the original documents
 attached to a text may end up misleading the viewer/reader.



 Digital Critical Apparatus

   It is crucial to make clear what are the sources of the critical edition, so that these
very same sources may be consulted and verified. In the case of a literary critical edi
tion, usually the editor spells out in the introduction which sources have been left
out and why; when it is necessary the critical apparatus highlights the alternative
interpretations added by the editor. These are the so-called authorial notes. This edi-
torial action documents the choices that have been made. In the light of this dynam
ic of disclosure, it is possible to compare the critical apparatus to the site of a textu-
al drama. The critical apparatus should tell us everything about the life of a text;
from its original moment of conception to the very last moment of its reception. In
the history of literary criticism, recent technological developments have enabled
editors to overcome the limits of the so-called codex format. Turning now our atten
tion to film history, only thanks to the development of DVDs it has been possible to
digitalize entire film-prints. Among literary specialists, it is possible to talk about
the "body" of the critical edition? Would this terminology apply just as well to film
studies?

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                                       CRITICAL EDITIONS OF FILMS AND NEW DIGITAL TECHNIQUES



Philology, Products, Digital Processes

  There are closed structures (CD-ROM, DVD), which are not too different from a crit-
ical edition on paper. There are also open structures (hyper-texts, databases) which are
also capable of housing the critical edition in such a way to allow the reader/viewer to
interact so much that these open structures profoundly differ from the traditional con-
 cept of critical edition. Should the apparatus remain on the side of the critical edition
 or should be a fundamental part of it? Is this dilemma a new way of staging the well-
known tension between text and palimpsest? Can the palimpsest work as a model
only for the construction of the apparatus and of the documentation, or should it be
extended to the critical edition as a whole? Is it possible to say that, because of the way
the DVD is built to begin with, the filmic text is bound to confuse itself with its criti-
cal apparatus? How is it possible to distinguish between these two levels inside the
DVD format?


Critical Edition/Public

  The new media landscape allows for the circulation of cinema and its remediation on
a scale which we have never seen unfold so massively. Classic films have been recently
the object of re-editions which we have seen go from restored version, to television pro-
gramming; to archive re-printing; to re release on a commercial level; from the first
home-video editions to recent DVD editions, not too mention what is available online.
There is also a historical relation between technological transformation and cinephilia.
Looking back at the days of the advent of sound, cinephilia, the development of film
archives, and the films themselves were all bound up together by a feeling of complici-
ty among a few devotees; by contrast, from the fifties, cinephilia has began to slowly
become an economic force.


Participants

  Hans-Michael Bock, Giulio Bursi, Jean-Pierre Candeloro, Paolo Caneppele, Michele
Canosa, Angela Dalle Vacche, Natascha Drubek-Meyer, Anna Fiaccarini, Joseph
Garncarz, Vinzenz Hedger, Nikolai Izvolov, Uli Jung, Kenneth Knoespel, Vittoria Lera,
Martin Loiperdinger, Maria Assunta Pimpinelli, Davide Pozzi, Leonardo Quaresima,
François Thomas, Sergio Toffetti, Simone Venturini, Christoph Wahl.


Institutions

  Ruhr Universität Bochum, Università di Bologna, La Camera Ottica (Gorizia),
Cineteca Comunale di Bologna, CineGraph (Hamburg), FAMU (Prague), Filmmuseum
(Wien), GeorgiaTech (Atlanta), L'Immagine Ritrovata (Bologna), Istituto LUCE (Roma),
Cineteca Nazionale (Roma), Research Institute for the Art of Cinema/NIIK, (Moscow),
Università della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano), Université de Paris III, Universität Siegen,
Universität Trier, Università degli Studi di Udine.
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