suture

[ psychoanalytic film theory ][ Category - Film ]

Suture, meaning stitching. These are techniques used by film and filmmakers to make us forget that there's a camera in the shot doing all the filming.

The collapsing, the congruence of the cinema's “forms of looking”. Those are

1. The camera recording the profilmic event (whatever is on screen)
2. The audience viewing the final product
3. The actors looking on set, in the world of illusion

The synthesis of these three things gives the audience suture. You can use editing and other Filmmaking techniques to achieve this collapse, which thereby Suture.

Suture makes us identify with the characters on screen. And remember we don't chose who we identify with the filmmakers makes that choice for us. This is what motivated feminist film theory (the lack of female identification).