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 

Reality and Representation (Bordwell)

When I say  "blue" everyone can represent that very color in their head... but do we really picture the same color for this particular wavelength of light? Maybe some people see the sky and everything called "blue" like what I see everything called "yellow" without knowing the internal discrepancy because we are consistent in calling the color-a-like objects by a consensual name. Like in the case of color blindness (which is a disorder we can detect).

Human perception is limited by the very nature of our brains, because that's what we use to comprehend. But this is high-end theory. Cinema doesn't make use of such refined aspects of the perceptive process. In Plato's Cave, cinema is that 2-dimensional  monochrome shadow on the wall, and real life human perception is what happens in the cave behind the fire, invisible to the prisoner-observer. Cognitive science strives to explain the universe of daylight outside the cave, which is of metaphysical interest, and do not really affect the understanding of cinema one way or another. The science of perception is infra-language : it comes ahead of any possible communication. A fully functioning eye-ear-brains apparatus enables the idea of language formation, perception and comprehension. Visual language comes afterward, developed by society with whatever the human brains could handle.

So says Bordwell :"But we don’t have to worry about whether it’s true; what matters is that filmmakers invoke it and film viewers follow their lead. Storytellers are practical psychologists, preying (usually in a good sense) on our habits of mind in order to produce experiences." after making numerous cases of such studies.

Cinema is made by flawed humans and watched by equally flawed humans. That's all film theory needs to know. If a camera could record images that we are unable to perceive or understand (eg. infra red or high-speed flickering), filmmakers wouldn't use them because of their inefficiency on the spectator experience.

Bordwell: "Film academics assume, along with most humanists, that once you set aside some uninteresting aspects of the human creature, usually summed up as “physiology,” culture goes all the way down. Beyond cell division and digestion, let’s say, everything is cultural, and to invoke any other explanations risks rejection."

Bordwell wrote an essay on "commonsense film theory" (there is at least a couple academics who could learn why "common sense" is not undesirable in film criticism!). 

I wonder why he uses the likeness of images rather than their editing to interrogate the perception of spectators. The audience reacts to screen images just about the same way they react to reality. Only editing is really specific to film language and could eventually require a different process than in the real world.

The real world we live in is full of situations where mankind has evolved to perceive, interpret and infer incomplete images, like in the movies. Humans are perfectly able to understand a reflection on a mirroring surface, a shadow on a wall, a silhouette in the fog, a sound without image, a view without sound, an animal through blocking leaves, a visage behind a glass window or a translucent curtain... In this regard, cinema didn't pose a major problem to our perception that we didn't have to solve before.

Even the absence of stereoscopy (perception of depth), merely equates to looking through a keyhole in real life. We are not disconcerted by this situation. It's harder to make sense instantly of a perspective, but we manage. So a video image of a person is not so different from looking at someone in real life, behind a window, through a keyhole, with a peculiar texture on the glass that alters the resolution of the image (like the typical video resolution does). 

You are sitting on a bench in a park, in real life, and you eavesdrop on a couple next to you having an argument. You don't know how it started, what succession of events led to this conflict, what is their past, their life, their background. But you can try to follow what is going on anyway, interpret the body language and the portions of sentences you catch, make your own speculations and infer what it is all about, little by little. They walk inside a building near enough to continue your observation, and you only see them and hear them each time they pass an open window. This is no different from what audience are subjected to on a cinema screen, and we are well equipped to fill in most of the blanks, and at least get a basic understanding of the action, even when the distillation of bits of informations and visual cues, the timing of their obstruction wasn't designed by a narrator.

I'm not saying that cinema narration is an innate language, but as far as cognitive process is concerned, it's not the imperfect nature of screen images or the timeline editing that could confuse spectators more than in real life. Not to mention the mental processes mankind used to develop and master for the transmission of oral traditions, such as memorization of a continuous timeline, at the scale of a day or a lifetime, or village history, and the manipulation of a discontinuous timeline to construct dramatised stories or lies. Cinema came after cave paintings, music, poetry, theatre and literature... and built a language largely based on previously acquired skills of perception, mental visualisation, communication and memory.

"Recognizing the contents of realistic images, I’ve suggested, depends heavily upon our everyday perceptual abilities. Similarly, filmic storytelling relies upon cognitive dispositions and habits we’ve developed in a real-world context." 

I wish the examples of "cinema narration" were a little bit more medium-specific than what he cites to question our understanding of cinema conventions : a man running away from someone (easily identifiable in real life without any more context than on a screen), a red-tinted sexy scene with saxophone (real life cliché), Daffy Duck (similar to identifying mural stick figures or a sock puppet)...
In these cases, cognitive science only indicates how humans generally perceive real world situations, it doesn't explain what is specific to film language, or what poses a problem to usual cognition in filmic representation...

I wish "cognitive science based film studies" would look into problematics that are less about plotpoint stereotypes (reading emotions, intentions, causality, continuity, space orientation...) and more about the subtle quintessence of film language (frame composition, harmony, sense of duration, pauses, images collision, rhythmic edit, organic crowds, permanent landscapes...) because filmmakers need to learn to use richer cues, more elaborate, more indirect, delayed in time, secondary cues that are not operative in the plot advancement, cues for transient impressions that only qualify a shot or a moment.

"Further, Narrative in the Fiction Film argued that the conventions that guide our inferential extrapolation don’t simply float free in space. There were recurring clusters of favored choices for presenting causality, time, and space. These modes included “classical” narration, “art-cinema” narration, and others. The historical layout still seems valid to me, and they seem to have proven useful to other researchers."

I'd like to come back to this nebulous label of "art cinema" later, because I don't think it represents anything identifiable by a standard form like "classical narration" or "Hollywood" (by period) or "Mainstream" could. As for "Avant Garde", the concept of "art cinema" doesn't correspond to a definite format, or to any films in particular, except to cast them outside of the well known classicism. Mentioning "classical narration" refers to a set of codes and conventions that will match almost every film we file under this umbrella term. However, what you call "art-films" are practically all different from each other (except for certain trends and "schools"), aside from being also different from the classical format. 

"Considering narrative comprehension as inferential led me to bring in the Russian Formalist distinction between fabula and syuzhet. These two terms have been used in several ways, but the most plausible way, it seemed to me then [Narrative in the Fiction Film, 1985] and seems still, is to see fabula as the chronological-causal string of events that may be presented by the syuzhet, the configuration of events in the narrative text as we have it."

Serge Daney was talking about "énoncé" (=fabula) and "énonciation" (=syuzhet) in 1974 (Cahiers du cinéma, n°248-249-250, janvier-mai 1974).

