30 juin 2012

Collaboration / Contribution (Puig)


Conférence au MashUp Festival (Forum des Images)
Le mashup n’est qu’un petit élément d’un ensemble de pratiques qui se développent, et qui participent d’une mutation profonde de nos sociétés, où l’économie de la contribution peut s’opposer à celle de la compétition. Derrière ces questions, la figure de l’amateur, telle que la conçoit le philosophe Bernard Stiegler, et les pratiques collaboratives, auxquelles Vincent Puig, directeur adjoint de l’IRI, consacre une part importante de ses recherche et de ses expériences de développement d’outils.
L’Institut de recherche et d’innovation a été créé pour anticiper, accompagner, et analyser les mutations des pratiques culturelles permises par les technologies numériques, et pour contribuer parfois à les faire émerger.


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27 juin 2012

Droit d'auteur, Copyrights et nouveaux usages


Table ronde " Réinventer le droit d'auteur ? " organisée dans le cadre de la 2ème édition du MashUp Film Festival (Forum des Images) [programme PDF].
Dans son documentaire produit par l’Office National du Film du Canada RIP: A Remix Manifesto, Brett Gaylor questionne le rôle du droit d’auteur dans l’ère numérique, à partir de l’expérience de l’artiste américain Girltalk, dont les chansons sont entièrement composées de collages musicaux. Doit-il simplement être considéré comme un pirate ? Alors que tombent certaines barrières entre professionnels et amateurs, entre producteurs et “consommateurs” de culture, nos systèmes de droit d’auteur doivent-ils évoluer, voire être réinventés ?
Intervenants : Juan Branco, auteur de Réponses à Hadopi (Éd. Capricci, 2011) ; Benjamin Jean, juriste et auteur du livre Option libre. Du bon usage des licences libres (Éd. Framasoft-Atramenta, 2011) ; Alain Longuet, artiste multimédia, membre de la Scam.
Débat animé par Jean-Yves de Lépinay, directeur des programmes du Forum des images.


Voir aussi :

25 juin 2012

Pier Paolo Pasolini (Didi-Hoberman/Joubert-Laurencin/Jaar)

Inviter Alfredo Jaar : pour prendre la mesure, à travers son essai vidéographique Le ceneri di Pasolini, du choix que certains artistes sont amenés à faire, quelquefois, pour ne pas organiser tout leur travail autour d'une auto-affirmation de leur « style propre ». Aujourd'hui que le monde de l'art semble ignorer les mouvements collectifs, qu'est-ce qu'un artiste qui ne fait pas montre de son je, mais affirme hautement sa capacité de dialogue et d'admiration pour autrui ?
* * *

Faire l'histoire des sans-noms (23 Mai 2012) vidéo 1h22'
Inviter Arlette Farge : pour comprendre comment une pratique de l'histoire, fondée sur la « critique des discours » instaurée par Michel Foucault, peut délivrer, dans les « blancs » ou les singularités de l'archive, la parole et les gestes - même intimes - de ceux à qui l'on n'a pas voulu donner la parole ni la possibilité d'assumer leurs gestes singuliers. Arlette Farge est directrice de recherche à l'EHESS, historienne des comportements populaires au XVIIIe siècle et des relations entre le monde masculin et féminin à la même époque. Parmi ses derniers ouvrages : Essai pour une histoire des voix au XVIIIe siècle (Bayard, 2009).

Théâtre sans soi (24 Mai 2012) vidéo 2h13'
Inviter Évelyne Didi : pour observer comment travaille une actrice lorsqu'elle cherche, à rebrousse-poil de toute tendance « moïque » ou « héroïque », à servir scrupuleusement – et inventivement – un propos, un texte, une pensée, une poétique. Et comment ce travail suppose un engagement éthique et politique vis-à-vis de la question de la « société du spectacle ». Qu'est-ce donc qu'une actrice « au-delà des étoiles », pour reprendre l'expression fameuse d'Eisenstein ? Evelyne Didi est comédienne. Elle a travaillé, entre autres, avec Klaus Michael Grüber, Robert Wilson et Aki Kaurismäki.

L'Homme sans nom (30 Mai 2012)
Wang Bing : pour montrer, à travers son film L'Homme sans nom – qui apparaît comme le revers et le prolongement de son immense fresque À l'ouest des rails –, comment il est possible de faire, avec la plus grande modestie formelle qui soit, un acte authentique d'exposition des peuples, un acte d'écoute attentive et de pure délicatesse envers autrui. Comment, donc, l'artiste n'y « prend » aucune image de l'être filmé, mais se contente (il y faut beaucoup de travail) de nous la « rendre ».

Une autobiographie de philosophe, forcément impersonnelle (31 Mai 2012)
Inviter Patrice Loraux : pour assister « en direct » à ce que produit une pensée guidée par son propre tempo (pour reprendre le titre de l'ouvrage majeur de ce philosophe, Le Tempo de la pensée) et par sa propre exigence interne. C'est une sorte de machine que nous verrons naître alors, une machine qui ne sert rien d'autre qu'un souci de la vérité, loin de toutes les intimidations et de tous les « discours du maître » à quoi veulent quelquefois se livrer les philosophes académiques.

