Chapter Twenty Five: Filming the Moment

There is LIGHT in this world.

A healing spirit more powerful

than any darkness we may encounter.

We sometime lose sight of this force

when there is suffering, and too much pain.

Then suddenly, the spirit will emerge through

the lives of ordinary people who hear a

call and answer in ordinary ways.

Richard Attenborough

If chess has any relationship with filmmaking,

it would be in the way it helps you develop

patience and discipline in choosing between

alternatives at a time when an impulsive

decision seems very attractive.

Stanley Kubrick

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If there is one thing that we can learn from movies (or film, if you wanted to sound more British), it is probably the fact that we are attempting to capture a significant moment in our lives that can be filmed by the camera in the same intensity as it was first shot, and this is the footprint and the magic celebrated by the achievements in filmmaking. Movies may be about the subject of annoying talking animals, like an Otter, an American Swan or a Crocodile, but it is also about (most of the times, in fact) the sadness, triumph and the true meaning of the human condition.

The resulting scenes then become a fitting tribute to historical accounts, as well as giving visual interpretation to the invisible faces that books have the greatest courage to tell, as well as original materials written specifically for the screen. Whatever the source of the intricacies of happiness and sadness bound by the light and the angles of multiple cameras shot at once, movies in itself honor the perseverance and resiliency of the human species known scientifically as the homo sapiens.

But maybe films are not just about the actors and the actresses who provide meaning to the glory portrayed in the visual media, but it is more than that, for sure. Every element of the scene gives an artistic flavor to the entirety of the movie, so that the whole is equal to the sum of all of its parts, or even greater than the efforts that have made the unexpected impact in the story, costumes, hairstyling, set decoration, and everything else.

So these scenes are actually tiny monuments that the movie wishes to portray; in as much as the actors involved in the scene wanted to make an unforgettable performance, so is the other parts that wanted to portray a moment in the existence of human life that is just perfect, and beautiful, and gentle.

The history of mankind was not without artistic expression and certain forms of visible art. The field of Archaeology is so full of discoveries about the many materials gathered from all civilizations in history ever recorded. It is a big testament to the fact that digging dirt, and finding life within, where the remains was gloriously buried in time, is a form of exhortation, in itself, from where God formed the first humans, and gave them breath to become alive.

Only history as it may seem, but it is through these important, yet simple, records that we identify ourselves to the ancestors who have lived their lives before us, who died in the same biological way as we would (the manner of death is certain in all periods of time), whose civilization had expressed their desires in artifacts, and everything that they believe in, although invisible and acting through agents, in many artistic expressions made intact in all materials gathered by such archaeological evidence.

But the future may refuse to dig dirt for lack of value anymore (and by that time, everything may have been unearthed from the ground already), and so the evidence of life may be discovered from a different medium to satisfy future curiosity. It is in this curious state that men have decreed a certain form of librarianship of the archives to preserve films into retrievable form. Historical accounts in this sense ultimately became a reliable source of energy and a strong impetus to deal with, ever evolving in time and space, as it is now the topic of understanding in this particular story.

And now, here we are; everything that we have is history.

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The Chapter is sponsored by Nike.