"But I now think that the inference-making takes place in a very narrow window of time, and it leaves few tangible traces. What is built up in our memory as we move through a film is something more approximate, more idiosyncratic, more distorted by strong moments, and more subject to error than the fabula that the analyst can draw up. [..] In assigning to the spectator the task of ongoing fabula construction, NiFF harmonized with one premise I consider central: a holistic sense of form. Even if we scan the entire narrative through a narrow slit, it’s important for the analyst and theorist to consider the overall design of the work, the more or less coherent principles that govern the unfolding tale. I’m thinking of such matters as smoothly cascading character goals, psychological motives and personality change, gradual development of knowledge, shifts in viewpoint, repeated and varied motifs, and finer-grained patterns of visual and sonic presentation."

That is an interesting aspect of human perception applied specifically to the cinema experience and how the limitations of this experience can be exploited, manipulated by the narrative design. 

Even if we do not recall every element of a film by the end of the screening, or even during the film, our subconscious does. Often the film needs to use self-quoting flashback (of images already previously projected in the distant beginning of the film), to make a pointed reference, as if the audience had already forgotten what they saw a few minutes ago. And the emotional climate within which each scene or image is registered (in state of fear, or under the tone of suspicion, or in awe, or accompanied by a music cue...) attribute to each memorial image a distinct accent, that influences the way we store and retrieve such memory, in the long term memory (belonging to our personal history), or in the short term memory (for single-using within the duration of the film).

Source: Common Sense + Film Theory = Common-Sense Film Theory? (David Bordwell, May 2011)

---

Pawan Sinha details his groundbreaking research into how the brain's visual system develops (TED talk, Nov 2009)

Lire aussi:

• Paul Virillo, La machine de la vision, 1988 [PDF]

* * *

Related:

• When do images turn into cinema? 
• Temple Grandin: thinking in picture
• Experiencing Self & Remembering Self (D. Khaneman) 
• Typologie des montages 
• Object and Substance 

French critics legacy 4

Dave Kehr: "The studios aren't distributing anymore, it's not on TV anymore... [..] But when you realise how much films were made in that period, and how many are actually in circulation, it's pretty startling. Very tiny percentage. Mostly it's the Oscars pictures. And that's what's gonna survive unfortunately. And I don't think that's what represents the best of what came out of Hollywood. And the same for Germany, Italy, France, Japan... We just have the very surface of the stuff that is accessible. [..]
The one thing that America has never done and that the French did very early on, was to move beyond movies as nostalgia. Here, home videos have always been pitched to people who remembered these movies when they were kids. And as that audience dies out, those films go out of circulation because we never moved to that next stage: works of art are interesting in and of themselves, not because they evoke nice days of our youth. [..]"

Dave Phelps: "The culture they are preserving is American culture. Paris has devoted 3 or 4 small cinemathèques that show different classical Hollywood films every day. [..]"

Dave Kehr: "The French also have a huge back lot of stuff they're not seeing. Pierre Chenal, Henri Calef... and another couple of dozen people who worked in the 20ies, 30ies, 40ies who were really major [sic] interesting filmmakers, of which nothing is on commercial distribution. And maybe you can see some of it in museums..."

Dave Phelps: "So if France is keeping a lot of our culture, maybe we should be [doing the same for them]"

Dave Kehr: "That would be nice! I don't think we're going to be returning that favor anytime soon... [..] But France is the only country that has a huge archive that is supported by tax money. Every ticket you buy, there is a percentage that goes to the CNC, and that preserves their film culture. French film culture, of course, but they also have an awful lot of American film culture, that they are slowly repatriating to the Library of Congress, UCLA... We should have a program like that. The new facilities at the Library of Congress are the best in the world, and it's a gigantic collection of movies. And we're preserving more and more stuff, it's just that we can't see it, movies don't come out of the vault. [..]
It's also a byproduct of the 60ies where we all learnt that our feelings is what really matter, not so much the objects, just the expression of it. I love that movie, I love it, but why? And they can't explain it. But it's not important to them. It resonates on some level. How is it affecting ME. Is it boring? It's not about the movie anymore... [..]"

Source:

• Podcast: Dave Kehr critic! (Mubi, 23 March 2011) [MP3] 58'24"

What's going on? The American Film Critic Society recently lifted the embargo on French Culture or what? Is it not frowned upon anymore to mention France, to praise French critics? It's about time American culture is starting to compare itself with something else than America.

The next step will be to stop being fatalistic about it, and try to put faith in the idea that it is POSSIBLE to change the system imposed to your limited, conditioned sheep consumption, with some efforts and some commitment. You can't always rely on the French to preserve and analyse American films for you. An heritage you later appropriate like if you invented it on your own while snubbing French critics.

Related :

• French critics legacy 1 - 2 - 3 
• Pariscope 2009 

Stanley Kubrick (La Cinémathèque) 2

Conférence Pierre Berthomieu : Stanley Kubrick et la recherche de la nouveauté
16 mai 2011 (La cinémathèque française) 1h36

Dès le début de son œuvre, Kubrick s'est démarqué des styles hollywoodiens dominants, privilégiant la recherche de la singularité et de la nouveauté. C'est ainsi qu'il élabore son odyssée de l'espace, destinée à révolutionner la science-fiction. Nourri de plusieurs films des années 1950, qu'il améliore techniquement, 2001 puise dans les registres des cinémas expérimental et scientifique, comme dans la musique classique, avec l'idée, a priori paradoxale, d'un grand spectacle sidérant en Cinerama.

* * *

Bruno Dumont parle de Stanley Kubrick
Bruno Dumont on Stanley Kubrick
28 avril 2011 (La Cinémathèque) 13'43"

A l'occasion de la rétrospective et de l'exposition Stanley Kubrick à la Cinémathèque française (jusqu'au 31 juillet 2011), le cinéaste Bruno Dumont parle de son rapport au cinéma de Kubrick, de la vision qu'il s'en fait et de l'influence qu'il peut exercer.

* * *

Jan Kounen parle de Stanley Kubrick
20 avril 2011 (La Cinémathèque) 6'15"

A l'occasion de la rétrospective et de l'exposition Stanley Kubrick à la Cinémathèque française (jusqu'au 31 juillet 2011), le cinéaste Jan Kounen parle de son rapport au cinéma de Kubrick, de la vision qu'il s'en fait et de l'influence qu'il peut exercer.

Voir aussi:

• Stanley Kubrick (La cinémathèque) 1
• Exploding traditional narrative structure (Kubrick)

Urbanisation galopante (Jayasundara)

Chatrak - Vimukthi Jayasundara Interview in Cannes 2011
18 mai 2011 (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs) 4'29"

A travers l'histoire de deux frères, Chatrak questionne l'urbanisation galopante de l'Inde. Le premier, architecte, est à la recherche du second, parti vivre en ermite dans les bois du Bengale.
Vimukhti Jayasundara, ancien lauréat de la Caméra d'or, n'a pas eu peur de proposer un récit qui ne devient vraiment accessible qu'à mesure que le film avance. D'après lui, la gravité des questions qu'il pose sur son pays justifie de demander au public un petit effort de compréhension aux spectateurs.
Le réalisateur estime d'ailleurs que le cinéma indien est uniquement tourné vers le divertissement, et donc trop uniforme. Le monopole de Bollywood empêcherait ainsi d'évoquer au cinéma des questions essentielles dans l'Inde d'aujourd'hui.

