The history of Film Movements (cinemawaves)

 A formidable new blog, Cinemawaves, is offering to cover the history of film movements in cinema history : 

A film movement signifies a wave of cinematic works, usually following a particular trend in cinema, shaped by and reflecting the time, people, culture, and political events of the location from which it emerged. These cinematic works frequently draw inspiration from cultural roots influenced by events of national tragedy, popular culture or social issues. Often, these film movements are instigated by filmmakers or film critics who develop concepts through discussions on how to craft films and then translate those ideas into cinematic practice.

Check out also at Screenville:

• Nuances in "Art Cinema" History
• Historical map of the aesthetics, schools, trends and genres
• Parallel Histories of World Cinema Developments

HarryTuttle is back

The blogger HarryTuttle comes back on this blog after discontinuing it for 4 and a half years, under the name Benoit Rouilly.
See my introduction post at Unspoken Cinema
I don't know if the blog Screenville will restart... maybe on a new website.

You may find me online at:

Google+

Gmail rouilly.benoit3c(at)gmail

Twitter @RouillyBenoit3C 

Open world (Tapscott)

Don Tapscott: Four principles for the open world
June 2012 (TED talk) 17'50"

The recent generations have been bathed in connecting technology from birth, says futurist Don Tapscott, and as a result the world is transforming into one that is far more open and transparent. In this inspiring talk, he lists the four core principles that show how this open world can be a far better place.
Don Tapscott can see the future coming ... and works to identify the new concepts we need to understand in a world transformed by the Internet.

Don Tapscott takes a farseeing look at our digital, connected, hypercollaborative world. He's the chair of Moxie Insight and has written 14 books about aspects of this new world, helping readers understand where the world is heading as our civilization fundamentally reshapes itself. In 1995, his book The Digital Economy was among the first to show how the internet would change the way we did business; in 2000, he defined the Net Generation and the “digital divide” in Growing Up Digital.
In his most recent works, he thinks deeply about newly possible collaboration "on an astronomical scale." As the Industrial Age comes to an end, all our institutions are challenged (state, corporations, schools), he argues--and suggests that we need to reboot and reinvent civilization.

"The Macrowikinomics assertion that 'there has never been a more exciting time to be human' is spot on."  Michael Dell

Related :

• Collaboration / Contribution (Puig) / Collaboration v. Institution

Droit d'auteur, Copyrights et nouveaux usages

Table ronde : " Réinventer le droit d'auteur ? "
23 juin 2012 (forumdesimages) 1h31'

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 :

• Le Festival CinéCast : Crise économique, crise sociale, crise de la démocratie : le cinéma en parle. Et vous, qu’en pensez-vous ? / Mashup et droit d’auteur : des films qui nous en parlent. 
• Les enjeux des pratiques collaboratives et de la contribution. Conférence avec Vincent Puig (23 juin 2012) 
• Rencontre avec Luc Lagier (23 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 :

• Repeat Whiner (David Carr) Season 2 Episode 5 
• Subjective Reviewing / Deficiant Subjectivity 
• Contra-contrarianism 4 
• Art Criticism (Wikipedia) / Aesthetics (Wikipedia) / The Concept of the Aesthetic (Stanford)  
• Dan Shaw, Film and Philosophy: Taking Movies Seriously (Wallflower Press, 2008)
• Thomas Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen (Blackwell, 2007)
• Call yourself a critic? (Sam Thorne; Frieze; March 2012)

USA to outlaw cultural sharing (SOPA)

What does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? At the TED offices, Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto -- a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume.

* * *

19 January 2012 : FBI shuts down megaupload / Anonymous retaliates / Megaupload song



Related:

• HADOPI (France) [PDF]
• DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act 1998) [PDF]
• MPAA not interested in democratized culture 
• Why it's important to reject SOPA, the MPAA and Piracy (Film School Rejects) 
• Copying is not theft (Nina Paley) 
• Copyright Forever Less One Day (CGP Grey)
• How YouTube thinks about copyright (Margret Stewart) 

Online Postcards (Project:New Cinephilia)

"Epilogue '08 is the final chapter of the year 2008. An online roundtable looking back one last time on the past year in films, after 2008 came to a close and every year-end poll and commentary has been published. We have gathered here a panel of passionate film critics from around the world to feel the pulse of the cinephile life as it unfolded in half a dozen capital cities where cinema is lively and brewing. We get a chance to take a look at the global village of cinephilia, more than ever bound together by the communitarian feelings of the blogosphere and the communication between foreign film cultures, through films and also the international exchange allowed by film discourse in the English language." (HarryTuttle, ex-TheAuteurs.com, 25 Jan 2009)

2  ½ years later, Mubi finally follows up on the supposedly annual series I started in January 2009 under the name Epilogue ('08). Do you think Mubi would have the memory of what The Auteurs did, and pay homage to its inspirational predecessor event? No. There is no memory, regret or remorse in instant social media. I asked Andrew Grant to co-organise (because as he wrote, he had a similar concept), unfortunately he didn't provide more support (in the 1 or 2 months of preparation) than any other participants.
They ignored my debriefing when everything was done, and nobody made sure to meet again the next year. In fact I never heard again of the participants I had personally invited to this roundtable (except Nitesh and Edwin, but about other ongoing projects), through email or blog. Apparently the Twitter logorrhea has a (s)elective flow. This includes the paid editor of the website, who didn't even notice that the date had passed without the new installment taking place in January 2010. He didn't forget to cover the Year-end lists and the Oscars though. To each his own priorities. I also asked him for a dedicated page for the roundtable posts, aside from the cluttered flow of the "Notebook", and a publicity on the forum... I'm glad he found out how to get things done the right way this time around.

