Cinema

The success in "Man With a Movie Camera" lies in the timing: of the duration of shots and the speed at which they are played. A truly cinematic experience is achieved when the camera, whose greatest potential lies in its ability to manipulate time, is employed in such a way. In cinematic film we view series of real events that happen in unreal order and time. This is largely achieved by shots placed in sequence devoid of transitional phases, and it is here that we begin to adjust the relationships between objects. With this sort of grasp on the relationship of objects, Lissitsky makes an analogy to mathematics. Numbers are abstract figures in themselves as undefinable quantities (you cannot use a word in its own definition); but their interaction is significant and the relationships between them establish a legible order. Likewise, painting can be an abstract figure given meaning by the relationships between constituent parts. The projection of these relationships beyond the picture plane creates three dimensional space, and what could be architecture. The Acropolis is a cinema of its own right: the views presupposed by Greeks are distinguished from the time its takes to move between them.