Gestes de guerre (8 Juin 2012) vidéo 37'35"
Inviter Harun Farocki : pour s'interroger, une fois encore, sur les rapports si complexes et intriqués entre les images et l'histoire, notamment quand cette histoire prend forme dans la guerre. Farocki rend possible à nouveau, loin de tous les cynismes et de tous les dandysmes postmodernes, une "figure critique" de l'artiste qui nous donne à repenser l'histoire politique à travers l'intelligence aiguë de ses montages. Harun Farocki est cinéaste et vit en Allemagne. Il a réalisé notamment "Images du monde et inscription de la guerre" (1988) et "En sursis" (2007), analyses des conditions de lisibilité des images de la Shoah. On lui doit aussi les installations "Eye Machine" (1, 2 et 3).



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22 juin 2012

Canadian indie distribution (KinoSmith)


The Seventh Art: Issue 4 (May 2012)
A profile of the Canadian film distributor, KinoSmith, where we talk to founder Robin Smith.
KinoSmith is an independent Canadian film distribution and marketing company that works closely with domestic and international producers, distributors and sales agents in presenting diverse works to the Canadian market.
Notable releases include the box office hit documentary Up the Yangtze, Werner Herzog's 3D documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Academy Award winning foreign language feature Departures and Mark Cousins' epic The Story of Film: An Odyssey.
We sat down with founder Robin Smith in the newly renovated Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, where he is the new Cinema Programmer, to discuss the realities of distribution in Canada.
The Seventh Art is an independently produced video magazine about cinema featuring profiles on interesting aspects of the film industry, video essays and in-depth interviews with filmmakers.
View full issues and additional features on our site: http://www.theseventhart.org

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16 juin 2012

Beauty, Art, Inutility and Subjectivity

The Avengers (2012) : beauty?
"If the contemplation of something beautiful arouses pleasurable feelings, this effect is distinct from the beautiful as such. I may, indeed, place a beautiful object before an observer with the avowed purpose of giving him pleasure, but this purpose in no way affects the beauty of the object. The beautiful is and remains beautiful though it arouse no emotion whatever, and though there be no one to look at it. In other words, although the beautiful exists for the gratification of an observer, it is independent of him."
Eduard Hanslick; music critic (1854)
Picasso (1937) : not beauty?


* * *


Why Beauty Matters (BBC2; Roger Scruton; 2009) video 59'
Philosopher Roger Scruton presents a provocative essay on the importance of beauty in the arts and in our lives.In the 20th century, Scruton argues, art, architecture and music turned their backs on beauty, making a cult of ugliness and leading us into a spiritual desert.
Using the thoughts of philosophers from Plato to Kant, and by talking to artists Michael Craig-Martin and Alexander Stoddart, Scruton analyses where art went wrong and presents his own impassioned case for restoring beauty to its traditional position at the centre of our civilisation.
Roger Scruton is well meaning, and, at the very least, provides a crash course in Aesthetics for dummies, which would have been perfect circa 1900. Unfortunately, it is a backward looking at Art, as it was conceived until the XXth century, a conservative and classicist approach to the wider spectrum of artistic possibilities. So for people who believe that everything is subjective and that only what they like can be art, that what doesn't fit their taste cannot be art, that there cannot be such a thing as an objective standard... this documentary answers to their uneducated self-deception. 
But this is the basic understanding of Art explained to beginners. Like I said, it was perfectly valid and complete until the XIXth century, because art had always been conceived and admired by and for these conservative ideas. And, these classic artists might have achieved the highest peaks of perfection in Art history. 
However, it's not because Modern Art, Contemporary Art or Conceptual Art may not (yet) be as perfect and transcendent as 2000 years of "classical" history (like DaVinci, Michelangelo, Raphaël, Botticelli, Rambrandt, Wermeer, Velazquez, Dürer, Rubens, Titian, David...), that we should dismiss them entirely.
Scruton makes two mistakes that conveniently rule out or disqualify anything that isn't "pretty", "sacred" or "ancient", one is theo-centrism (equating true art with sacred art because he's a religious believer) the other is  being retrograde (judging NEW art movements through the obsolete paradigms that could only validate CLASSICAL art). 
Speaking of "beauty" is already a self-limitation. Even if I agree with most of what he says, with the gist of his argument (if we understand a broad definition of "beauty" as including a more modern acception of beauty, less about cuteness or transcendental holyness, and more about a conceptual idea of aesthetic), Scruton still instills the whole discourse of outdated references that new art just cannot live up to, precisely because it was produced in reaction to these classical canons of beauty. The Classical Age being outdated, doesn't mean the old masterpieces aren't as great as they used to be. But that the definition of art that was pretty much consistent throughout millennia, has encountered many transformations, mutations, revolutions, in the last century alone. And to account for these changes (which brought us Picasso, Monet, Kandinski, Cézanne, van Gogh, Matisse, Mondrian, Warhol, Schiele, Miro, Chagall, Klee, Malevich, Dali, Ernst, Modigliani, Giacometti, Bacon...), we cannot continue to refer to a definition of Art that only validates the Classical Age.  
Beauty is no longer prettiness. Art is no longer figurative. Art is no longer material. Art is no longer a simple object, a product of the art market. What I mean is that Classical Art is still considered great art as always, the only difference today is that the expanded definition of art is more tolerant of non-classical experiments, thus the advent of Modern Art, Surrealism, Cubism, Constructivism, Abstract Art, Conceptual Art, Minimalism, Postmodern Art, Contemporary Art, Performance Art, Digital Art, Virtual Art...
I understand he's angry at Duchamp, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Michael Craig... for discrediting the prettiness and meaningfulness of figurative/sacred art. But it's a very simplistic way of looking at the history of arts. It's not because you don't find it pretty, yourself personally, that it isn't, or that it cannot possibly be considered art.
The market of art which gives sometimes an overestimated attention to artists who seemingly don't seem to put much efforts in their work, has its excesses and perversions. But the mercantile market of art, hic et nunc, doesn't define what we should or should not accept as art, now and for posterity. In 2009 for Scruton, or today for us, we just CANNOT fall back on such antiquated definition of art, even if we don't understand the point, the substance, the purpose of everything going on in the realm of Contemporary Arts. 