Pratiques du cinéma dans le monde (France Culture)

Se faire une toile : pratiques du cinéma dans le monde
(France Culture, 17-19 mai 2011) 1 - 2 - 3

• Petite anthropologie du spectateur [MP3] 52'
  avec Florian Delorme, Marc Kravetz, Alexis Ipatovtsev, Hormus Key, Agnès Devictor, Jean-Marc Leveratto 

Alors que le festival de Cannes a débuté la semaine dernière et que tout le monde a les yeux rivés sur les toiles - c'est-à-dire sur les films  eux-mêmes, nous allons aujourd’hui décentrer notre regard et nous tourner vers la salle, vers le spectateur. En quoi le cinéma est-il un fait social? Dans quelle mesure peut-on parler d'une fonction intégratrice de la pratique cinématographique? En quoi cette pratique diffère-t-elle en fonction des contextes culturel? Autant de questions que nous poserons à notre invité du jour, le sociologue de la culture Jean-Marc Levaretto, professeur à l'université Paul Verlaine de Metz et directeur du Laboratoire lorrain des Sciences Sociales. Nous aurons également au téléphone pour nous éclairer sur la pratique cinématographique en Iran Hormus Key et Agnès Devictor.

• Le cinéma dans la cité [MP3] 52'
  avec Florian Delorme, Marc Kravetz, Alexis Ipatovtsev, Luc Damiba, Baba Diop, Laurent Creton

Aujourd'hui, nous nous intéressons au cinéma dans la cité. Quels rapports - sur le plan économique et social - le cinéma entretient-il avec la collectivité? Financements, infrastructures (multiplexes ou salles d'art et d'essai), prix de l'entrée...Autant de problématiques sur lesquelles nous nous penchons ce matin avec notre invité Laurent Creton, professeur à l'Université de Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle et directeur de l'Institut de recherche sur le cinéma et l'audiovisuel (IRCAV). Nous retrouverons aussi le journaliste Baba Diop et Luc Damiba, le co-fondateur du Festival Ciné Droit Libre, avec qui nous évoquerons la disparition progressive des salles de cinéma au Sénégal et au Burkina.

• Bollywood et Nollywood, deux géants du Sud [MP3] 52'
  avec Florian Delorme, Marc Kravetz, Alexis Ipatovtsev, Pierre Barrot, Emmanuel Grimaud

Deux pays, deux cultures au sein desquelles le cinéma tient une place bien particulière...Aujourd’hui, nous consacrons notre rendez-vous à deux immenses industries cinématographiques du Sud : Bollywood et Nollywood ! Nous parlerons du mode de production du cinéma indien et du cinéma nigérian et des enjeux spécifiques de ces deux industries. Avec nous ce matin pour en parler : Pierre Barrot, journaliste, ancien attaché audivisuel de l'Ambassade de France au Nigéria et Emmanuel Grimaud, ethnologue ayant travaillé sur les studios de cinéma à Bombay.

 Voir aussi:

• Formatisation globalisante
• Artistes persans + Kiarostami 
• La consommation culturelle (Montebello)
• Panahi: le cinéma au tribunal 
• World cinema stats - index / Indian production (1931-1993) / China production (1949-2008) 
• Second class film distribution 

Hypnoses, émotions, animalités (Bellour)

Une œuvre parlée : Raymond Bellour
Le coprs du cinéma: hypnoses, émotions, animalités
23 février 2011 (centrepompidou) 1h23'

Dans le cadre de l'exposition au Centre G. Pompidou (16 février - 7 mars 2011): Aether de Christophe Keller, De la cosmologie à la conscience

Formatisation globalisante

• les versions russes et coréennes du film hollywoodien Gulliver's Travels (2010/Rob Letterman/USA) a rapporté presque 4 fois plus que les recettes sur le marché américain. Le film n'aurait pas été rentable sans l'exploitation à l'étranger. 
• Dans les 10 dernières années, les ventes de billets ont augmenté d'1/3 aux USA, et doublé dans le reste du monde (IHS Screen Digest).
• Les ventes de DVD aux USA déclinent.
• 2007, les films américains ont rapportés en Russie 2 fois plus que les films russes. En 2010, les films américains ont rapportés en Russie 5 fois plus que les films russes!
• Le gouvernement chinois, protectioniste pour le cinéma national, a limité l'importation de films étrangers à 20 par an. Moins de concurrence entre films étrangers = plus de bénéfices pour les films projectés (Hollywood principalement). 

Alexis Ipatovtsev: "Le journal The Economist résume l'affaire, pour qu'un film aie un véritable succès commercial partout dans le monde, il faut que l'action se passe à l'étranger, que les méchants et les gentils soient de culture différente, et qu'on parle plusieurs langues dans le films. Les grands et bruyants spectacles voyagent le mieux. La globalisation du marche du cinéma profite surtout aux grands studios, mais pas parce qu'ils font de bons films, mais parce qu'ils sont les seuls a avoir des capacités d'extraire tous les revenues possibles de leur production. Leur machines de marketing global sont supérieures, tout comme leur capacités d'enticiper les goûts des étrangers." (Frontières, France Culture, 23 mai 2011) 5' [MP3]

A.I. (Chauvin)

Cours de cinéma de Jean-Pierre Chauvin: "A.I. Intelligence artificielle" de Spielberg
29 avril 2011 (forumdesimages) 1h36'

A.I. Intelligence artificielle tient une place singulière dans l’oeuvre de Spielberg. Véritable mise à nue de ses obsessions, sonde proustienne au coeur de l’enfance, jamais film du cinéaste n’aura porté la douleur à un tel point d’incandescence. La beauté d’A.I. vient de cette rencontre entre un matériau intime et une vaste odyssée de science-fiction. 

International Film Festivals (stats) 1

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Source:

• FIAPF (International Federation of Film Producers Associations) [PDF]

Related:

• Random factoid 3: Festivals size (Cannes)
• Clueless anti-festival clichés
• Mushroom festivals
• Without festival

Masterclass Costa Gavras

La Master class de Costa-Gavras
3 mai 2011 (forumdesimages) 1h33'

"Toute ressemblance avec des événements réels, des personnes mortes ou vivantes n'est pas le fait du hasard. Elle est VOLONTAIRE". En ouvrant son film Z en 1969 avec cette phrase, Costa-Gavras donne le ton de ce que sera son cinéma, une arme qui dénonce. S'attaquant à la dictature des colonels en Grèce (Z), au stalinisme (L'Aveu), ou au coup d'état du général Pinochet (Porté disparu), il a su garder sa liberté de parole en toute circonstance, que ce soit à Paris ou à Hollywood.
Aujourd'hui président de la Cinémathèque française, Costa-Gavras revient sur plus de 50 ans de carrière pour le plus grand plaisir des spectateurs du Forum des images.

