사실과 언어의 간극으로부터

Between Reality and Language: Peter Kubelka's Metric Films and the Cinematic Truth

This study examines how Peter Kubelka's early films challenge the basic propositions that semioticians like Christian Metz embraced in the course of investigating the structural basis of cinema. Whereas Metz tried to explicate the semiotic mechanism of cinema in terms of such elements as the shot, Kubelka interrogates the function of the individual frame in his “metric films.” Kubelka's working principle recognizes the very mechanical foundation of the cinematic perception and ultimately resolves the conceptual dualism of reality and language, the binary opposition which not only dictates western thoughts but also haunts modern film theory. By restricting the scope of research to narrative films and not taking into account avant-garde approaches, film semiotic theory failed to offer a comprehensive understanding of the cinematic phenomena. The purpose of this study is to propose a way of rethinking the basis of cinema as an optical phenomenon, through which the binary opposition between reality and language becomes obsolete.