Chattaway goes to a lecture by Ron Reed

What happens when a reviewer I admire goes to hear a lecture by a stage-director and film critic I admire?

Here’s Peter T. Chattaway pondering a lecture by Ron Reed, and considering

“the way art functions as oblation — the way it takes common elements, offers them up in an almost sacramental form of thanksgiving, and then distributes those elements to others. Listening to him, it occurred to me that the very act of photography itself is a form of “oblation” — cameras receive common light rays bouncing off of common objects, transform them into something on celluloid, and then those images are distributed to people through some sort of communal venture, whether photographs or art gallery shows or whatnot. And thus, films themselves can be a sort of “oblation” — though it probably depends on the spirit in which any given film is made. (Or does it? Considering how many crewmembers on any given shoot are just there for the pay, whose intentions count and whose do not? Do filmmakers ever accidentally stumble into making an “oblation” of some sort? And what about those of us in the audience? Can we turn a film into an “oblation” simply by receiving it and transforming it into something more than what it is, through the way we watch it, appreciate it, discuss it with others, and so on?)”