The moral of the story is that you should never believe all the over-ecstatic, hyperbolic mutual congratulations and promises that you read in these formal roundtable exchanges (you know, when they write that they love being there and that everything the others wrote was amazing) cause it's all fake and uncommitted. Why do we find the typical political pandering for publicity sake within the CRITICAL discourse?

The point of this Epilogue event was to meet with foreigners, cinephiles from outside our own culture. Here, Mubi only remembers the common language (English) and forgot about inviting non-English natives. There is one Frenchman at their table, but he lives in Australia... I guess anglophones are only interested in other fellow anglophones. 

The host this year, Neil Young, who wears his French snobbery as ostentatiously as possible, admits not being up-to-date with world cinema, nonetheless he judges with confidence how festivals should function, he's stranger to social media but he will define nonetheless what "new cinephilia" should be. He made quite an impression at Rotterdam already (see Contra-contrarianism (IFFR) 2).
And to seal the deal, none of the roundtable participants stepped down from their pedestal to pay a visit to the Mubi forum users and engage in a conversation, social-media style. So much for "new cinephilia"... Beyond the facade of the word "social" in social media, it shows its true color : Me Me Me and my Followers (which is the exact top-down model of the magisterial dispense of institutional information in old print media!). That's what the new media are all about, not about conviviality, curiosity, diversity and interactivity.
It's a shame really, because the users who commented on the roundtable content (see here) have more interesting things (more critical distance, more scepticism, deeper implications, more pertinence) to say that the collection of commonplace and navel-gazing anecdotes published in these trivial postcards.

I wish I was encouraged by such project proposition, with a collegial format rather than a unilateral lecture, with a contemporary topic rather than conservative world views (see Film Crit summits 2008), and still, its core conception works against what it is supposed to achieve. It fails to provide true exchanges, interactivity, pertinent analysis of the symptoms, insights and solutions...

Educational cursory reading (in case you're amongst those who found this roundtable a-mazing):

---

1. Céci n’est pas un cinéphile (Neil Young)

• Not just anyone can pull off a Magritte reference... you need apropos point to make!
• WTF is a "New Cinephile Canon"??? You mix up "cinephilia" with academia. There is no consensual canon amongst cinephiles, it's critics who elect a common canon and a pantheon. 
• "My version of cinephilia" ME ME ME let's define that word according to my anecdotal life experience. An international roundtable is not the opportunity to reflect on universalisable standards, for everyone. I'm only here to tell everyone to model themselves after ME.
• When he says "a genuine diversity of perspectives", he means : please let people with crap taste be included in the snob circle. 
• "Meek’s Cutoff is a waste of everyone’s time, effort and money" well let me break it to you right there, a CINEPHILE would NEVER make such a disrespectful statement! 1) if you didn't like it, it doesn't mean that NOBODY on Earth should watch it or love it, 2) It's not for you to decide whether a bad movie should be made or not. The person who made that film probably knows more about cinema than your little self, this film was selected by competent curators at VENICE, and even praised by some of your peers! So your little subjective, selfish desire for control over film production and cultural censorship has no bearing whatsoever on how the world develops.
• "the majority of cinephiles don’t make a penny out of what they’d consider their private passion." Why don't you find a business model for shopping addicts, gastronomes or melomaniacs too? Are you talking about "cinéphiles" as in movie-goers, or film enthusiasts? Or are you talking about film prescription pages employees? You realize that only film critics could be paid (eventually)?
• "I wonder if the “Frenchness” of the cinephilia concept is problematic" LMAO
  Yeah your post clearly states a few evidences of your problems with cinephilia, but you obviously have bigger worries than Frenchness at this point. Clear up your own backyard first. One of them is dropping random French words, and insulting filmmakers while complaining that "cinephilia" is too high-faluting for you... 
• So basically, you don't want to be a "cinéphile" yourself, but you want every cinéphiles to become like you?

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2. Of cinephilia(s) and fandom (Frances Morgan)

• look up what "canon" means. It's exclusive by definition, the top most on the taste scale. It's not inclusive. If you have a problem with the elitism of canons, that's probably not the word you're looking for... Try "Zeitgeist" maybe, that's inclusive, that's pretty much the embodiment of "fan culture".
• it starts rather bad, 2 postcards, 2 self-admitted newbies talking...
• "fandom is not so different from that which drives cinephilia – to commit to either requires passion, amassed knowledge, long hours spent in an alternate world; increasingly it also inspires production: debate, DIY theory, formulation of ideas fresh from viewing, instant connections with others’ opinions." LMAO (see: Project: Validating Indulgent Movie Fandom, literally)
• useless contribution overall to the "what is new cinephilia" debate, unless you're a fan of Frances Morgan, of course.

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3. The zine from here (Mike Everleth)

• 3rd contributor to the roundtable, patronising us about cinephilia, is not a cinephile but a "fan". So basically "New Cinephilia" is people talking about things they don't know about?
• So you're saying that film culture should thank fans for the comic books-inspired blockbusters???
• "Pre-Internet, the main distinction between them was that cinephiles and critics were more apt to be able to make a living at being a fan." AGAIN! (See: Reality Check: Critics are NOT the Film Press) Trying to define a cultural activity by its business model. Damn Capitalists!
• I guess this guy didn't read the curatorial statement about not going back to the "critic v. bloggers" debate...
• "Can one be a cinephile and, you know, never go to the cinema?" NO. Can one be a canvas painting amateur and only look at paintings on paper postcards reproductions? Can one be oenologist and drink wine from a carton? Can one be an opera fan and only listen to MP3s? To understand that you would have to value the importance of a unique performance, as intended by the artist/maker, for an optimum experience. If you think any experience is equivalent, you probably don't know enough about that art.