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15 juin 2012

Children Ciné-Clubs (Beeban Kidron)

May 2012 TED Salon London 13'13"
Movies have the power to create a shared narrative experience and to shape memories and worldviews. British film director Beeban Kidron invokes iconic film scenes -- from Miracle in Milan to Boyz n the Hood -- as she shows how her group FILMCLUB shares great films with kids.
Beeban Kidron is a British filmmaker who successfully navigates between pop culture and society’s darkest underworlds. Kidron is best known for directing Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004) and the Bafta-winning miniseries Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1989), adapted from Jeannette Winterson’s novel of the same name. She is also the director of To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995) and Antonia and Jane (1991), as well as two documentaries on prostitution: Hookers, Hustlers, Pimps and their Johns (1993) and Sex, Death and the Gods (2011), a film about “devadasi,” or Indian “sacred prostitutes.”
In 2006 Kidron, with journalist and film critic Lindsay Mackie, founded FILMCLUB, an educational charity aimed at transforming the lives of young people through film. Through FILMCLUB, schools can screen films at no cost, and afterwards students discuss and review the films. Each week the charity reaches 220,000 children, in over 7,000 clubs.

FILMCLUB : Weekly Film Screenings in schools
  • Participatory choice of the film title from the vast annals of cinema history
  • Curated and contextualized film presentation
  • Uninterrupted, communal film screening 
  • Post-screening discussions, opening up on larger societal debates
  • Meeting with filmmakers, film crew, actors, screenwriters, editors, casting directors, stun managers, composers, conductors
  • Film-related activities, school project, workshop
  • Review writing, review of the week contest


Films cited :
  • Anabelle Serpentine dance (1894/Thomas Edison)
  • Le voyage dans la Lune (1902/Georges Meliès)
  • Dead Poets Society (1993/Peter Weir)
  • Miracle in Milan (1951/Vittorio de Sica)
  • Slumdog Millionaire (2008/Danny Boyle)
  • City of God (2002/Fernando Meirelles)
  • Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939/Frank Capra)
  • Hotel Rwanda (2004/Terry George)
  • Schindler's List (1993/Steven Spielberg)
  • Pickpocket (1959/Robert Bresson)
  • To Sir, with Love (1967/James Clavell)
  • Seven Samourai (1954/Kurosawa)
  • Half Nelson (2006/Ryan Fleck)
  • Persepolis (2007/Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi)
  • Jaws (1975/Steven Spielberg)
  • The Diary of Anne Frank (1959/George Stevens)
  • The Great Escape (1963/John Sturges)
  • Shoah (1985/Claude Lanzmann)
  • Triumph of the Will (1935/Leni Riefenstahl)
  • The Wizard of Oz (1939/Victor Fleming)
  • Citizen Kane (1941/Orson Welles)
  • Boyz n the Hood (1991/John Singleton)
  • Apollo 13 (1995/Ron Howard)
  • Gandhi (1982/Richard Attenborough)
  • All About Eve (1950/Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
  • Network (1976/Sidney Lumet)
  • Mildred Pierce (1945/Michael Curtiz)
  • Marx Brothers 
  • Spirited Away (2001/Hayao Miyazaki)
  • La Haine (1993/Matthieu Kassovitz)
  • Rear Window (1954/Alfred Hitchcock)



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14 juin 2012

Affection vs. Criticism (the incompatible dispute)

In a perfect world, this is how the role playing dialogue between AO Scott and David Carr should have undergone (full script included) :


S = AO Scott (16 years old reviewer, self-proclaimed "institutional weight" of American criticism, who doesn't know how to define criticism when asked to)
C = David Carr (11 years old hypothetical whiner unable to conciliate LIKE with evaluation, and wants ALL critics to AGREE with his whimsical crushes)





THE CHEAP SHOT (New York Fucking Times)



C : "Whoa! Welcome back to The Cheap Shot which is a show about the intersection between inculture and covert product placement for Diet Coke and iPad. If this was TV we wouldn't have to downgrade our discourse cause we already are at the widely accessible level of Fox News's cheapest controversies."