Palme d'Or de la meilleure conférence de presse

Michel Seydoux (producteur): "Alain [Cavalier] a carte blanche. Il me dit 'je vais faire ça'. Je dis 'faites'. Et moi je me débrouille. Prochain rendez-vous [9 mois plus tard]. Je m'occupe de mon problème économique. Et lui a carte blanche, économie libre. Et c'est comme ça qu'on travaille depuis 11 ans, 12 ans. Ça a toujours été l'inconnu avec Alain, mais on a une telle confiance, qu'on se comprend. Et après j'essaie que tout ça aie un sens économique, que ça se passe en douceur, qu'il n'y aie pas de problème de production, que la liberté d'artiste soit totale. Mon rôle est d'offrir une liberté et de trouver les solutions économique qui vont entourer le film."

Alain Cavalier : "Il faut donner l'impression que c'est comme à la cuisine. comme une conversation dans une cuisine pendant le repas. C'est à dire familier, aisé, juste, pas trop long, pas ennuyeux... [..] Imitation de la vie. Rien n'est posé. Ça n'est pas fait d'idées  générales, c'est fait de choses courantes, liées au moment où l'on vit."

Vincent Lindon : "Alain m'a influencé sur une chose. Un jour, Alain me disait 'sur un film normal, dit tourné de façon normal, je me suis rendu compte que ça ne pouvait plus fonctionner avec moi. Qu'il y avait quelque chose entre l'actrice et moi. Avec tout ce maquillage, ces répétitions, ces plans de travail... où on me demande tous les matins d'avoir tel ou tel talent, d'être obligé de fournir tous les jours 20 plans, 17 plans par jour... C'était trop pour moi.' "

conférence de presse pour le film d'Alain Cavalier : Pater (2011/France) [video 48'09"]
avec Alain Cavalier, Vincent Lindon, Michel Seydoux

Sans langue de bois, sans auto-promotion, sans fausse-modestie, direct, honnête, et radical.
Un film réellement INDEPENDENT, petit budget, ambition raisonnable et maitrisée, replaçant la création cinématographique au centre du projet, sans se soucier d'argent, de style standard, de tradition, d'académisme rigide, d'organisation optimale de la production... Expérimenter et naviguer à vue, en corrigeant au fur et à mesure, pour laisser le film se développer organiquement, sans contraintes exogènes (non-artistique, non-cinématographique).
Un petit cinéma artisanal que l'obsession du box-office à enterré il y a trop longtemps!

Les Matins - Alain Cavalier
22 juin 2011 (franceculture) 17'55" [émission complete]

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Interview subversive de Vincent Lindon contre la promo
Juin 2011 (AlloCiné) 17'06"

Mandarins vs Philistines (Bordwell)

"In most arts, academic study isn’t considered the enemy of journalistic criticism. [..] When it comes to cinema, though, the relations are cool, even adversarial."
Academics vs. Critics. Never the twain shall meet: why can't cinephiles and academics just get along? David Bordwell (Film Comment, May 2011) 

He's talking about the climate in the USA of course, which is a particular combination of anti-intellectualism, fear of alienating oneself from the gut reactions of the crowd and the guilty conscience of enjoying cinephilia. American critics have the phobic anxiety to be perceived as "objective" or "intellectual". American scholars have the repressed guilt of infusing their love of cinema into their object of clinical studies. I guess the Grand Theory chiasm is typical to American ambivalence. There is so much useless drama around the repressed subjectivity of film students who want to be accepted in academe through self-important jargon. 

You don't see such extreme polarisation in French culture... There is a gap between common reviewers and actual researchers, each side acknowledges their territory of competency and their incompatibility but they use eachothers and communicate to exchange ideas (even when it fails). In fact French film scholars come from cinephilia (which is something American scholars tend to forget). Delluc, Epstein, Mitry, Desnos, Malraux, Artaud, Blanchot, Debord, Metz, Duras, Lyotard, Foucault, Debord, Deleuze, Bellour, Rancière, Badiou, Nancy are unapologetic cinephiles! French intellectuals are not afraid to admit their cinephilia, or their guilty pleasure, they don't shy away from hermeneutics and evaluation.  

• Bordwell on clichés in criticism [Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema, 1989]
• Post Theory, reconstructing film studies (Carroll/Bordwell, 1996)
• Backpage: Against Insight (David Bordwell, cinemascope, #26, 2006)
• Ideas and excellence (David Bordwell, 16 march 2010) / Film criticism always declining, never quite falling (David Bordwell, 16 March 2010)

This topic seems to be a recurring concern for Bordwell, and I'm glad because it's worth repeating until the futility of such arguments stops clouding the general film discourse. This is an abstract categorization though. Evaluation and subjectivity might be the casus belli between actual film studies and actual film criticism, but what worries me more is the dissemination and misappropriation of such theoretical arguments into the lowest planes of film discourse. Pseudo-academics and wannabe reviewers appropriate and abuse this conflict, in order to somehow validate their participation to film culture, while they are neither scholars nor critics. It's not because somebody positions oneself in the objective/subjective war that it makes him/her a critic or a scholar. The impression of holding and defending a position replaces for some people the importance of discipline and ideas. What is destroying film culture is the infiltration of posers and other impostors at institutional levels, in the film press, in academic circles... And the main reason is that either nobody pays enough attention to notice the B.S. published everywhere, or, which is worse, that a pervading complacency lets such counterfeit arguments be for the sake of putting out content and mutual friendly encouragements. These types of irresponsible practices make the academic vs. journalist gap seem trivial.

A more pressing issue than the academic vs. cinephile debate to oppose Grand Theory, is to reflect on the nature of their incompatibility. The reason why Semiotics, Reception Studies, Gender Studies, Cultural Studies failed assimilation to Film Culture, is precisely because they deal less with cinema itself than with a broader theory or abstract concepts across general culture in its globality. Semiotics is to cinema what grammar is to Literature, or chromatology to Painting. Reception studies is hardly specific to cinema, and could indifferently apply to Theatre, Literature or Pavlov. Gender studies is a socio-cultural issue, again spanning across all arts and media indifferently. Knowing the building blocks of words (Literature) or colors (Painting) or chords (Music) is important to acquire a general understanding of the technique, but doesn't inform the production of aesthetic meaning resulting from the artist's use of such generic technique.

I see Cultural Studies as being a subset of Sociology, using movies as a statistical sample, on the other hand I see Aesthetics as the only academic studies dealing with what makes cinema an art, treating films as artistic statements. The controversy is whether you consider cinema as an ethnological evidence for the study of mankind or as the contribution to the history of the Arts for the study of Cinema itself. There is no wrong answer, but your slant will make your writing relevant to Cinema or to another domain of interest outside of and larger than cinema (Humanities, Sociology, Economy, Epistemology, Philology...) That's why there is no possible reconciliation. Academics from Cultural Studies are observing ideological phenomena AROUND the consumption of cinema as entertainment, OUTSIDE of the Arts.

