Sent by AKECH OBAT MASIRA
CHAIRMAN
LAKE VICTORIA BASIN FILM MAKERS GUILD[ KENYA]
+254726164954

PRESENTATION DURING AWARDS BY JOHN MIDEGA

For a long time, there has existed an interrelationship and mutual influence between literature and other forms of artistic expressions. This has resulted in painting and music based on works of fiction, drama and poetry, as well as literary works emulating pictorial styles and musical structures. The creative exchange between literature and film was initiated in the last decade of the 19th Century. Initially, film was most related to photography and painting.

Literature shares with film the ability to employ the structures and devices of narrative. Sequence of images on screen told a story and this is equivalent to the sequence of words on page. The use of language in film established firmly the connections to literature.

Films, just like in literature, present i) action ii) images iii) words replicating life. Literary works also have a stylistic and thematic basis in a realistic presentation of characters and incidents. Theatre, initially, seemed nearest to film because of the common use of actors and sets. Critics agree that films have a stronger affinity with fiction, especially with the pronounced emphasis on narrative. However, whereas the primary thrust of literature is linguistic, the thrust of film is imagistic/ visual and immediate.

Film draws from the tradition of live theatre which includes techniques of staging, lighting, movement and gestures. From the novel, film draws from structure, characterization, theme and point of view.

From poetry it draws from an understanding of metaphor, symbolism and other literary tropes. Film can extend into areas of the innermost privacy and consciousness just like poetry does.

From music film draws from rhythm, repetition and counterpoint.

From painting it draws from sensitivity to shape, form, visual textures and colour.

Popular film developed with the emergence of the 18th Century novel. Both the 18th Century novel and film relied heavily upon realism as a technique. Early films were concerned, just like with realism in literature, daily lives of ordinary people. The subject matter and audiences were people of low social standing.

An analogy stands out for film and literature. The basic structural units of the novel were replicated in film. In the novel we have: the word, sentence, paragraph, chapter and the entire novel. In film we have the frame, shot scene and sequence. The word in literature and the image in film were similar in so far as they are visual phenomena, both perceived with the eye.

Despite different degrees of explication, both writers and filmmakers use language or languages. Some differences may exist however. For instance, whereas the film is multi-sensory communal experience emphasizing immediacy, literature is a monosensory private experience that is more conductive to reflection. A film is usually viewed in others’ presence who become a larger part of the film’s experience. Each audience member acknowledges the presence of the others. Audience response can also affect perception of a film. A novel is typically a private experience in which the relationship between the author and the reader is relatively direct and immediate. Others’ responses do not impinge on the novel, thus making it conducive to reflection as the reader can pause and mull over or re-read.

The above notwithstanding, the film and the novel are alike insofar as their order is typically linear. Movement is generally sequential and the events and scenes are ordered in direct relation to each other. Whether the order is ABC or CBA, the progression is usually sequential, straightforward and predictable.

By and large, therefore, film is considered as a branch of literature. Filmmakers are indebted to literature in a wide variety of ways. Since literature is a narrative art intent upon creating images and sounds in the reader’s mind, then film is obviously literary- an extension of the older narrative arts. Indeed, the most distinctive quality of good writing is visual: to convey images by means of words, to make the mind see, to project onto that inner screen of the brain a moving picture of objects and events to convey a balance and reconciliation of a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order. Film is therefore visual literacy (as opposed to verbal literacy), a new medium which is an extension and enlargement of the idea of literacy itself. In contemporary scholarship, everything written, for example, film scripts, are a part of the study of literature, thus film is a branch of literature.