Handmade Films: Questioning and Integrating Cinematic Technology: ontological and epistemological implications of direct-on-film animation

Norman McLaren’s most important creation strategy was that of making a film completely by hand: not only the visuals, which he painted or scratched directly on film, but also sound and –most important– motion. He propounded muscular memory to control the formal differences between successive images (1976/1978), proclaiming the physiological development of a consciousness of movement. Thus neglecting what has always been considered up to now the main ontological foundations of film: the automatic recording of physical reality. At the same time he was questioning the epistemological model they integrate, i.e. the perception of order and the ways in which that order is imposed upon reality by films and the technology which holds them. In this paper I will try to demonstrate that, by overwhelming the cinematic technical workings with his gesture –literally with his body– Norman McLaren exposed its technological scheme to contingency, thus opening the production process to new unpredictable expressive and communicative possibilities. I will attempt to explain how this corresponds to a renewed way of comprehending technology by, simultaneously, revealing the human reality it contains and physiologically incorporating it.