You don't understand the place of La Joconde in the Arts by surveying visitors at Le Louvre, observing under the microscope its canvas, or contemplating whether Mona Lisa was a dude... Unfortunately that's how Cultural Studies are treating Cinema, as a commodity consumed by pigeon-holed shares of a demographic.

Bordwell is wondering why there is a gap between cinephiles and academics... I think it is a moot point. If it doesn't take away precious time from the serious study of Great Cinema (classics and contemporary), film scholars may study whatever they fancy! Be it Humanities or Economy or the Star System or Movie posters or trade newspaper or gossips... as long as any of this is NOT put in the same box as Cinema Art, just because it is remotely related to film production. Scholars don't need to seek the approval of auteurists or cinephiles...
That's the real problem today: anybody can write any bullshit about some movies and it will insidiously infiltrate Film Discourse, and sometimes pass as "serious criticism" just because it is a subversive way of looking at a B-movie that everyone else ignored. Turning lowbrow entertainment into highbrow film studies is a very very marginal share of cinema history, it doesn't happen every year! It's not because one blockbuster becomes socially relevant worldwide for a couple months that it has become an instant classic. I wish film discourse (contrary to humanities) had prospects with longer terms than that.

Bordwell: "[..] the auteur tradition never studied in detail how the Hollywood system worked. Suspending evaluation allows us to ask questions that aren't simply factual but have broader implications. The standard story about the early 'evolution of film language' has been shown over the last 30 years to be at best an oversimplification and at worst inadequate. But scholars had to look beyond the few classics of Griffith, Chaplin, and DeMille to what now realize to be a great diversity of creative choice."

The purpose of "Authorism" (or "Auteur Theory") is to look at films (possibly as part of a body of work or œuvre) from the perspective of the film director (most likely scenarist-director). It is self-limited in scope and in its object of study, by definition. It doesn't study ALL films, only those made with the implicit intention to create an œuvre (recurrent theme, trademark style, obsessions, original mise en scène). Not all films fit this criterion, especially not most early films. It is very selective by nature, not only in the titles studied but in the specific, narrow aspects of a larger production. So it seems OBVIOUS why the study of an industrial economical infrastructure like the "Hollywood system" is not part of the "auteur tradition", no? It's like blaming a biographer of Honoré de Balzac for not mentioning once the complete history of Gutenberg's movable type printing... Some academics study the infrastructure, other academics study the art. To each his own job. He said that as if the "auteur tradition" had the responsibility to write the TOTAL HISTORY of cinema (including non-auteurist productions), and failed. This said, I believe that in the 50ies, the so-called "auteur tradition" studied more seriously the "Hollywood system" than any American academics or critics, if only as a starting point for further investigations.
Second point : Isn't it a bit presumptuous for historians to base a comprehensive understanding of the average production of silent cinema on what amounts to 20% of leftovers from that period? About 80% of nitrate prints have been destroyed or lost! At this rate, it's more like archeology based on sparse fossils found in the soil by chance. Do you think we would KNOW about the cinema of the XXIst century if we only watched 20% of the current production? Oh wait, this is about as much of world production (including Hollywood production!) that is actually screened in commercial theatres in the USA...

"The prototypical cinephile piece in effect answers a question like this: “What distinctive qualities of this film can I detect, and how do they enhance our sense of its value?” The prototypical academic interpretation would be answering something like: “What aspects of the film are illuminated by my theoretical frame of reference?” I think, however, that we academics can make progress in understanding cinema if our questions are more specifically and self-consciously formulated." Academics vs. Critics. Never the twain shall meet: why can't cinephiles and academics just get along? David Bordwell (Film Comment, May 2011) 

"Film criticism lies at the centre of nearly all intellectual discourse about the cinema, and if we take criticism to be an effort to know particular movies more intimately, it probably deserves its prime place. But contemporary film criticism is failing. In academic venues, it mostly grinds Movie X through Theory Y, in the hope that somehow the exercise will yield political emancipation." Backpage: Against Insight David Bordwell (cinemascope, #26, 2006)

This sounds great. And then, when he reviews a minimalist, contemplative film he exemplifies himself the very shortcomings he criticizes Academia for : inadequately grinding random films through his classic theories of transitions with a film like What Time Is It There? (David Bordwell, The Hook: Scene Transitions in Classical Cinema, January 2008), or his classic theories of editing with a film like The Shaft (Three from Palm Springs, 16 Jan 2009), or his classic theories of staging for an undefined "slow cinema" (The Cross, David Bordwell, 1 June 2010) or his classic theories of suspense with a film like Le Quattro Volte (No suspense? David Bordwell, 11 April 2011; see my comment here), instead of adapting to what the specific stylistic of the film requires, and trying to understand what distinguishes classic narratives from minimalist narratives. What is the point of knowing so much about Cinema History if it's to treat recent films as if they had been made 70 years ago?

"Less obvious is the overlap between cinephile criticism and what I’d call middle-level research." David Bordwell (Film Comment, May 2011) 

More on "middle-level research" if you read his 1996 book :

"This 'middle-level' research asks questions that have both empirical and theoretical import. That is, and contrary to many expositors of Grand Theory, being empirical does not rule out being theoretical.
The most established realms of middle-level research have been empirical studies of filmmakers, genres, and national cinemas. [..]" Post Theory, reconstructing film studies (Carroll/Bordwell, 1996)

Hopeful parting thought:

"Academics have more elbow room to study how those qualities came into being, how they work together, and what roles they play historically and culturally. Academics can also contribute new ideas that critics on the front lines can try out. Readers who enjoy cinephile criticism should sample the academic work that stays close to the sensuous surface of a movie. Meanwhile, academics should recognize how cinephile criticism can alert us to the movie’s unique identity. Perceptive appreciation and analytical explanation can enhance one another."

Amen.

Related:

• Auteurist vs. cinephile (Dan Sallitt)
• Journalists vs Academics 
• Cinéma d'auteur blasé 
• Bordwell on cliché in criticism 
• Le quattro volte (English critics) 
• Slow films, easy life (Sight&Sound)
• Mandarins vs Philistines 2 

50 SiC

50ème anniversaire de la Semaine de la Critique (Festival de Cannes)
écoutez : Projection Privée, Michel Ciment (France Culture, 14 mai 2011) 59' [MP3]
avec:

• Jean-Jacques Bernard (journaliste et réalisateur, Président du Syndicat Français de la Critique de Cinéma et de télévision),
• Jean-Christophe Berjon (délégué général de la Semaine Internationale de la Critique) et
• Charles Tesson (critique et historien du cinéma)

Jean-Jacques Bernard: "C'est une concurrence et une stimulation [avec la selection officielle de Cannes]. noublions pas que si le festival de Cannes n'existait pas dans son ampleur, dans sa magesté - premier festival du monde - la Semaine de la Critique n'aurait pas cet éclat. C'est parce qu'il y a un grand festival ici qu'il y a une grande semaine de la critique. L'un et l'autre s'adossent constament."

