For an educational syncretism

“The evolution of art, as an entity, is expressed in the permanent swings between isolation (differentiation) and fusion. Each art taken individually exists and is developed in comparison with others, as individual species and as a variety. Depending on the eras, either one art or another tends to be an art of the masses and, inspired by the spirit of syncretism, aims to include elements of the other arts. In the history of arts, differentiation and syncretization, are permanent and equally important processes that evolve correlatively. The syncretic forms are not at all the exclusive attribute of primitive art or of the “people”, as was previously believed. Their tendency to reappear is a constant of artistic culture”. In 1926, Boris Eichenbaum, the Russian Rormalist, in his article entitled “Problems of Film Stylistics”, started a debate about a subject that had already stirred up and fascinated thousands of critics right from the earliest films. The subject: cinema as a pure art or as an impure art, as André Bazin would say several decades later. Right at the peak of French impressionists and the European avant-garde, Eichenbaum established the cinema as a syncretic art form.