Alternative Theory: The Crystals of Time

I made a remix video. This is my first time editing.

I reinterpret clips from Citizen Kane(1941), The Lady from Shanghai(1949), The Structure of Crystal(1949), Last Year at Marienbad(1961), Mirror(1975), and The Double Life of Véronique(1991) to explore Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the “crystal-image”. In these films, the actual image often intertwines with recollection-images and virtual-images. The protagonists are not merely living in the present but are actively trying to identify, reconstruct, or even embody their recollection. This results in a temporal fold where the actual and virtual-images, illustrating Deleuze’s notion that time becomes non-linear, crystallized, and refracted through perception and memory.

“The purely optical and sound situation (description) is an actual image, but one which, instead of extending into movement, links up with a virtual image and forms a circuit with it.” (p.47)  In these cinematic moments, the recollection-image does not simply bear the mark of the past; instead, recollection/dreams opens up an entirely different space-time, showing the virtuality and potentiality. It is not important to identify which scenes are actual images and which are virtual images, but recognizing the circuit that is formed between them. It is precisely this temporal and perceptual circuit. The actual and the virtual fold into each other in the crystals of time. That inspires my desire to finish this remix project.