Quelques découvertes des premiers films selectionnés par la SiC :

• Jacques Rozier (Adieu Philippine, 1962)
• Chris Marker (Le Joli mai, 1963)
• Denys Arcand (Seul ou avec d’autres, 1963 et La Maudite galette, 1972)
• Bernardo Bertolucci (Prima della revoluzione, 1964)
• Jerzy Skolimowski (Walkover, 1965)
• Dusan Makavejev (Man is not a Bird, 1966 and Love Affair, 1967)
• Jean Eustache (Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus, 1966 et La Rosière de Pessac, 1969)
• Jean-Marie Straub (Nicht Versöhnt / Non réconcilié, 1966 et Chronique d’Anna Magdalena Bach, 1968)
• Ousmane Sembene (La Noire de…, 1966)
• Robert Kramer (En marge, 1968 et Ice, 1970)
• Otar Iosseliani (La Chute des feuilles, 1968)
• Philippe Garel (Marie pour mémoire, 1968)
• Fernando Solanas (L’Heure des brasiers, 1969)
• Barbet Schroeder (More, 1969)
• Alain Tanner (Charles mort ou vif, 1969)
• Ken Loach (Kes, 1970)
• Paul Morrissey (Trash, 1971)
• Victor Erice (The Spirit of the Beehive, 1974)
• Benoît Jacquot (L’Assassin musicien, 1975)
• John Sayles (Liana, 1983)
• Leos Carax (Boy Meets Girl, 1984)
• Amos Gitai (Esther, 1986)
• Idrissa Ouedraogo (The Choice, 1987)
• Tran-Anh Hung (La Femme mariée de Nam Xuong, 1989 CM)
• Wong Kar-Wai (As Tears Go By, 1989)
• Arnaud Desplechin (La Vie des morts, 1991)
• Benoît Poelvoorde, Rémy Belvaux et André Bonzel (C’est arrivé près de chez vous, 1992)
• Guillermo del Toro (Cronos, 1993)
• Jacques Audiard (Regarde les hommes tomber, 1994)
• Kevin Smith (Clerks, 1994)
• Andrea Arnold (Milk, 1998 CM)
• François Ozon (Une Robe d’été, 1996 CM et Sitcom, 1998)
• Gaspar Noé (Carne, 1991 CM et Seul contre tous, 1998)
• Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores perros, 2000)
• Neil Jordan (Not I, 2000 CM)
• Bertrand Bonello (Le Pornographe, 2001)
• Bill Plympton (Eat, 2001 CM)
• Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know, 2005)
• Arturo Ripstein (Los Heroes y el tiempo, 2005)

La Semaine de La Critique célèbre sa 50e édition lors du prochain Festival de Cannes. Pour célébrer cet anniversaire, la Semaine, qui se consacre depuis ses débuts en 1962 à la découverte de nouveaux talents en présentant des premières et secondes œuvres du monde entier, met à l’honneur les personnalités qu’elle a révélées. Avec ces témoignages filmés, la Semaine rend hommage aux réalisateurs et comédiens ayant débuté dans cette section en partageant les souvenirs de 50 ans de premières fois cannoises. Ces vidéos, réalisées par un journaliste critique ou par les cinéastes eux-mêmes, donnent la parole aux réalisateurs.

Abel & Gordon; Hany Abu-Assad; Karin Albou; Marie Amachoukeli; Jacques Audiard; Aida Begic; Alain Bergala; Bernardo Bertolucci; Julie Bertuccelli; Christoffer Boe; Bertrand Bonello; Claire Burger; Adrian Caetano; Grégoire Colin; Carlos Diegues; Jean-Pierre Daroussin; Guillermo del Toro; Anaïs Demoustier; Fabrice du Welz; Claude Duty; Inès Efron; Patrik Eklund; Pablo Fendrik; Esmir Filho; Marina Foïs; Anne Fontaine; James Franco; Shira Geffen; Amos Gitaï; Arturo Goetz; Alejandro Gonzales Iñarritu; Romain Goupil; Otar Iosselani; Benoît Jacquot; Thierry Jousse; Anna KArina; Marin Karmitz; Etgar Keret; Agnes Kocsis; Lee Chang-dong; Pierre Lhomme; Jean-Pierre Limosin; Ken Loach; Paul Morrissey; Greg Mottola; Johannes Stjärne Nilsson; Anna Novion; Martin Piroyansky; Lucia Puenzo; Jacques Rozier; Nicolas Saada; John Sayles; Alo Simonsson; Fernando Solanas; Judith Henry; Keren Yedaya.

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Reprise des 7 films en competition à la Semaine de la Critique à Paris (La Cinémathèque Française) du 3 au 6 juin 2011.

Related:

• Cahiers-Cannes
• Clueless anti-festival clichés
• Random factoid 3: festival sizes
• Without festival

La Nouvelle Babylone (Marinone)

Cours de cinéma d'Isabelle Marinone : "La nouvelle Babylone" (Kozintsev/Trauberg)
6 mai 2011 (forumdesimages) 54'23"

Cahiers-Cannes

Stéphane Delorme : "[..] le Festival est devenu le rendez-vous absolu à la fois des meilleurs films et de l'industrie, une suprématie qui ne va qu'en s'accentuant. [..] Mais combien de films seront écrabouillés dans l'étau entre septembre et novembre ? On doute fort qu'un effet « rentrée littéraire » soit favorable à la distribution. [..]  Embargo sur la compétition [..] Les Cahiers se retrouvent donc à se caler sur le rythme précis imposé pour Cannes. [..] L'an prochain, faudra-t-il refaire un dossier spécial ? La question se pose. Peut-être, si des gros films se jettent à l'eau en mai et que les plus petits envisagent le coup de pouce de la revue à l'approche de Cannes. Le lecteur des Cahiers ne descend pas forcément sur la Croisette (les distributeurs ont tendance à l'oublier) et est friand en amont d'informations, de textes, de photos pour suivre le Festival. [..]  Parce que ce ne sont pas des films Cahiers ? Mais cela fait trente ans que les Cahiers défendent Craven, et quinze ans les Farrelly ! Que ce soit à cause de la négligence, du mépris, ou de la peur de la presse, il devient difficile de faire un mensuel."

Pas étalonné! Editorial Cahiers, n°667 (mai 2011)

Contrairement à ses homologues anglophones, Delorme a la sagesse de reconnaitre l'importance de Cannes, et ne pas tomber dans la mesquine polémique des "cinéphiles" snobinards qui prennent un malin plaisir à rouler dans la boue les festivals majeurs qui font vivre la planète cinéma.

En critique consciencieux, il s'interroge sur les difficultés de la distribution des films de la sélection cannoise. Moins sortent en mai, en synchronicité avec la projection pour les critiques. Et plus sortent en septembre-octobre, dans un embouteillage infernal. Au moins, on devrait s'en réjouir, ils sortent en salles pour le grand public en France, ce qui n'est pas le cas outre-atlantique! 