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4. Cinephilia as Activism (Mathieu Ravier)

• "The diversity of what’s on our screens is under threat. And, due partly to ignorance about alternatives, it isn’t being demanded. This offers a tremendous opportunity to define new cinephilia as a form of activism or resistance." First sensible sentence in the debate so far.
• "A cinephile activist is anyone who lets true cinephilia inform their actions." now you sound like a religious preacher.
• "Cinephile activism is an inclusive, open-minded enthusiasm unshaped by dominant market forces, unburdened by self-censorship, unafraid of questioning itself, one which is informed by personal history and experience as much as by received wisdom, buoyed by critical thinking, sharpened by constructive discussion, curious of under-represented voices, aware of the underground, and which eventually dedicates itself to enhancing cinematic diversity, innovation and originality." Ditto

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5. It’s about time (Andrew Grant)

• "Thanks to the Internet everybody can be (and is) a critic" WRONG, critic implies values and integrity. Having opinions and showing off taste with a loud voice is not enough.
• "the cinephile label is what separates writers and commenters on mubi.com from those at movies.com" Why did they change their elitist brand from TheAuteurs.com to WannaBeNetflix.com then???

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6. Je suis un cinemaphile… (Neil Young)

• use an accent on "cinéphile" and "cinémaphile" if you meant to write in French, or else you just look like an ass!
• "cinemaphile" : let's try to coin a new hip phrase to show off! Even though "cinéphiles" already defined themselves for over 60 years as people who watch films on the big screen!
• "apologies from narrowing the focus of the discussion from the inspiringly general to the solipsistically personal" You know it, but you still waste time and space of a public (and international) debate with your narcissistic anecdotes... Maybe that's all you can write about.
• "[..] Tsai Ming-Liang, that his work can only be appreciated in a cinema setting (perhaps in his case, a cinema that’s crumbling and deteriorating even quicker than flimsy old celluloid…" Analogical mimetism. Yeah right. Because you can only read Eschyle if you wear a Greek toga, you can only listen to Mozart with a curly powdered wig and a lace shirt, you can only watch The Paths of Glory in a trench and Alien in outer space... LOL

---

7. Sound, vision, action (Frances Morgan)

• "Might the increased ease of filmmaking and distribution afforded by digital technology have a significant effect on political filmmaking?" About as much as what the affordability of VHS homevideo did to 70ies political filmmaking...
• nothing added to the conversation really...

---

8. Slow! Cinephiles writing! (Mike Everleth)

• again confusion between "film writer" (producer of content) and "cinephile" (consumer of content)
• "Certainly there’s a place in the world for slow criticism and oh-my-god-you-have-to-watch-this-right-now-!!!"
  It's not because it has a right of representation that it is included in the narrow topic of "cinephilia". Not EVERYTHING in the world is cinephilia, not even EVERY FILM CONSUMPTION PRACTICES! Either you want to talk about "cinephilia" or you just survey random movie goers and their habits. If you talk about movie fans in general, then you don't need a special appellation for it, that means something else.
• "Hey, I saw Thor … and I liked it!" Apologetic elite... if you're afraid to be a walking cliché, maybe what you do doesn't speak for itself.
• "To me, cinephilia meant a removing of oneself from the human interaction of discussing cinema." WTF? Like if cinephiles are any less humans than Tweeter addicts glued to their iPhone and ignoring the people around them...

---

9. Reclaim The Screens! (Mathieu Ravier)

• "worship" why the religiosity again?
• "Reclaim The Screens!" He didn't mean "reclaim theatrical screens for underexposed art cinema relegated to DVDs and illegal downloads"... NO. He's another fatalist, who thinks that if exhibitors prefers to show blockbusters, there is nothing on Earth we can ever do about it... No. What he proposes is to reclaim mini-screens that are readily available and that nobody threatens to take away from you... That's his idea of "activism".

---

10. Programming, discussion and racing to the Tree (Andrew Grant)

• "Though I’m not nearly as well versed in German online film coverage as I am in the US variety, my impression thus far is that critics and bloggers here aren’t in a mad dash to churn out content. But then again, cinema (and cinephilia) on a whole seems to be a far more serious affair over here. [..] That it’s possible to receive government funding to mount a film series is nothing short of mind-blowing [..] What impresses me the most are the post-screening discussions, which are usually quite intense, and often go on longer than the film itself. With virtually no softball questions, filmgoers here aren’t shy about holding their tongues and their directness has taken me a while to get used to." Welcome to the real world outside of the Hollywoodland bubble, where critical thinking is not just a myth!
• Yeah, softball questions are not a problem for your roundtable there apparently...

---

11. Will the circle be unbroken? (Neil Young)

• that's it? 2 articles each and you call that a "conversation"? If these were dense with well prepared ideas and perfectly focused problematics, maybe it'll do, like interventions at an academic symposium... but when all you have to say are anecdotes and half-baked improvised rambling, put together as you go, it's too slow coming for 2 rounds and goodbye. There is no hope to get anything meaningful debated other than a juxtaposition of unilateral declarations. If you just exchange trivial stream-of-consciousness without long term prospects, you don't need to extract it from the general noise and highlight it with a special tribune that intends to tackle problems and get to the bottom of it.
• What did we learn? What did you bring up that wasn't already circulating amongst online film writers in the past couple of years?
• There is an improvement in the choice of topics discussed (from past similar panels), but it remains purely declarative... listing issues without sorting them, without engaging with them, without thinking them through. This is how the general climate for the average film writer should sound like. But when you step up on an international soapbox to lecture the masses, you need to prepare something a little more reflective and productive! A tribune is for determined thinking (long term), not for aimless rambling of the moment (short term).