S : "THIS is obviously NOT TV. But this raises the questions : 'What is the press? What is the NYT? should we ape the worst TV makes to beg for attention? Are we dying out? Does it show we are desperate for advertising money?' "

C : "Whoa! Here is a pause from our sponsors offering this Public Service Announcement for those of our readers who might not have learnt basic English in school. Since The NYT is only read by children, let's bring the discourse level to the lowest common denominator. As Dubya said, no child left behind... "



PSA : 
TO LIKE : I like, you like, he, she likes, we like, you like, they like, EVERYONE likes. And it doesn't require ANY qualification. Regular verb of the English language referring to a SUBJECTIVE feeling a unique INDIVIDUAL experiences;  "to feel attraction toward or take pleasure in. Synonymous : to enjoy" (Merriam-Webster). Antonym : to dislike (same shit)

TO CRITICIZE : A person QUALIFIED to pass judgments on matters of cinema aesthetics and artistic achievements, through film studies and a considerable amount of film viewing, may deliver an EDUCATED OPINION on a work of art, after a thorough attention, enough reflection time and with the appropriate critical distance to the subject.
"to consider the merits and demerits of and judge accordingly. Synonymous : to evaluate" (Merriam-Webster)

These two verbs DO NOT signify the same thing, they are not interchangeable within the same argument. With one you speak of AFFECTION, with the other you speak of CRITICISM. It is impossible to mix them up.

When two persons argue over the SAME point, one says "I criticized this movie A" and the other rebukes "You said you didn't like this movie A". No, NO, NO! Evaluating a movie doesn't deal with audience feelings towards it, it doesn't judge people's personal reactions, it doesn't patronize people's affection. There is nothing personal in producing an artistic evaluation. And vice versa : one says "I like movie A" and the other retorts "Prove this is a masterpiece then!" No, NO, NO! It is possible to LIKE really bad movies without having to justify why, it is possible to LIKE mediocre movies without trying to shove it in any critically approved top10, it is possible to LIKE a blockbuster like a billion other spectators without making a statement about its timeless merits on a canonical scale.
Not everything you LIKE is or will ever be considered a MASTERPIECE. Nothing wrong with that. It doesn't mean your feelings are wrong. It doesn't mean criticism is worthless. Get over it.



C : "Whoa! I had no idea. If I opened a dictionary before starting this mock-interview, I wouldn't look so stupid now..."

S : "Dead on, pal! And if my definition of criticism wasn't clouded by decades of anti-intellectualism, I would have said it myself"

C : "Whoa! Fancy-pantsy critics at the NYT don't watch TV and give a 'MIXED review' to critic-proof summer movies such as The Avengers. Why? Why am I making stuff up to overblow hypothetical controversies?"

S : "Yeah we are the lowbrow-hipsters. Walking paradox if there ever was."

C : "Whoa! So mister Critic, do you think it is possible to CRITICALLY pan a commercial blockbuster if it has too many fans? Or should you shit your pants and pretend it's the best film of the year just to pander to our artistically uneducated readership?"

S : "Dude, do you think there are people who read an intellectual paper like the NYT and don't know the difference between To Like and To Criticize? between a personal connection with a cultural product and the evaluation of an artistic achievement in cinema?"

C : "Whoa! Of course. If I didn't know and could still find a job here at The NYT, there must be tons of confused Americans out there. Just look at our political elections, our news channels... and that's the serious side of our society! Confusion is the new gold standard."

S : "So true dude, let's not misunderestimate [sic] the power of American anti-intellectualism. So basically, now I have to explain why it is OK to review a movie regardless for its mercantile exploitation and its fanatical following among consumers?"

C : "Whoa! Exactly. So tell us, what is the point of paying you for the job you do at the NYT?"

S : "Well, I'm only speaking for myself here, but I heard there was something called movie reviewing. Movies come out, you watch them before the general public, and if you can jot down a quick run down of what's going on during the movie, then you're a movie reviewer."

C : "Whoa! sounds pretty simple to me. Reverse engineering of a movie pitch. Why can't you DO your job then? Sam Jackson's tweet said so, therefore I believe it."

S : "I don't have to know how to do a decent job, didn't you see that the NYT publishes inane papers like Dan Kois's anti-vegetable diatribe or Rosenbaum's anti-Bergman obituary? It's not like we have any aspiration for intellectual standards here. You should know, you're a free loader too."