Ensuite, il se plaint de ne pouvoir révéler le nom des films avant tout le monde, et de publier des résumés pour les films en première mondiale, début mai, avant que quiconque ne soit arrivé à Cannes.

Je crois qu'il oublie que Cannes n'est pas un festival franco-français dont les Cahiers serait une sorte d'attaché de presse... Si Delorme s'oppose à l'effet de surprise d'une première mondiale, le prestige d'un grand festival comme Cannes issu du principe d'exclusivité n'a plus lieu d'être! En fait, il rechigne à voir les films en même temps que tous les autres critiques mondiaux, avec ses insinuations de chantage affectif (y'aura pas de dossier l'an prochain... nanana nanère). Soit on accepte les règles du jeu de l'embargo, pour faire de Cannes un moment unique qui n'est pas pré-digéré à l'avance dans la presse. Soit on abandonne l'idée d'avoir en France un festival qui compte dans le monde. Etant donné le pôle magnétique qu'est devenu Cannes, les desiderata des Cahiers importent peu sur les décisions de Jacob et Frémaux.

Je trouve tout à fait normal de ne pas lire dans le numéro de mai, les synopsis de tous les films qui doivent conserver leur mystère, non seulement avant l'ouverture de Cannes, mais aussi jusqu'au jour de leur projection. Sinon ça n'a aucun sens de faire attendre certains réalisateurs jusqu'au dernier jour du festival pour projeter leur film après tous les autres. Ils acceptent d'attendre parce que les critiques continue d'anticiper jusqu'à la première officielle. Et si le prix à payer est de prolonger la frustration des lecteurs, qu'il en soit ainsi. 

La couverture d'un festival ne devrait pas être envisagée comme n'importe quelle semaine de l'année, dont les films en distributions sont annoncés et décryptés avant même d'apparaître sur les écrans. La compétition de Cannes c'est pas les sorties en salles de la semaine.

Les lecteurs seraient surement plus content de pouvoir lire les réactions des Cahiers avant le numéro de Juin! Mais on ne peut pas satisfaire tous leurs désirs égoïstes, ni ceux des mensuels... Un festival ça se dévoile au jour le jour, et si les mensuels sont incapable de suivre le rythmes des nouvelles technologies, tant pis pour eux! C'est pas aux festivals de s'adapter à la presse papier du XXe siècle.

Burdeau avait tenté un moment d'établir un contact en direct de Cannes via le site web des Cahiers, avec chat et billets journaliers. Mais, Delorme a réduit à néant cette interface web : plus de chat, plus de forum, plus de contenu web hors-issue... Ce n'est pas à Cannes à s'adapter à la presse papier, ce sont aux mensuels à s'adapter au XXIe siècle!

A défaut de pouvoir tout savoir sur les films de la sélection, peut-être serait-il bienvenue pour un mensuel d'imaginer une manière différente de participer au festival, sans en gâcher le plaisir. Soit en se détachant du format mensuel pour l'occasion, en usant de moyens plus interactifs. Soit en proposant autre chose qu'une liste de synopsis, en parlant d'autre chose que d'actualité qui n'a pas encore eu lieu. Il faut parler avec des acteurs décisifs du cinéma mondial, faire un bilan de la distribution de l'ancienne sélection, la carrière des lauréats dans leur pays respectif, en France et dans le monde. Reprendre l'excellente idée de Tesson/Frodon pour un Atlas mondial du cinéma (annuel), l'occasion de prendre contact avec des critiques étrangers qui décrivent l'état de leur marché national, de comparer l'évolution des goûts aux quatre coin du monde.

Et puis repousser à juin, le numéros spécial Cannes, avec des papiers plus posés, moins bâclés, sur chaque film, sur les sections parallèles. Un numéro sur Cannes écrit et publié APRES Cannes, est plus crédible qu'un mois avant l'ouverture du festival! Même si il arrive 2 semaine après tous les quotidiens. Mais il faut choisir entre le presse de l'immédiat, et la presse au temps long des mensuels qui s'attardent sur les sujets pour les approfondir. L'opinion des Cahiers devrait garder tout son intérêt même si on a déjà lu l'opinion superficiel des journaux et du web, surtout si les lecteurs ne peuvent voir les films qu'à la rentrée. C'est aux Cahiers de se faire attendre, plutôt que compter sur l'unique avantage d'avoir parler avant les autres.

Cannes est un moment exceptionnel dans l'année, une seule fois par an. Les films présentés se précipitent pour être vu là-bas des professionnels. Mais ce n'est pas la date de Cannes qui définit quand sortent les films commercialement. On ne peut pas avoir tous les meilleurs films de l'année sortis dans la même semaine sous prétexte que les critiques les ont déjà vus. Le temps des professionnels et le temps du grand public ne coïncident pas. 

Ce n'est pas la première fois que les Cahiers se plaignent de n'avoir pas accès aux films de genre commerciaux (selon le cliché que ce ne sont pas des "films-Cahiers"). Burdeau, fan d'Hollywood, avait déjà réclamé qu'on lui paie le voyage pour avoir accès à des junkets à L.A. Quelle misère d'en arriver là... quémander à Hollywood ce que même les journalistes de l'entertainment devrait refuser par déontologie professionnelle. Ça ne grandit pas la critique cinéma.

Ainsi, Delorme explique que les Cahiers défendent Craven depuis 30 ans et Farrelly depuis 15 ans. Si cela avait un impact sur les ventes d'Hollywood... ils vous harcèleraient sans répit. Pas la peine de jouer au lèche-cul. Ce que cet aveu implique est plutôt malsain : si Craven et Farrelly ont "la carte", qu'il on reçu le "label Cahiers" pour leur films précédents, vous promettez donc de publier une critique positive pour leur nouveau film sans l'avoir vu??? Ça craint quand même une mentalité pareille. Pourquoi est-ce qu'ils devraient vous faire confiance à l'aveugle? Et d'ailleurs, interdire les projection de presse dans la crainte d'un mauvais papier est contraire aux règles. S'il suffisait de montrer le films aux critiques qui adorent, la vie serait tellement simple pour les studios qui aiment faire des navets. 

Si les exclusivité vous est soufflé par Twitter, et que vous êtes obligés de voir les films en salles (comme tout le monde, quelle horreur!)... il va bien falloir faire une sérieuse introspection et repenser le rôle de la presse à une époque où tout lecteur est connecté au web en permanence et n'attend pas un mois pour connaitre les moindres infos dont la presse avait jadis le monopole. 

Regardez de l'avant. Les nouvelles technologies ne vont pas ralentir pour vous faciliter la tâche.

Lire aussi :

• Clueless anti-festival clichés
• Random factoid 3: festival sizes 

Clueless anti-festival clichés

"Here follows a number of current clichés about the film business:

• Film festivals are a massive growth industry [..]
• Film festivals are now a crucial part of modern independent (and especially foreign-language) film business [..]
• Film festivals now constitute an alternative "distribution network" [..]
• Film festivals are about discovery, revealing to the world films that the existing distribution mechanisms fail to reach [..]

