All of a sudden on the turbulent streets of Tokyo, I realized that a valid image of this city might very well be an electronic one, and not only my sacred celluloid images. In it’s own language, the video camera was capturing the city in an appropriate way. I was shocked! A language of images was not the privilege of cinema. Wasn’t it necessary then to reevaluate everything? All notions of identity, language, images, authorship. Perhaps our future authors were the makers of commercials, or video clips, or the designers of electronic games and computer programs. Fuck!
And movies? This nineteenth century invention is out of the mechanical age. This beautiful language of light and movement, of myth and adventure that can speak of love and hate, of war and peace, of life and death — what would become of it? And all these craftsmen, behind the cameras, behind the lights, at the editing tables — would they have to unlearn everything? Would there ever be an electronic craft? A digital craftsman? And would this new electronic language be capable of showing the men of the twentieth century like the still camera of August Sander or the film camera of John Cassavetes?