C : "Whoa! So I'll just shut up and listen then."

S : "Yeah, I'm the boss here, everybody bows to my critic's pick. Cause MY taste is supreme, and I'm never wrong. I don't even know why I'm not the only name signing the NYT reviews, they all should be my ghost writers."

C : "Whoa! But you're spoiling the fun for millions of fans... Why so mean?"

S : "Because fans are irrational, their depth of field only sees their object of desire and everyone attacking it. They have zero perspective in a more global scale for the rest of the offers available that could be compared to that movie, and they have a very short term imperative : to win all possible critical accolades that will justify their emotional admiration, regardless of all other films that might deserve it more."

C : "Whoa! You lost me there... Could we go back to the talking points on the Hollywood memo our CEO demanded we recitate? Let's remind our readers that here at the NYT we are open-minded about summer movies, which everybody knows are called 'critic-proof', and that we review them religiously, I mean, fairly."

S : "Oops. Lemme add that we worship, respect consumers. We know at the NYT how to pander to the largest demographics, namely blockbuster audiences. So, instead of saying upfront that a critic's choice has nothing to do with the popularity of a movie and that the general level of Hollywood offering is too mediocre to raise the attention of serious critics and cinephiles, I'll just muddle my way out and talk about how 'real critics' like movies big and small, serious and kiddie ones, great and shitty ones... Yeah, because justifying your open-minded taste means you MUST admit you think bad movies are good... or else you'll never be credible in the USA."

C : "Whoa! You're just defending your posse."

S : "If I was a critic I wouldn't answer to this moronic bait. But since we play-pretend, I'll just ignore the fact you try to dismiss the discipline of film criticism in general as a mere corporate clique only formed of acquaintances I have personal interest in protecting. Instead I'll just play along and validate your anti-intellectual side-stepping."

C : "Whoa! May I pronounce random words like 'warm' and 'cuddly' just to interrupt your tentative explanation of critical evaluation?"

S : "You just did, dude. Thanks for cutting up my sentences in manageable soundbytes, so I can never reach too deep a level of conversation."

C : "Whoa! No problem. I'm here for the punctuation. Wait a second. I need to suck up to you here. I love whatever you write in the NYT *awkward tap on the shoulder*, cause you're America's favorite critic for people who think weekly reviewers are the highest possible standards of critical discourse. And I don't understand anything to world cinema standards anyway."

S : *blushes*

C : "Whoa! Let's cut to a candid interview of another NYT staffer who doesn't know how to defend an intellectual discipline against the discredit of populists.



Random source who crashes art exhibition luncheons : "Everybody looking at arts seriously, in the bars, on the Tweeter, all vote. Art criticism is a mess. It's liberating."



C : "Whoa! Thanks for your 'insightful' contribution, random source. We'll just ignore it and move on."

S : "After spending all my time looking down on movies, on my peers, on online reviewers... now that I'm on TV, I'll fake humility and define my job as merely formulating and clarifying my own ideas, to enter in a discussion, to engage in a discussion  "

C : "Whoa! I've never seen you participating to an informal discussion with spectators, bloggers, other critics or even your own readers, outside of the NYT office..."

S : "Shuddup! We're pretending I'm Mr. Nice Guy."

C : "Whoa! Sorry to blow up your carefully adjusted cover dude. It was almost believable. Now. If you please, indulge my retarded analogy, where I equate negative criticism to destroying the artwork itself in halves. As if an external evaluation of one prevented everyone else from looking at the piece, whole and untouched."

S : "This is not a progressive kindergarten, douchebag! What critics pursue is excellence, truth, beauty... everything that characterizes my assembly-line industrial reviews at the NYT."

C : "Whoa! There is no such thing as OBJECTIVE excellence, OBJECTIVE truth, OBJECTIVE beauty. There is only YOUR SUBJECTIVE version of it."

S : "If I was a critic, I would kick your ass all the way to the MoMA... or to a decent Art School. There you would learn the reason we use the word ART, and ART CRITICISM. It is precisely because people thought some ancient artifacts deserved to be salvaged from the dereliction of passing time, careless handling, looting and destruction. Without OBJECTIVE canons of beauty, generations after generations of fads wouldn't keep a consistent deference for the same pieces of ART, and make sure to preserve them for future generations coming after them.
But since I'm a failed American reviewer, I will agree with you by fear of the Anti-American bureau, which protects our declaration of independence from Auld European Values. OBJECTIVITY does NOT exist."

C : "Whoa! Hobgoblin!"

S : "Right. Let's bow to Ralph Waldo Emerson together cause INDIVIDUALISM, and the supremacy of personal subjective impressions are more important to our lowbrow culture than any millennium-old canons."

C : "What is the 2500 years longevity of appreciation for Greek Antiquity arts (sculpture, architecture, tragedy, poetry) in comparison to MY irrational LOVE for The Avengers TODAY???? Phidias is a figment of subjectivity. There is no way that golden proportions, harmonious compositions, delicate gestures, sense of scale, mastery of the tools, trans-generational, transnational emotions for the same piece of art would amount to anything we could call a pretty good approximation to OBJECTIVE STANDARDS for what is great art and what isn't."

