A GOD OF CINEMA

A very brief "essay" on the intrinsic connection between Janus and cinema

• WHO IS JANUS ? : 

ROMAN GOD

Janus is the Roman God of all beginnings, gates, transitions, time, choices, duality, doorways, passages, and endings.

A mysterious deity, his true nature is still debated to this day.

Interpretations concerning the god's fundamental nature either limit it to this general function or emphasize a concrete or particular aspect of it.

ETYMOLOGY

The name of the god comes form Iānus, meaning in Latin "arched passage, doorway".

Cicero, Ovid and Macrobius have also indicated that the name derived from the verb ire ("to go"), which made of Janus the god of motion and transitions.

GOD OF MOTION

Since movement and change are interconnected, he has a double nature, symbolised in his two-headed image.

He also rules the progress of past to future, from one condition to another, from one vision to another, and young people's growth to adulthood (he could see into the past with one face and into the future with the other).

• JANUS AND THE DEFINITION OF CINEMA :

Isn't that ultimately what cinema is all about ? Calling Janus the god of cinema captures the essence of what cinema represents: a dynamic, reflective, and transformative art form.

MOTION, MOTION, MOTION ! 

Let's not forget that cinema is fundamentally about motion! The very essence of film lies in its ability to capture and convey movement.

In its early days, the development of cinema was very much a public and scientific endeavor, driven by a collective fascination with the ability to capture and reproduce movement.

This brings to mind the pioneering experiments of Eadweard Muybridge, whose work in motion photography laid the foundation for the development of motion pictures.

DIVINE POWERS

	JANUS	CINEMA
TIME	Knows the past and future, moving freely between both.	Plays with the concept of time itself through storytelling techniques like flashbacks and foreshadowing. One could argue that cinema is time: it lasts a finite number of minutes, yet offers a self-contained timeline within our own, a sort of temporal mise-en-abyme.
SPACE	Moves wherever he wants, enters whatever he desires.	Transcends physical boundaries and limitations. One could argue that cinema is space: it can enter or film anything, whether created digitally or physically. It has no limits.
DUALITY	Two faces.	cinema embodies duality: it offers two ways of analysis—implicit and explicit.
TRANSITIONS, BEGINNINGS, ENDINGS	Presides over them.	Narrates the end and beginning of stories. Cinema inherently rules over transitions. The very word transitions is self-explanatory in the context of film. Cinema often explores themes of change, transformation, and new beginnings (such as coming-of-age movies).

• WHO CAME FIRST ? : 

Everyone is familiar with the infamous phrase: "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" When it comes to movies, we might rephrase it as: "Which came first, Janus or cinema?" One could argue that cinema, with its ability to capture movement and time, was an inevitable progression in our quest to understand and represent the world around us.

In this sense, Janus, the god of transitions and beginnings, may be a prefiguration of cinema.

I like to think that just as the discovery of fire marked a pivotal moment in human history, and the shaping of iron signified a mastery over materials and a leap forward in technology, the birth of cinema represents a new era in human expression and communication.