Dave Kehr has a few remarks on the release of a set of woefully underseen films by Yugoslavian director Dusan Makavejev by Criterion’s Eclipse branch. Which is great news for fans of Eastern European cinema.
But then the comments turn into a great conversation about the longevity of the DVD format, and the future of film-watching. I am not an avid DVD collector by any means (though I have a compulsive book hoarding habit), but this comment rings of a truth un-entranced by the web’s ease of access:
“Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories…For what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order.”
These remarks come from “Unpacking My Library: A Talk About Book Collecting” by Walter Benjamin, an essay, found in “Illuminations,” that also has other fascinating insights into collecting that can surely apply to DVD libraries and what Benjamin terms, as Jean-Pierre Coursodon also did so pertinently, “a magic circle in which they are fixed as the final thrill, the thrill of acquisition.”
How will the apparently forthcoming future when all the non-unique material artistic objects known by such names as “books,” “CDs,” and “DVDs’ (among others) have been turned into dustbin items by non-material versions of the works they contain affect this phenomenon?
Will people want to compensate by downloading everything into mammoth storage drives so as to retain some form of material possession? Or will they just say, “I don’t need shelves of these things. I can always pluck anything I want from cyberspace?” If the latter, that will certainly leave a lot more room for plaster ducks and bowling trophies, and other knicknacks.
Some — me included (I’m in Jean-Pierre’s age bracket) — derive “inspiration” from the visible, touchable presence of books and DVDs, though their presence also brings to mind the classic question of whether or not one, having reached such an age, will live long enough to read/see everything one has acquired.
This applies even or especially when I’m not reading or watching or listening to them at any given moment, even or especially when I have yet to do so.
But the process need not be mere acquisition alone. It can also involve, and for some does also involve, engaging with these objects and their non-object elements individually, often repeatedly.
For as Benjamin also remarks, “”[To] a true collector the acquisition of an old book is its rebirth…To renew the old world — that is the collector’s deepest desire when he is driven to acquire new things…”
In any case, this fine essay, blending the whimsical with the profound but with no touch of solemnity, has much to say and suggest about the nuances of the collecting game, in which film has taken its place going as far back as private collections of 8mm and other prints that have often proven to be repositories of many films’ last surviving copies.