S : "No idea what you're talking about, or else I would present a case to legitimize the profession of art criticism. If Roger Ebert can't find the words to define what is art before ruling out videogames, why would I know any better? In America, we don't need to bother with technicalities, just blame objectivity and indulge your own navel-gazing fleeting taste. It's just as good. And the best thing is that nobody will ever expose your incompetency."

C : "Whoa! I admire your intellectual courage there. Not that my qualification in such matters gives much credit to yours. Sistine Chapel, The Strokes... same shit. So there must be... 'SOMETHING'. Since we're talking about ART, I'm trying to use undifferentiated words without obvious meanings, to show off that I never took a class in Art History vocabulary. Readers like to feel the writer is as dumb as them, to insure they will never LEARN anything from a newspaper."

S : "Instead of explicating this 'something' which would make our 'show' worthwhile, we'll just leave it at that, and feel good about moving the debate to this amazing cultural level of meaninglessness. Maybe it is impossible to define... who knows? If I was a critic, I'd know because the raison d'être of my job would depend on my understanding of this definition. Thankfully I'm not a critic, and I don't work for a reputable intellectual newspaper, so we're safe."

C : "Whoa! So it's not just because you say so?"

S : "I would hate to think that people formulate their opinion just based on what I say. I'm not interested in mind-control. I will just give a star rating to movies Hollywood distributors want me to see, bash major international film festival which make USA looks bad, and tell my readers what tickets to buy and which ones to boycott, and dumb down American culture as much as humanly possible. But other than that, if you ask me publicly, I will never admit enjoying controlling the mind of NYT readers..."

C : "Whoa! After failing to discuss intelligently about cultural concepts, let's just focus on OURSELVES, books WE wrote, OUR tiny little shameless PERSONAL lives, OUR SUBJECTIVE experiences, and we'll base our definition of what a critic should do or not on our frustrated feelings of being reviewed by others..."

S : "Yeah, doesn't sound any less professional and legit than anything we've babbled so far."

C : "Whoa! So have you, AO, -let me emphasize the condescending tone to childish levels - MELLOWED?"

S (pondering) : "... Maybe. But... but..."

C : "Sounds like a little."

S : "Again, if I was a critic I wouldn't feel my reputation of incorruptible ass-kicker threatened by such an inconsequential remark. But I'm not, so I feel I have to justify myself. And to do so, I'll summon my negative review of a CHILDREN distraction like The Lorax. It makes me mad. See! I ain't afraid of nobody, I can punch defenseless babies in their crib. I'm a tough guy. Look at me drum my alpha-male pecs over bashing superhero movies and children entertainment."

C : "Whoa! You're really making reading the NYT a waste of time."

S (cynically) : "Other than that I'm mellow."

C : "Whoa! Who are you to say you're mellow or not. Who appointed you emperor of all things good and horrible? You're a critic of the NYT, you've got a big box of lightning bolts on your desk. It takes a certain form of arrogance."

S : "Guilty as charged."

C : "Whoa! Now just repeat everything I spell out for you, so I get a testimony on camera of a critic who admits being a douche with an unbearable cynical tone in his voice, OK?"

S : "I'm totally oblivious of the way media can edit stuff and manipulate what an interviewee says, so  OK. If I was a critic I wouldn't play along, but, you know, I'm not."

C : "Whoa! that's perfect. Say : 'I'm arrogant. I over-intellectualize beyond reasonable.' "

S : "I'm arrogant. I over-intellectualize beyond reasonable."

C : "Whoa! Repeat this : 'My constituency is people who wants their fun spoiled by me, people insecure and masochistic, people who need their lives ruined.' "

S : "My constituency is people who wants their fun spoiled by me, people insecure and masochistic, people who need their lives ruined."

C : "Whoa! We now really discredited the profession of film journalist, movie reviewer and film critic, while conforting the anti-intellectual reputation of the NYT."

S : "You're welcome. A job well done indeed."

C : "Whoa! By the way, let's edit this video interview as if we had never seen a well edited movie."

S : "Yeah, great idea! So it will match how badly framed we are. How could anybody question the critical authority of the NYT film pages now? Not any children under the age of 5 at least, we got this segment covered for sure."

C : "Whoa! They are the ones who push parents to buy stuff anyway. Let's focus on them, the rest follow suit."


End............... scene.




Related :

11 juin 2012

Repeat Whiner (David Carr) Season 2 Episode 5

Is it that time of the year again? Like last year (Dan Kois), to the day, The New York Times publishes another anti-intellectual rant against film criticism...

