The Splices in My Life: A Documentary or a Fictionary?

Abstract

When evaluating any new technology, one must not only ask what it will do, but also what it will undo. Computers, for example, have undone our need to have memory skills: we now have to learn how to forget. The cinema is gradually undoing our “idea” of speaking, thereby shaking the very epistemic bases upon which our culture rests. The responsibility for this “undoing” lies mainly with the film editor. But not the editor of just any film: it is that of the editor of a documentary film, as this skill evolved into an art form at the National Film Board of Canada.

Le cinéma parlant, dans son histoire et sans le vouloir, ne propose-t-il pas une classification [des actes de paroles] qui pourrait rejaillir ailleurs et aurait une importance philosophique?

Gilles Deleuze²

Gilles Deleuze, L’Image-temps, Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1985, p. 329.