Film (1965) by Samuel Beckett

Beckett's own cinematic short -directed by Alan Schneider -featuring Buster Keaton.

Samuel Beckett’s only venture into the medium of cinema, Film was written in 1963 and filmed in New York in the summer of 1964.
The problematic which Beckett establishes in the script (which he intended to be read in conjunction with the viewing of the film) is that of the 18th Century Irish philosopher Berkeley "Esse est percipi", that is "to be is to be perceived" or to quote Berkeley in his more detailed formulation "all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world have not any subsistence without a mind - that their being is to be perceived or known.": even after all outside perception -- be it animal, human or divine -- has been suppressed, self perception remains.



Film: The Collected Works of Samuel Beckett