---

source: Online roundtable (Project : New Cinephilia)

* * *

Related:

• Project: Validating Indulgent Movie Fandom / Roundtable 2 
• Auteurists v. Cinephiles (Dan Sallitt)
• Contra-contrarianism (IFFR) 1-2-3-4-5-6
• 2008 Film Crit Summits
• Epilogue '08
• Table ronde: la critique et internet (2008) 

Project: Validating Indulgent Movie Fandom

“Project: New Cinephilia” will be a unique gathering of diverse voices engaging in conversation about the current landscape for film appreciation and evaluation, taking place at the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2011.
Curatorial statement, projectcinephilia.mubi.com, 23 May 2011

The "Commonwealth Bubble" is done with the French Criticism legacy, and wants to impose an Anglophone-centric redefinition of "Film Culture", without obscur French words such as "cinéphilie". Let's redefine DVD consumerism as the new cinephilia, the American way! Typical Emersonian attitude, developing pragmatic individualism (because DVDs de facto replace lackluster distribution on American screens) to cut off from European tradition (where cinephilia is defined around the art of film, instead of its material ways of circulation). Good luck with that marketing campaign... as long as you only address your speeches to the anglophone world, nobody will care enough to dispute. You could indulge in such "geocentric" arguments in the pre-internet world maybe... but you can not possibly make such unsubstantiated claims in the XXIst century, outside of your motherland.

• Contributors : 100% English-writting. 18 from USA, 6 from the UK, 3 from Australia (one of which is a French expat), 2 from Canada (not the Québec part!). See Contra-contrarianism (IFFR) 3. No need to explain how an anglophone-only debate is irrelevant to an interconnected world without borders.
• Resource (Cinephilia studies) : 100% English; 6 USA, 1 Aussie
• Resource (Discussions/Panels) : 100% English; 6 USA, 1 UK, 1 AU, 1 NL, 1 CH
• Resource (Essential texts) : 100% English (40% translated); 3 USA; 1 FR, 1 DE
• Resource (Manifesto/Positions) : 100% English; 15 USA, 1 CA, 1 AU, 1 Chile
• Resource (Slow Criticism) : 100% English; 2 USA, 1 UK, 1 NL, 1 DK
• Resource (Video essays) : 100% English; 11 USA
• Resource (Originals) : 100% English; 2 USA
• The website information is replete with American-centric references (H.D., Carl Sandburg, Graham Greene, James Agee, Manny Farber, Pauline Kael, Kent Jones, Harmony Korine, David Lynch, Spike Jonze, Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, Hollis Frampton, David Sterritt, Laura Mulvey, Chris Fujiwara, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Zach Campbell, Dudley Andrew, James Morrison, Annette Michelson, Acquarello, Jessica Winter, David Hudson, Gavin Smith, Richard Brody, Ed Halter, Andrew Sarris, J. Hoberman, Stanley Kauffmann, Dave Kehr...)

Since it takes place in the UK, you would think the natural bias would be with a majority of British residents, but no. 94 American references versus 8 British references. Just like the British screens are overwhelmed by Hollywood, their local film literature is also monopolized by the USA. Is it really a British summit? I wonder.
Did they actually try to seek out the MOST INTERESTING and COMPETENT people in the WORLD able to discuss this question, or did they just randomly spin their Rolodex of buddies and Twitter followers? They probably think that by ignoring the world around them and by quoting eachothers, it makes them more relevant internationally or even thus appropriate a (deceitful) dominating position in Film Discourse (as evidenced by this disingenuous lack of non-English references). The MPA would be proud of you for contributing to install American culture hegemony through cinema. It's just a little presumptuous to go to Scotlands and brainwash dumb festival goers : Let's forget about actual cinephilia, it takes too much efforts and commitment to attain, instead we'll indulge in our own laziness and redefine standards according to our own limitations... What a pity.

But then again, maybe the anglophone critics are the ones badly in need of such therapeutic consultation, AA support group-style.

To which reservation organiser Kate Taylor replies:

We have spoken a lot since the project’s inception about how to ensure a variety of perspectives feeds in to the project, and within the timeframe of pulling it all together, we have for our initial phase focused on Anglophone voices. [..]
We would not claim the project is currently representative of global voices (and there are also several non-Anglophone invitees who were not able to contribute due to time commitments), but hopefully within the ethos of the project we have suggested that we are up for discussion and open to suggestion.

Bollocks! If you haven't acquired a solid background in WORLDWIDE film studies by now (not just in preparation of this event), you maybe shouldn't be in charge of this supposedly "international" event, at EIFF. Find a better excuse next time, unless your intention was to confirm Anglophone Isolationism.

If you're looking for the NEW cinephilia... well, you failed to discover the CROSS-CULTURALITY of the WORLD WIDE WEB. We can be sure of that much at this point, and the thing hasn't started yet...

"NEW cinephilia"? really? Always this desperate obsession of the NEW World to steal concepts from the Old World, discredit them, and rebrand them by adding the adjective "new" or "neo" in front. What a subservient absence of creativity for words and for ideas! (See: Film Theory Branding)

An English-only bibliography had to overlook these (you're just 30 years late for the re-evaluation of the original cinéphilie):

