Raul Ruiz

Poetics of Cinema 2 Raul Ruiz

"Eleven years separate these lines from the first part of my Poetics of Cinema. Meanwhile the world has changed and cinema with it. Poetics of Cinema, 1 had much of a call to arms about it. What I write today is rather more of a consolatio philosophica. However, let no one be mistaken about this, a healthy pessimism may be better than a suicidal optimism." Following his research in Poetics of Cinema, 1 on new narrative models as tools for apprehending a fast-shifting world, Ruiz makes an appeal for an entirely new way of filming, writing and conceiving the image. "'Light, more light,' were Goethe's last words as he died. 'Less light, less light,' Orson Welles cried repeatedly on a set--the one and only time I saw him. In today's cinema (and in today's world) there is too much light. It is time to return to the shadows. So, about turn! And back to the caverns!"