Fade-In: Introduction

The introduction makes clear the novelty and importance of the present study, describes its methodology, and delineates its argument. The introductory chapter also emphasizes the book’s fresh contributions to two major scholarly conversations: first, the innovative intersections between film studies and Deleuze and Guattari studies; second, the emergent interest in absence, darkness, and silence in film studies and film-philosophy. Accordingly, this chapter introduces the reader not only to the specialized vocabulary of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari—including concepts such as the “abstract machine,” “deterritorialization,” and “lines of flight”—but also to the author’s own terminology, such as “folds to black or white” and “elective mutism.” In addition to elaborating on the concept of the filmmaking machine as an abstract art machine in relation to questions of absence in cinema, the introduction explicates the book’s focus on “thirteen ways of looking at the black or white screen.” This undergirding diagrammatic principle guides the presentation of content in the book, mobilizing Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of “assemblage,” “diagram,” and “cartography,” all of which are correlative with an understanding of the filmmaking machine. The filmmaking machine is not disconnected from critical film disciplines and creative practices as integral components of the “cine-mecanosphere.” The introduction posits that film history, film theory, and film analysis all stand to benefit from the film-philosophical conceptual apparatus. What is more, reflective of an expanded process of “cine-machining,” the book manifests itself as theoretical assemblage, which is integral to the stand-alone creative practice component, the author’s remix-assemblage, This Video Does Not Exist (2015/2024).

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