Audiences experience cinema as a form of illusion. Discuss in relation to the fact that certain films explore both their own materiality and the cinematic apparatus itself.

‘The experience of the avant-garde film can be disorienting. Film has only a one hundred year history and so does not exhibit ruptures with dominant codes as does the history of most disciplines, including painting, and physics, among others. One is therefore less prepared for the unfamiliar in film than other areas.’

The most common and well established of all films is the feature-length, commercial, entertainment film. It assumes that film is mass entertainment requiring certain levels of production and marketing to sustain it as such. These films are produced for the pleasure of the masses. The film makers skills can rightly be compared to those of the magician and illusionist in so much as they create imaginary realities that the audience are absorbed into for the length of the film, even in some instances, for some time after. The improvement of sound, colour and wide-screen have been viewed as essential decoration to a product of an industry that continually seeks to inc...