This is exactly this type of knee-jerk reaction by so-called institutional intellectuals (isn't what the NYT stands for?) that makes American reviewers scared shitless about being too "critical" (meaning panning the blockbusters "universally" embraced by the masses). They are afraid of the base consumer's backlash. They are afraid to alienate their readership. They are shy about expressing their true intuition and deliver the expected talking points instead.
David Carr is not any less infantile than Dan Kois, and just like him he desperately tries to dismantle the independence of the film criticism discipline to subvert it to the whims of the mass. If the populace disagrees then the critic should bend over and pander to the lowest common denominator. That's the level the film discourse is at in the USA, and of all places, at the New York Fucking Times

Fortunately some observers (Glenn Kenny, Jim Emerson) react to these kinds of attacks instead of being bullied by the Studios PR, the actors on Twitter, the "democratic" voice of the sacred audience who buys all the tickets. And for once, I won't be the first one and the only one to be offended by the dismissal of critical values. Is the sleeper slowly awakening?
Nonetheless, AO Scott doesn't know how to defend himself (or his profession), hasn't got the rhetorical tools, and if we are to believe CNN-grade body language analysts (folded arms, elbows on the table, glancing sideways, sitting strait, stuttering, while Carr is sloughing in his chair, facing him more directly in a confident and dominant posture, winking, smirking), he hasn't got the will to face off, he just dodges, rolls over and ultimately, in a cynical parody of himself, word out all the soundbytes Carr wanted him to say. We know it was a second degree parody of himself, in between air quotes, but to the inattentive listeners they hear what they want to hear, which is a critic admitting he is out there to spoil people's fun. This, instead of disqualifying any loaded question and laying down the simple answers explaining the language barrier between the critical discourse and the emotional expression. He did not do so. He played the game. Because in the USA, the self-indulgent consumers rule over the intellectual discourse. An "intellectual" must adapt to their level, never the other way round. That's why American cultural discourse is forever lame...

And AO Scott is hardly the role model to defend critical sovereignty... He poses here as the one who champions morality and impartiality, but that's not really what motivates his everyday papers. I came across his anti-intellectual rampages a few times in the past (Dan Kois half-assed rebuke; Neo-Neo; festival bashing; mini-balls, Disappearing Act I...). And I don't forget, contrary to his short-memory fans (who believe he represents the authoritative quality in American film criticism). In the kingdom of blind, the one-eyed is king! Or as I would put it : the teenager is king in the kindergarten.

Some desperately try to find a hidden value in this mockery of a "debate", as if Carr was playing dumb on purpose... Is that the full force of the NYT's mindpower at work there? A highschool student would be asked to bring a lot more than that to pass an essay. Why couldn't a NYT journalist get a better grade than a highschooler??? Serious lack of ambition there, for themselves and for their readership!
If it was a witty role playing to expose the cultural gap, then why isn't AO Scott better prepared to answer? Why is he struggling against a man made of straw? Why isn't he coming out on top in the end? Why the bogus positions are considered, respected, embraced if it was supposedly a pantomime to allow a critic to justify himself?
This is when you realize the least we could expect from people employed at the NYT would be to have graduated from a basic cultural school, like say, a highschool class on rhetorics and a film class 101. The reason this level of discourse is taught and acquired before 20 years old, is precisely so you can develop a deeper discourse when you read the NYT!!! Or so it should be. Apparently the target audience of the NYT is 14 yold (which is the average mental age of the entire country, when you skim through the media content available).
It's hard to believe AO Scott was considered for a Pulitzer prize in 2010... for doing what the worse reviewer is supposed to do : "For his incisive film reviews that, with aplomb, embrace a wide spectrum of movies and often explore their connection to larger issues in society or the arts." LMAO. And this year the Pulitzer goes to the first dude who can Tweet a subject, a verb and a complement! Yay! The Decline of the American Empire...

The USA is stuck in the 40ies when you had to justify yourself to publish serious film criticism. Their basic  consumer-guide reviewing didn't evolve beyond that yet. People are still asking whether art criticism is legit. What a waste of time debating silly readers insecurities... for over 100 years now. When will you decide to move on, leaving baby whiners behind, and address intellectual issues of the level of a cultural newspaper like the NYT?



Unrelated misleading quote brought on the table by bloggers :
Dave Eggers : "I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy."
Do not fall for it. Film Criticism isn't that. What he describes is bad practice by bad reviewers, people who do it for the wrong reasons. People who abuse their fantasied power to think of themselves as maker or breaker of works of art according to their whim. Replace his word of "critic" by the phrase "film-reviews-page employee who synopsizes everything (s)he's told to, movies (s)he enjoys as well as movies (s)he hates writing on" and you might give some meaning to this sentence (once the individual anecdote is dissociated from a universal definition of criticism in general). This is exactly the reason why the movie reviewing press is NOT the discipline of film criticism, it is only a perverted devolution of it, muffled by so many absurd mercantile constraints. (See Reality Check : Film Critics are NOT The Film Press)
This isn't in the NATURE of art criticism to proceed in this manner and attain such results. People's feelings being hurt is a collateral, not the main objective of a critic. Why should a debate on the function of criticism have to answer to this accusation? 
It's as if all reviewers in the USA perverted the original and proper role of criticism, produced ill-intentioned articles and that the entire population concluded this masquerade of "criticism" was all there was to it, thus dismissed it altogether. that's what happens when there aren't any exemplary role models to compare to.
Apparently the masses rejoice in bashing people they dislike, and act all offended when people they like are put into question... Likewise, the masses find it a duty to worship their favourites and find it outrageous that someone would praise something that is too far away from their comfort zone. WHY? 


