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Project Website: http://slought.org/content/11217/
Slought Foundation, a non-profit organization rethinking contemporary art, presents Samuel Beckett's "Film" (1965, 21 minutes, B&W) from April 17 - May 20, 2004 as part of its storefront video series. A recording of "Beckett and the Unfilmable," a public conversation at Slought Foundation on February 12, 2004 with Branka Arsic and Jean-Michel Rabaté, engaging the relationship between Beckett, film and philosophy, is also available online at: http://slought.org/content/11182/
Samuel Beckett's only venture into the medium of cinema, Film was written in 1963 and filmed in New York in the summer of 1964, directed by Alan Schneider and featuring Buster Keaton. For the shooting, Mr. Beckett made his only trip to America. The silent film, which has no dialogue, takes its inspiration from Berkeley's theory
"Esse est percipi" ("to be is to be perceived"). Even after all outside perception has been suppressed, be it animal, human or divine, self-perception remains. Film was edited by Sydney Meyers with cinematography by Boris Kaufman, both of whom were preeminent in their fields at the time. Film was produced by Barney Rosset and Evergreen Theater, and is on display at Slought Foundation courtesy of Barney Rossett and Evergreen/Foxrock.
"For as to what is said of the absolute existence of unthinking things without any relation their being perceived, that seems perfectly unintelligible. Their esse is percipi, nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them.--George Berkeley, Of the Principles of Human Knowledge
This program is made possible in part through the generous sponsorship or support of Evergreen Review/ Foxrock, Inc.
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Buster Keaton in "Film," 1965