• Contre la Nouvelle Cinéphilie (Louis Skorecki, Cahiers du cinéma, n°293, octobre 1978)
• L'Homme ordinaire du cinéma (Jean Louis Schefer, 1980)
• La société du spectacle (Guy Debord, 1983) 
• Devant la recrudescence des vols de sacs à main, cinéma, télévision, information (Serge Daney, 1991)
• Eléments pour une chronique de téléphilie (Louis Skorecki, Libération, 21 juillet 1992)
• Retours de cinéphilie (Antoine de Baecque, Cahiers du cinéma, n°460, octobre 1992)
• Le salaire du zappeur (Serge Daney, 1993) 
• Les dandys du câble (Thierry Jousse, Cahiers du cinéma, n°498, janvier 1996)
• Le cinéma et l'éthique (Jean-Claude Biette, 1999; publié in Trafic, n°50, 2004)
• Cinéfile et cinémonde (Jean-Luc Nancy, Trafic, n°50, 2004)
• La DVDéothèque de Jean Douchet (Jean Douchet, 2006)
• Pour une cinéphilie grand angle (Arnaud Guigue, 2009)
• Bréviaire de cinéphilie dissidente (Ludovic Maubreuil, 2009)

* * *

Here is what the public relations promised for the upcoming event :

Premise :

• How we write about cinema [that's gonna be fun!]
• How we watch cinema [you need a symposium for this?]
• How we teach cinema [yes please]
• How we create cinema [WTH? so critics are artists now?]

Watching, Writing, Teaching, Creating... they obviously don't talk merely about "cinephiles" (passive audience), but about people who produce a work after viewing. Cinephile is a generic term which designates, when you qualify a demographic, its consumption of this cultural good that is cinema. Here you're talking about writers, educators and filmmakers. Only a slim proportion of cinephiles are active contributors to Film Discourse, Film Education and Film Making, in a serious way (if they even consider themselves cinephiles).

Sessions :

1. Provocations [I hope they'll be... thought-provoking, provocative and impertinent indeed]
2. Critical Approaches: How to Read a Film Today [here is an educational bit for a festival audience]
3. Passions: Getting Your Voice Heard, Starting a Film Publication [if you need help in this domain, you're not ready to be published, so work harder on your own!]
4. Critical Approaches II: Tools, Formats and Experiments [finally!]
5. Passions: What Does It Mean to Be a Cinephile Today? [welcome to the AA meeting]
6. Respondent: My God, What Have We Done? [that'll be interesting to see how self-critical they are]
7. Twitterthon: 140 Character Film Critic Deathmatch [WTF? This alone shows how careless and unserious they are about the whole thing. See Dim-Tweet]

* * *

"This is not about “the future” or “the death” of film criticism. This is not about print journalists versus bloggers. It is about how “cinephilia” informs and enriches film culture, from the inside out, and the outside in."

Grand. You're starting on productive basis. Though, if you're really honest about this, why link in the resource page to the "death of cinema" essays and the print v. bloggers panels of the last couple years? Perverse temptation or unfocused bibliography? Further they list the "future" as a recommended topic :

"Is the technique of film (3-D, immersive technologies, hyper-cut editing) developing ahead of the art? What is to be made today of André Bazin’s proclamation that “cinema has not yet been invented”? Are we headed toward non-photographic cinema in mass culture? And if so, how will our notions of the moving image change? How will such a shift change the future as well as the past?"

We're not starting on the right foot, are we? Did you not consult eachother before writing the pages of your presentation? If you're confused yourself about what you're doing, we cannot reasonably hope that you'll make your readers/audience less, but more confused after participating to the event. Organisers have the responsibility to clear out confusion and improve the level of film discourse, not to worsen it.

Related:

• Online postcards (Project New Cinephilia) / Roundtable 2 
• English Fail 
• Contra-contrarianism (IFFR) 1-2-3-4-5-6
• 2008 Film Crit Summits
• Responsibilities of Criticism in NYC
• Online Cultural Credibility 
• Deficient Subjectivity 

Table ronde : critique et internet (2008)

La critique de cinéma et le défi d'internet: de la revue au blog

Roundtable organised at La Cinémathèque Française (2008-07-06) in Paris.
MP3 and Video available at Canal U (FRENCH, 2h)

Guests (only one blogger among representatives of the paper press institution, TV, university and La Cinémathèque) :

• N.T. Binh (Yann Tobin) : critic at Positif, distributor (Les Grands Films Classiques), documentarian
  
• Luc Lagier : critic, ex-chief editor of TV show "Court-Circuit" (Arte), blogger
  
• Frédéric Bas : scholar, writer for Chronic'art and Médiapart
  
• Julien Gester : critic, curator, editor of the website Les Inrockuptibles
  
• Joachim Lepastier : blogger (365 jours ouvrables)
• Alexandre Tylski : scholar, editor of revue Cadrage

My notes from the collective debate :


CRISIS OF PAPER PRESS

Drop of interest by paper readers, and drop of sales, shrinking of the space allocated to cinema in newspapers... the cinema discourse online has built up and solidified in the last 10 years, from the online forums, to the websites of paper publications, to the blogs.

Blog : Impressions intuitive, subjective, intimate and fetishistic, like a collector album of cinema memories. Cross-references, confrontations, extrapolations... dialogue of cinema with architecture, urbanism, songs, football...
Multimedia content, using sound and image, a form that is impossible on paper.

There is the death of something (institutional criticism) and the birth of something else (multimedia criticism), which is very chaotic. Revolution of the "function critic". To break the stream of weekly professional criticism.
Internet is "the place of diffraction of the critical speech" against the professionalism of the formatted critic profession.


MULTIMEDIA CRITICISM

Freedom of the internet opposed to constraint of TV production. Notably the proverbial "fair use" of film clip citations on a blog, which is vetoed by Copyrights bureaucracy on TV programs, or film documentaries (expensive fees!). It opens a liberty of creation, montage, collage and détournement on the web, at least for a few more months until the studios enforce some kind of regulation.
Possibility to develop a certain film criticism without a voice-over commentary, by means of images alone, with a dialogue of films themselves (e.g. Matthias Muller), home-movies, vlog, as a form of visual criticism.
Unlimited length. No censor. No editor.

