003_ Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Observations on the Long Take"

Pasolini begins his argument around the Kennedy assassination claiming that "the spectator-cameraman did not choose his camera angle; rather he simply filmed from where he happened to be, framing what he, not the lens, saw." He argues that this long take is an example of using film as a representation of the present is abstract and leads only to a subjectivity for the viewer. The idealized long take becomes more so an alternate or fantasy vision of the event as taking place in "past". In that, to even attempt a truism of the President's death on film refrains to subjective notions of "a multiplication of 'presents'" or simply put relative to the frame of the viewing/recording device. He pushes this metaphor further when relating this use of film as present-past-future knowledge to the death of an individual: "as long as he has a future, that is, something known, a man does not express himself." Pasolini's interpretation of death as an action of allowing others to "know" the person, works similar to the vision of the video camera capturing small moments (or long shots) trying to depict moments of present, past etc. Therefore, when one dies, the possibility of a future rests with the body. Film is similar, in that, once the moment is captured and becomes in a sense "dead", others can subjectively interpret it's meaning as a static object. This is not to say the long clip will allow of an objective truth, nor the body of a human. But in the least allows for a critical analysis of the film (or body) as a discontinuous object. I think his comparison does lack in technical means, although in a conceptual sense does help describe the possible uses of the camera as a capturing device or method to reveal a moment in time, regardless of it's place within a time line of past, present or future.