On Filmic Virtualities: Beyond Fiction/Documentary Divide with Peter Watkins

Drawing on Deleuze’s well-known insight that the “virtual” is no less “real” than the “actual”, I will bring the notion of “virtuality” to bear on the discussion of certain cinematic practices in which the “reality of facts” and the “reality of fiction” cannot be simply separated. What is the truth potential of such a blurring of lines? Are there consequences to be drawn from the difference between the possible, the impossible and the contingent when it comes to fiction? These are among the questions that I’ll try to answer – or, better said, that I’ll try to displace into new, thought-provoking contexts – while taking the concept of the virtual as my conceptual guiding thread. In doing so, I will not reflect in the void. Quite the contrary, my reflections will take on the form of a diptych revolving around two filmmakers: Peter Watkins and Mark Rappaport, who, despite everything that separates them, share an intense, multiforme interest in the tensions between fiction and documentar.