Links cited during the debate :

Revue en ligne : Critikat; Ecran Large; Objectif Cinéma; cinema-take;
Forums : Dvd Classik; DVDrama;
Blogs : Serge Toubiana; alapoursuiteduvent; La Lanterne; Zohiloff; Matière Focale; Bertrand Tavernier; Compagnon Geek; Ce qui nous regarde;
Educational sites : Lumière!; Quai des images; télédoc; Zéro de conduite;

---

Related link:

• Responsibilities of Criticism in NYC (New York University seminar on March 13-14, 2008)
• Où va la critique française? (Screenville)
• The 2nd annual Museum of the Moving Image Institute in Film Criticism and Feature Writing
  
• Continuity and Innovation: Contemporary Film Form and Film Criticism (International Conference at the University of Reading, 5-7 September 2008)
• Film Criticism in the Age of the Internet: A Critical Symposium (Cineaste, Vol.33, N°4, Fall 2008)
  and commentaries : Cineaste, Toronto (Girish); Critics vs. Bloggers, Chapter 387: The Cineaste Critical Symposium (Filmbrain)
• Des nouvelles de l'état du monde, Charles Tesson (Spectres du cinéma, automne 2008)
  

Nouvelle étape des médias et du cinéma (Reilhac)

Aller de l'avant vers l'inconnu (5 Oct 2010; Michel Reilhac) 30' from ARTE FRANCE on Vimeo.

Unplug!

Selected amongst the 200 videos for the Guggenheim's biennale YouTube Play contest for online art video:

Yelp (With Apologies to Allen Ginsberg) narrated by Peter Coyote

(connectedthefilm, 8 june 2010, Tiffany Shlain & Ken Golberg)

Related:

• YouTube at Guggenheim
• Dim-Tweet

Dim-Tweet

RT @Twitter #attention-whore SMH frontseat throws popcorns FML awesome trailers tbh can't wait for the opening credits OMG

Who would have thought that a verbatim transcript of all mundane fleeting mindless telephone conversations would be a popular sensation? Twitter is a pretty close approximation. We're back to the telegraph and yet it passes as a technological breakthrough just because it's available on a portable device.

What are you going to do with that many instantaneous informations? Does it change your life instantaneously? Does it make you think faster? Or does it just distract the boredom of being left alone with your own thoughts? Why so hurried?

What did the "Twitter revolution" bring us? The minutiae of Ashton Kutcher and Larry King? News from Iran? Who still cares about Iranian Tweets today? They are still being oppressed and repressed by a totalitarian regime though... Who cares? Look Justin Bieber just bumped his head on a door.

I'm concerned about the inflated fad around these new gadgets that turn people into mindless addicted users rather than savvy operators. I'm also worried that by speaking up against this universally embraced sensation, I'm crossing the fence to the camp of grumpy conservatives who oppose every new technology without understanding it because they are out of the loop... I wouldn't want to be part of the same detractors that demonized the arrival of the Web 2.0. I defended the blogosphere back then (although I wasn't an early adopter, because I preferred the communality of online forums) against the old traditionalists attached to the paper paradigm.

I really don't mind the fanaticism of the new teens for this technology that belongs to their generation. This social-networking is as valid for society in general as anything else. A responsible usage makes it worthwhile for yourself and others.

The main problem is its misuse by journalists who need better tools than that. Instant news, moreover news bypassing the institutional pipes of official authorities, is great in itself. It's what people do with it, or don't do with it, that is bothersome, and should alert whoever cares for Culture.

However it is especially puerile for film critics to imagine they could use this word shredder other than for their private life. I'm not surprised though that the culture that supports capsule reviews, sound-bytes, blurbs, star-rating, top10 lists, and poster-quote whores would fall for an even more superficial way to share their stream-of-consciousness gut-impressions on whatever screens in front of their eyes.

The difference between propagating devices and content providers

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogs, Podcasts, RSS feeds, phones, TV are tools. They are propagating devices, empty pipes for the eventual circulation of informations. If you don't feed them with quality culture, they won't make quality cultural tools. "Garbage in = garbage out" say the computer nerds. And linking to "quality content" doesn't necessarily make it a pertinent usage. Quoting Shakespeare or Deleuze left and right is not enough, it ought to be pertinent and thoughtful, in adequation with what you want to do with it.

Structurally limited to 140 characters, cluttered by tags and links, encoded in shorthands, filled with redundant informations repeated from elsewhere or truncated sources you are supposed to have read in another Tweet.

I already hate the idea to sum up a film in capsule reviews... because shortening critical content only brings forth generalities, summary judgements, vagueness and clichés. Some people think there is literary genius in being able to synthetize a 2 hours long film in 5 lines... Really? Must be a cynical joke.

All films being standardized to a digest under 100 words, limited to obvious plotpoints and unquestionable subjective impressions is the job of a bureaucratic dictionary, a disposable weekly movie guide, not the scrutiny of a meaningful film critic.

So I don't look at the cinephile community migrating from the blogosphere to a Twitter-only online presence with a hopeful eye. Given the deficiency of low-standard journalism they take model from in the "professional" media, the blogosphere is not going to up their contributions by playing ping-pong with reading lists that nobody reads, analyses, comprehends or commentates.

Movies take years in the making, from conception to distribution. Serious films require years of writing. Then months of rehearsal and shooting. And the long wait to get picked up for distribution. On the screen it is a wealth of aesthetic, narrative, socio-political, intertextual information to decipher and analyse, for a couple of hours...

What is so urgent about Twitting a micro-review on premiere screenings for breaking news? Does it make you feel important to reject or acclaim such hard-labor in the shortest possible way, to spread hasty rumors to your "friends" before any thoughtful analysis?

