It was somewhere between a freeze frame and a buffering screen that I met Gilles Deleuze. The year? 2021–2023. The world was virtual, cinema was being discussed in square boxes on Zoom, and I was a replacement teacher for an online film studies batch based in Bangalore.
The class was supposed to be straightforward—genre, mise-en-scène, a little Hitchcock, a dash of Kurosawa. But Deleuze had other plans. Enter Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. This wasn’t just a book; it was a philosophical labyrinth where Bergson met Eisenstein for espresso, and every frame came with metaphysical baggage.
I didn’t pick up Deleuze because I wanted to—I picked it up because I had to. My students were smart, curious, and somehow already name-dropping "affection-images" in the group chat. So I dove in.
At first, it was chaos. Sentences unfolded like Möbius strips. Concepts spiraled. I had to pause every page and rewatch half of Battleship Potemkin just to breathe. But slowly, like montage itself, meaning began to emerge in the juxtapositions.
Deleuze taught me that cinema is not just about storytelling—it's about time, perception, and how we think through images. A simple tracking shot? No longer simple. It became a philosophical movement in itself. A dissolve? A bridge between sensory-motor schemas.
During one class, I attempted to explain the “perception-image” using a scene from Bicycle Thieves. I expected silence. What I got instead was a barrage of interpretations. One student said it felt like the frame itself had "a nervous system." And just like that, I realized: Deleuze doesn’t simplify cinema—he dignifies it. He takes it seriously enough to give it the same complexity we reserve for life.
Was it exhausting? Yes.
Did I feel like I was trapped in a Tarkovsky dreamscape half the time? Also yes.
But did Cinema 1 rewire the way I see movement, time, and light on screen?
Absolutely.
So here's to that unexpected journey into French philosophy, Soviet montage, and Indian film students who asked all the right questions. Deleuze didn’t just help me teach film—he changed the way I watched it. Forever.