RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

about Vietnam to a cartoon, from a drama series to an advertising spot. None of the foregoing is an independent part Тћеу mutually permeate and give meaning to each other based on the same principle of »the intellectual editing of spectacles« on which avant-garde films аге based - from Eisenstein to Godard. Therefore, everyday conventional television programmes have this open avant-garde structure, the same as the most unconventional fflm has (though television critics who watch and analyse our programme »in bits« do not try to understand it at all and apply traditional critical methodology to a medium which is not traditional at all). This open structure of TV, not based on symbolic and metaphoric procedure, which respects only the logical character of authentic data and documentary material transforms itself into lasting audio-visual material. The viewers communicate with such material from day to day, directly and without апу complexes, Such communication, without doubt, also requires a new, more avant-garde, unconventional, practical and theoretical approach to the medium of television itseif. Bearing in mind the non-literary and anti-metaphoric character of television and its informative and communicative function, we can vouch for this thesis, as far as understanding the »documentary« nature of TV is concerned: 1 Television as a document by itself, regardless of the type of programme presented, removes the barrier which exists between art and non-art forms which аге transformed into information (m this way, practice itself removed the barrier between the »art« and »non-art« characteristics of a joumalist’s job in some types of programmes. The symbiosis was spontaneous thanks to the nature of the medium itself)... The surreahsts’ hypothesis: »Poetry will be written by everybody!« becomes a reality today m the television age. It can be reduced to saying: »Anybody can be a director on T . .«. Some people will naturally do it better than others. 2. Being aware of the non-art nature of TV, a television director, regardless the type of programme on which he works, always has to face the following dilemma: to what extent can he and is he aUoweđ to interfere with the material which is offered to him? The picture ot everyday life shown оп TV is always indefmite, depnved of myths and unambigous. In short, it does not require mterpretation (especially not by means of editing on which film expression is based). Therefore, the direction of апу material on fflm is always a work full of the writer’s personal attitudes. Godard’s attitude proves this too.TV direction is only an »achievement« m which the dmector s personal attitudes should be overlooked. Of course, there аге some variations here too, as some forms which television hiexorably borrows from tradition are involved. These forms аге TV fflms and

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