This article is really to ask if we can continue to distinguish between the different arts: cinema, performance, video art and theatre. Each certainly has its own specific language. But cinema is often called a composite art, and directors such as Peter Greenaway, David Lynch and Matthew Barney are artists making films, or are they filmmaker artists? What is the dividing line, and is there one, be it in purpose, goal, conception, or public? Minù Habibi Minelli explores some of the forms art/cinema can take.

What if we contrast Michael Winterbottom's Wonderland (1999) with the video artwork of Seamus Harahan, whose work engages directly with place, using an intuitive process to map spaces, the accumulation of meanings in the dislocation of the familiar. Are they similar? The theme is the same – to look at everyday life without idealising it – but while Winterbottom has a narrative evolution and plot to give his vista on grim everyday life, the Northern Irish artist takes a look at reality in a minimal way, looking at fragments of experience, not structuring the image – he simply puts the camera before his subject without developing it into a story. He is, of course, not the first artist to take a common part of everyday life and 'elevate' it to the art gallery. Both Winterbottom and Seamus Harahan consciously choose not to use the high quality film finish we're used to with Hollywood; the former does so to get closer to his subject, while Harahan's work feels like a home video, choosing individual expressive images within short, fragmentary, and often poetic glimpses of street life.

The public of Wonderland understands the sort of development that starts as a puzzle of incoherent elements, little by little taking shape and leading to a logical and emotionally satisfying ending. We expect Winterbottom to show us his virtuosity in structuring a plot to this end. By contrast, video artists have more freedom due to the diverse expectations of their own public. Feeling no obligation to construct a narrative, filmmakers such as Kiorastami, Chantal Ackerman, and Atom Egoyan present video work at art exhibitions which consciously eschew traditional dramatic structure of crises and climax.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 110.