Research On The Sensory Ethnography Lab Cinema From The Perspective Of Image Philosophy Of Deleuze

The Sensory Ethnography Lab produces a series of documentary films that differ from traditional observational(Ethnography)films that tend to observe,document,and even interpret their subjects from the outside.Rather,they go deep into the environment and extract a certain reality from it.But how does the “Reality” of the film arrive? This question is the challenge that “Reality” has posed to countless cinematic theories and practices.In the view of SEL,the fundamental reason for the difficulty of reaching the real in cinema is the presence of people.Thus,they tend to subscribe to the “Kinoks”theory coined by Dziga Vertov,which views the camera as a more intelligent,sensual,and powerful dynamic subject than the human being.Underpinned by this theory,the lab advocates exploring the camera’s ability and potential to create a sense of autonomy in the film and to “self-absorb” the subject’s own image into the film in interaction with its environment.The Sensory Ethnography Lab film consciously stands in opposition to human beings,using animals,terrain,water,machinery,architecture and other “nonhuman” material movements to dissolve the camera-holder,normal human beings,viewing human beings,rational human beings and organic human beings,and seize images with materiality and vitality,allowing the material to present itself and the intensity of life to wrinkle the images.The intensity of life crinkles the image.The research in this paper takes Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of the image as its theoretical source.In terms of methodology,its theory and the films of the Sensory Ethnography Laboratory are intersected and interpreted to advance each other.In terms of structure,it draws on Deleuze’s planning in Cinema 1: Movement-Image and Cinema2: Time-Image,in which the analysis of the “movement-image” is intended to transcend it and lead it to a new form of “time-image”.In this essay,whether from the first to the second chapter,or from the first two chapters to the last two chapters,what the author does is not to juxtapose them,but to slowly converge and construct them,sometimes overturning the former,sometimes returning to the former and developing it in a repetitive and different way,making it break out into new tributaries again,and continuously enriching the connection between concepts and images from multiple levels and perspectives.The article is divided into two parts and four chapters,the first part “World-Image”focuses on the analysis of the images of the subject environment and the material form of the world in sensory ethnographic films,and the second part,“Life-Image”,focuses on the analysis of the images of characters presented in sensory ethnographic films.The first of which summarizes the various "non-human" points of view presented in the film series,transforming the traditional human point of view and human consciousness in the films into a “camera-consciousness” that does not depend on human will.By considering the film “Manakamana” as a “cinematic dispositive” and analyzing the“movement-image” of the film,we connect the image of SEL with the “real movement”in the philosophical sense of Deleuze and further develop it.In this chapter,we further develop the concept of “camera-consciousness” and explore the autonomous power of the camera.In the second chapter,we will firstly,broadly sort out and study the basic theories of film research-the method of audiovisual analysis,artistic aesthetics and the absence of sensation in human existence-and explain why SEL films have strong sensation.Secondly,the concept of “camera-consciousness” proposed in the previous article is developed into a more autonomous concept of “cinema-consciousness” through SEL images.This provides a new perspective for understanding images by demonstrating the connection between images and material reality.In the third chapter,the flattened facial images and the flowing,fractured body images in the films “Somniloquies” and “Caniba” are related to the body images in Francis Bacon’s paintings.The face in “Caniba” is developed from an emotional to a spiritual level.By arguing the logic of the body,the life experience of the two brothers in Cannibalism is explored and leads to the key concept of the “body without organs”in the next chapter.The fourth chapter continuing the discussion of images,bodies and characters’ life experiences in the two films in Chapter 3,focuses on the concept of “body without organs” used by Deleuze to explain the unique life forms,life instincts and life impulses of the subjects from the perspectives of the image,function and essence of the “body without organs”.The exhibition explores the unique life form,life instinct and life impulse of the subject from the perspective of the image,function and essence of the“body without organs”.