Tweeting and spontaneous reactions are for the general audience, the layman, the ignorants who believe that sharing their favourite taste and immediate impressions from the top of their heads gives meaning to their place in society...

The linkers (I link therefore I am) even delude themselves in thinking that "linking" becomes an expression of power, like the circulation of a print publisher, the generosity of letting their minions (or followers) know about something they recommend. Conversly, not linking, gives a sense of anal retentive deprivation, a denial of "fame", a suppression of readership from their followers (now counting as a "cultural capital" as Bourdieu would say).

Truffaut was reporting a Hollywood saying "everyone has two jobs, their own and film critic", now this should be changed to "everyone thinks they are a newscast channel, and the world is waiting for their release of information at every second of the day"...

Related:

• Unplug! (June 2010)
• The NYT bans the word 'Tweet' (June 2010)
• "The Shallows. What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains" by Nicholas Carr, 2010
• "Deficient subjectivity" (Screenville, Nov 2009)
• "I never intended for Twitter to be useful" (The Onion, 24 June 2009) parody
• "Is Google making us stupid?" by Nicholas Carr (The Atlantic, Jul 2008)

"Auteurs" back in Public Domain!

The website mubi.com, formerly known as "TheAuteurs.com", after a couple year of "beta testing", finally figured out that they didn't hold the exclusive patent for the word "auteur" in America, and changed their brand to a less megalomaniac name!

They imagined that auteurism could be a capitalist corporation, and that slapping the logo "auteur" on their products would automatically make any movie, regardless for the effective control the director had on the whole production, a "film d'auteur". Film theory is that easy in the USA. You can buy yourself legitimacy if you don't have any. Gerald Peary even rewrites history in his documentary on American Criticism and made Andrew Sarris the inventor of auteurism! But when your audience doesn't even know that non-English languages exist, that there is a film press in other countries... you can get away with pretty much anything. So why not do it if you can.

That's how you destroy the cinephile culture in a country, to replace it with star-system fandom which every critics continue to feed year after year. They don't have no "auteurism" in Hollywoodland, the monster they've created is Actorism.

Pauline Kael didn't care about the proper theory, she had an auteur-radar in her guts. The Paulettes didn't care. And that's how you arrive at a cultural state where "auteurs" means "my favourite directors", "cinéaste" [French translation : filmmaker] means "cinéma enthusiast", "montage" [editing] means "metaphorical collage", "Tradition de Qualité" means "mediocre independent art films"... That's the kind of "healthy culture" they firmly believe they get. But if you don't do anything against the spread of deception, you get the cultural climate you deserve.

Last month I received a telling email from TheAuteurs, an impersonal publicity spam asking me to vote for them to win a Webby award (whatever that is). The visual was saying something like : "if you like Hitchcock, Scorsese, Godard, Kubrick, Renoir, Coppola... vote for our website" (or whichever well known auteurs of the same stature). So basically they don't expect to win an award for the work they authored themselves, film reviews, VOD distribution... they don't ask if we like what they actually do to deserve one, they just skip that part and go directly to the source and steal some of the fame off of someone else's hardwork. Clever marketing indeed. Nothing unusual. But it reveals a certain mentality.

It's like if the Academy awarded the Best Picture Oscar to Rotten Tomatoes for syndicating film reviews so admirably, and granting that film a 99% at the tomatometer! Way to go living off of someone else's success.

In China they say that if you point at the Moon, the fools will only look at the finger pointing at it...

Apparently they did win that award. I guess the fans did like the namedropping. And they wanted me to believe it was an obscur website with low traffic... Good job!

I had high hopes when they announced in Cannes last year to offer FREE streaming of films restored by the World Cinema Foundation. And when they accepted my project of a yearly roundtable to discuss important issues, internationally and collectively, called Epilogue. Unfortunately these were one-shot stunts to fill the "air-time" (which they are dedicated to pack densely and quickly). Doing these things once a year is more than enough, and they didn't repeat the exercise, or just forgot about it, which is worse. That is not the level of commitment towards Web 2.0, open access, and educational cinephilia I expected from this self-appointed "auteurist" source. But we have different priorities most obviously, and irreconcilable cultural barriers. Their loss!

Now by liberating yourself from the cumbersome legacy of "auteurism", you're free to go full blown commercial, without the guilt of calling it "auteurism". They will continue to link publicity stunts, press kit marketing and vacuous blurbs, they will sell VOD of whatever movies they fancy, auteurs or not, in the hope to become Netflix or RottenTomatoes.

Never underestimate the appeal of populism in American "culture".

Could have become the rebirth of SERIOUS, INDEPENDENT film culture online in the USA...

As long as American film critics won't do their job by taking into consideration the structural flaws of the system they feed, the international context they live in, they won't have a relevant presence in World culture. (Not that they'd care if they don't; it doesn't matter cause American Film Criticism is #1 in America!) While they would normally have the prerogative (because of the overall power of their film industry) to claim top spot in film culture as well... Only Hollywood is capable to truly influence the (popular) culture throughout the world. Why American Film Criticism can not?

Anyway, welcome back in the public domain to our cherished word "auteur"!

P.S. this kind of cynical provocation is not enough to shake up the complacent inertia that paralyzes the cinema intelligentsia. And by calling it "arrogance" and "elitism" (because sarcasm is too tough for the delicate nature of people whose job is to give a thumb up or down in a wink to months of hard labor) they will feel better about themselves and look away from the long-overdue necessary introspection that might shatters their illusions. That's also called "denial".

Maronniers cannois

Critic at work

This time of the year again... Le Festival de Cannes!

