26 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
escape, rushed towards the camera, the Eskimos squatting on the floor of the improvised theatre lost not a second to jump on the screen to catch it. What followed was a big laugh, both from Flaherty and the viewers who, just at that very moment, grew wise.
Now, to conclude, Nanook's kind of "connection" that I have just described is not really you look for. Nor do I. It is all gross, crude, just physical—and nothing more. And granting the fact that the tribals inside the make-shift theatre watched the films "wide-eyed and open-mouthed" with the "reverence of a new experience on their faces", strongly feel that the scene is just watchable, and the matter ends there. The point, as I see it, is to go beyond the physical confines and, then, chase the "truth". It is a process, a journey—brief or long, simple or complex. This needs to be acquired. It is a quality of mind that needs to be cultivated.
To say it in the simplest possible manner—and I warn you not to read it too literally, here is what Eisenstein prescribed: It is reading the time that is obligatory (Intellectual Perception), not just watching the two arms of a clock at an undefined angle (Physical Perception).
In other words, it is the dialectical leap that is what is our concern.