Related :

09 juin 2012

Perception du cinéma (Merleau-Ponty)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty 1/4: Une perception du cinéma
Les nouveaux chemins de la conniassance, France Culture, 4 juin 2012 [MP3] 59'
Aujourd'hui, Adèle Van Reeth reçoit Stefan Kristensen (attaché de recherche dans l'unité d'Histoire de l'Art à l'Université de Genève) pour évoquer le cinéma chez Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Extraits :
  • Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle de Jean-Luc Godard, 1967 
  • A bout de souffle, Jean-Luc Godard, 1960  
  • Pierrot le fou de Jean-Luc Godard
  • Causeries de Merleau-Ponty, 6 novembre 1948 [PDF] [MP3]
  • Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Résumés de cours, Collège de France, 1952-1960, Gallimard, 1968 
  • Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sens et Non-Sens, "Le cinéma et la nouvelle psychologie", Gallimard, 1996

* * * 

Bibliographie complémentaire :
  • Cinema 1 : Image-Mouvement / Cinema 2 : Image-Temps (Gilles Deleuze, 1983-85)

Lire aussi : 

Filmer la sexualité (France Culture)

Aujourd'hui, Adèle Van Reeth reçoit Claudine Le Pallec-Marand (enseignante en cinéma à l’Université Paris 8 – Saint-Denis) pour évoquer les films « Anatomie d’un rapport » de Luc Moullet – « À ma sœur » de Catherine Breillat et « Intimité » de Patrice Chéreau.
Extraits :
  • Anatomie d'un rapport (1975/Luc Moullet et d'Antonietta Pizzorno/France)
  • Archive Truffaut, extrait de "Mémoires du cinéaste", interviewé par Claude Jean-Philippe, 1977 
  • When Harry Met Sally (1989/Rob Reiner/USA)
  • Intimité  (2001/Patrice Chéreau/France)
  • À ma soeur (2001/Catherine Breillat/France)
  • Le Deuxième sexe, Simone de Beauvoir
Autres émissions de la série Les nouveaux chemins de la connaissance (France Culture) :

* * *


Filmographie complémentaire sur la sexualité :
  • Blue Movie (1969/Andy Warhol/USA)
  • WR: Mysteries Of The Organism (1971/Dusan Makavejev/Yugoslavie/RFA)
  • The Last Tango in Paris (1972/Bertolucci/Italie)
  • Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975/Pier Paolo Pasolini/Italie)
  • The Empire of Senses (1976/Oshima/Japon)
  • Une Sale Histoire (1977/Jean Eustache/France)
  • Gojitmal (1999/Sun-Woo Jang/Corée du Sud)
  • Romance (1999/Breillat/France)
  • The Cremaster Cycle (1995-2002/Matthew Barney/USA)
  • Ken Park (2002/Larry Clark/USA)
  • Twintynine Palms (2003/Bruno Dumont/France)
  • 9 songs (2004/Winterbottom/UK)
  • Kinsey (2004/Bill Condon/USA)
  • Destricted (2006/Marina Abramovic; Matthew Barney; Marco Brambilla; Larry Clark; Marilyn Minter; Gaspar Noé; Richard Prince; Sam Taylor-Wood/UK/USA)
  • Dirty Diaries (2010/omnibus/Suède)

Lire aussi : 

04 juin 2012

Antichrist (Pacôme Thiellement)

Le cinéma de Lars von Trier est une expérience au cours de laquelle le spectateur passe par les pires tortures pour ressortir changé – encore faut-il qu’il tolère d’y passer et qu’il désire changer. Dans Antichrist, la forêt est le lieu de cette expérience, et le lieu de la rencontre avec l’élément diabolique, dans un espace où la réalité se fond avec le monde de l’âme. Pacôme Thiellement Critique, écrivain et réalisateur, Pacôme Thiellement a travaillé sur les Beatles, Frank Zappa, la B.D., Gérard de Nerval et David Lynch. Il a publié notamment “Les mêmes yeux que Lost” (Éd. Léo Scheer, 2011) et “Tous les chevaliers sauvages – un tombeau de l’humour et de la guerre” (Éd. Philippe Rey, 2012). Il collabore régulièrement aux magazines Rock & Folk et Chronic’art, et participe à l’émission “Mauvais Genres” sur France Culture. Il est coauteur avec Thomas Bertay de la collection de films Le Dispositif (prix AVIFF 2011 à Cannes). Ce Cours de cinéma a eu lieu le 27 avril 2012 dans le cadre du cycle "1001 Forêts" au Forum des images.