I can't wait to read what critics from around the world think about their hotel room, the color of their accreditation badge, the waiting time before the projection, the elitism of art films that lost touch with the mainstream entertainment-consumers, the lameness of the selection (so much worse than what they usually review every week on their domestic distribution market!), the length of the standing ovations, the number of screenings they walked out of, the made up controversies, the irrelevance of the palmarès, the trivia about the stars' little whims, the wildness of the yacht parties...

...anything to fill the void of film culture, the absence of criticism, and the blindness of viewers who ignore what to look at on the screen.

Abbas Kiarostami, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jia Zhang-Ke, Takeshi Kitano, Hong Sangsoo, Lee Chang-dong, Manoel de Oliveira, Mahamat-Saleh HAROUN, IM Sangsoo, Wang Xiaoshuaï, Lodge Kerrigan, Cristi Puiu, Pablo Trapero, Christoffer Boe, Frederick Wiseman... more all the potential discoveries in the debut films.

This sounds like a good sample of the filmmakers creating the best cinema at the moment.

Not just this year (or this quarter, since Berlin and Venice take the other seasons of the year). Not a grandiloquent statement about the cinema of a decade, or the future of cinema. Not a comprehensive survey of the totality of the best films of 2010. Not a flawless selection without disappointments.

A festival is a showcase of great cinema, a good glimpse at the cream of the crop. You won't see that many films with excellence brought together anywhere else... and if you still feel like whining about something, you probably don't know what art means in cinema.

Deficient Subjectivity

See Critical Fallacy series #11 : Egocentrism

Burdeau sur la critique web française

Interview sample on the France Culture website (Sept 2009): "Rentré ciné. De Twitter aux textes sans limites" La webcritique.

Emmanuel Burdeau : "Y'a beaucoup de chose à inventer, pour renouveler l'analyse de séquence, pour faire des entretiens filmés, monter des extraits ensemble, pour que la critique manie elle-même les images et le son pour en faire des outils d'analyse critique."
"Les outils de pensée que la critique a l'habitude de manier sont caduques sinon en train de le devenir (perte du pouvoir prescripteur des journaux, nouvelle cinéphilie, petit écran TV, téléchargement pirate)."
"Ce que me semble très important c'est l'aspect international d'internet, la possibilité pour la cinéphilie de fonctionner à sa véritable échelle, qui est aujourd'hui internationale. (eg. Moving Image Source)"
"Internet est une pièce centrale de reconsidération nécessaire des rapports entre la critique et le spectateur, la critique et l'industrie, la critique et les lieux où les films sont montrés, la critique et les cinéastes. Mais la réponses n'est pas seulement du côté d'internet. Elle se situe dans une interface entre internet et la presse écrite, entre internet et les salles de cinéma, entre internet et les musées..."
"On peut considérer qu'aujourd'hui la plupart des revues de cinéma et des quotidiens défendent le même cinéma, et que le lieu où peut se défendre un autre type de cinéma, c'est internet. C'est un lieu de liberté incomparable pour ça."
"Aujourd'hui, le besoin d'un esprit critique ne se fait pas tellement ressentir, mais ça va revenir."
"Un reproche qu'on pourrait faire à un certain type de blogs c'est qu'ils sont encore trop réglés sur l'actualité hebdomadaire. Ils rivalisent dans leur façon de fonctionner peut-être un peu trop avec les quotidiens, hebdomadaire et mensuels classiques. Alors que la critique de demain, c'est une critique qui pourra à la fois parler des films qui sortent, mais aussi des DVDs, mais aussi un discours donné en accompagnement d'un film proposé en téléchargement... réglée sur plusieurs types d'actualités"
"Les 'cadors', les 'petits messieurs' de la critiques existent depuis des dizaines d'années. Donc il est évident qu'il faut être absolument du côté d'internet. Entre les vieux de la vieille qui sont contents d'eux qui n'ont pas changé d'avis depuis 40 ans, et des jeunes excités qui éventuellement peuvent dire des choses irrecevables sur internet, ou très agressives, il est évident qu'il faut être du côté d'internet. Si il y a un arbitrage à faire, il est très très clair."

I'm glad to see that the positions on the internet of the ex-Cahiers editor is more progressive and realist than when he was still in command of Cahiers last year (at the NYC roundtable), or even earlier, dec 2007 (at the Cahiers roundtable). Would a certain "conflict of interest" explain this sudden reversal in favour of the internet projects, and allowing him to discredit today the pundits of the press he used to be part of?
Anyway, it's always nice when institutional voices speak out to support the agenda we've been pushing online for years. The wind is changing. Soon or later, the power-that-be, the taste-makers, the pundits of the conservative press will realise that the internet is today's modernity, that the general population has already embraced it, that the cultural landscape is migrating online and that it's where it will continue to generate the culture of the XXIst century.

In his speech, I still hear references to the old paradigm. He's concerned about "economic model and capital", "popularity and readership following in numbers", "circulation and business size"... as if these marketing considerations ever mattered to the existence of the Press. They were always materialistic statistics, and culture doesn't depend on polls and public satisfaction. His argument against the blogs is that there isn't yet one big hegemonic blog that would suck up all paper readership and single-handedly substitute the press monopole with an internet monopole.
The technological conversion doesn't present itself under such premise; there is no complete transition from one medium to the new one to be expected in the short term. What is evolving is the culture itself, not the industrial infrastructure. It's people's habits and usage that changes. Not the power balance between anonymous nerds and seasoned academics that will take over the control over film culture intelligence overnight. It's not going to happen. But if all newspapers and magazines go "virtual", it won't be a surprise. The internet is not a territorial war, it's a promised land for any entrepreneurial pioneers who want to use the tools that the consumers already use.