Let's just, for the sake of balance, shade a little reality into some of the clichés:

• New film festivals are indeed springing up all the time, particularly in North America [..] All film festivals rely on 3 revenue sources - ticket sales, public money and sponsorship
• All film festivals rely [..] on a number of poorly paid short-term staff [..] unpaid volunteers
• Film festivals may be an alternative distribution network for a certain type of film, but one entirely devoid of a business model: apart from the occasional screening fee [..] no money is generated for the film's maker. Tickets revenue goes to the festival
• There are not nearly enough good films to go around [..]

[..] it is the excessive top-down structure of the film distribution system : [..] we see what films Warners or Paramount [..], when [..] and for as long as they decide we should see them."

"Big society, little clue", Nick Roddick (Sight and Sound, May 2011)

Finally an ounce of pertinence in the pages of Sight and Sound, taking a hard look at the spoon-fed system that gives the film press its only reason to carry on. If you didn't review "all films of the month", in a servile manner, the ones approved by the official distribution system... maybe this magazine would have the legitimacy to criticize the festival circuit and the state of cinema in the world. Nonetheless, this is a good baby-step in the right direction.  

Film Festivals are no more an "industry" than international car shows... it's a place to show your products and sell the rights to export them. The commercialization (the part where you sell cars to consumers) takes places afterwards, once the distributors have negotiated their contract, bought the stock and exhibit the commercial products to the public. The car shows or the film festivals do not make benefits at this point, marginal sales are insignificant  to the expected gross revenue (that shall refund the production cost). 1 or 2 screenings at a festival (500 or 2000 admissions) does not pay back the production cost of a feature film!!! The film festival circuit is located outside of the commercial circuit, upstreams from the actual commercialization. Even the festival cuts of the film are sometimes different from the final official cut, precisely because it's merely a screening destined to professionals only, fresh from the editing room, and sometimes barely finalized.

If certain films (non-commercial films, challenging artfilms, niche audience offerings...) are only allowed to meet an audience (of regular public spectators), on the "festival circuit", 1 screening at the time, they are never going to make profits. Not only it is not a viable alternative to the commercial exhibition, but it is not an acceptable ghettoization. All narrative films, whatever their format or content or style, should be treated equally by the distribution circuit, meaning that they should have at least access to a public release. Films cannot be relegated to back alleys just because they are considered "non-profitable" or "intellectual". The popularity of "blockbusters" will influence the number of screens allocated of course. There is no point in having a mass audience locked out of full theatres because there are screens showing non-commercials films to an empty auditorium... But the other extreme is equally stupid, and that is the situation we are in now : artfilms are not even slated for public distribution (or eventually on a single screen nationwide!) just because the marketing predictions estimate that the audience doesn't like artfilms. 

There must be a reasonable number of screens (or show time slots during the week) dedicated to NON-COMMERCIAL cinema, because even if few people at the time wants to watch them (and it takes more than a week-end for the artfilm word of mouth to succeed) the access to the public must be guaranteed by law. It is too easy for distributors to purchase cheap artfilm distribution rights in the sole intention to shelf them ad infinitum (keeping them off the market, where risk-taking distributors would try to buy them). Money can't buy your competition like that. Or else the richest studios would lose less money by holding up their direct competition, than by having to market their films against too many alternative choices. In the USA, money buys everything, even the silence of the artfilm culture. And American critics find this situation perfectly fine... I don't care if American audiences refuse to watch (better) artfilms / foreign films, because their taste has been formated by Hollywood standards of mediocrity. The role of film critics and the film industry is to respect all films and give them all a decent chance!  

All this isn't the fault of a growing festival circuit! All this does is to develop the professional network to exchange distribution rights, not only globally at the few major festivals, but also locally at every local festival, relaying the discoveries made by major festivals on the other side of the planet. International buyers can afford to travel to Cannes, Venice or Berlin every year. But the local arthouse exhibitors (who are not part of a mainstream franchise) need the existence of local festivals at their level, within their reach, to discover themselves the non-commercial titles they will want to invest in, take a chance to support and sell to their local regular spectators. The commercial profits of artfilms shall be made in commercial arthouses, not on the festival circuit. Art films are not made for the unique privileged festival-goer audience (the cinephile jet-set)! Art films are made to reach out to every city and villages, even if it's only 1 screening a week, and if it takes 3 or 5 years after it's world premiere. Unfortunately, it is impossible to watch them currently if you don't live in a state capital, or a cinephile city, because art films are not marketed elsewhere, and art filmmakers cannot make a living based on one-off screenings, unpaid festival screenings, direct to DVD distribution, and illegal downloads. Hollywood loses peanuts with illegal downloads, but art filmmakers lose a much larger share of their total sales (which is, at the same time, significantly lower than the average Hollywood flick's revenue). They lose a larger percentage of a smaller total. 

Art filmmakers are not making films for the sport, to be watched by critics who don't even pay admission fees. The job of serious critics is to convince readers that challenging films are worth begging for, by inciting to harass lazy distributors until they give artfilms a dignified release! 

Related:

• Second class film distribution 
• Mushroom festivals 
• Without festivals 
• Random Factoid 3: festival sizes 
• GQ vs Hollywood (Harris)

Random Factoid 3: Festival sizes

To those who think that festivals grow exponentially every year, out of control... you can see that the number of films selected in competition in the Cannes International Film Festival, since 1994, didn't vary much. (see PDF here for details). The official competition where nominees are eligible for La Palme d'Or, just like the parallel section, Un Certain Regard, have always been between 19 and 24; both 20 this year. La Semaine de la Critique didn't change its format, always 1 feature film per day : 7 in total (plus a handful of special screenings). La Quinzaine des Réalisateurs has fluctuated without regularity from 15 to 25, with a peak at 30 in 2003. La Cinéfondation supports 13 to 20 debuting filmmakers each year, since 1998.

Only the Off Competition screenings have increased steadily, from only 3 in 1994 to 23 in 2006... 19 this year.

In total the various competitions (Official, Regard, Quinzaine, SiC) amount in 2011 to 68 mandatory feature film viewing, plus the short films. The rest are promotional screenings. With 6 screenings a day, in 10 days, a dedicated critic could watch at least 60 films during the course of the festival (without counting the few advance-screenings for the press, ahead of the festival). And since the coverage of a festival by a film magazine or a newspaper is never a one-man show, 2 or 3 well organised critics could easily watch the complete selection (including the often neglected parallel sections!), plus snoop around for some unexpected gems in the promotional screenings and the marketplace. The task is easily manageable. I don't understand why certain critics dare to complain. World cinema is not defined by the maximum capacity of a single man to watch films within 10 days (especially when they crash celebrity parties instead of doing their job!)

Number of films in Cannes (1994-2011) Official selection

The only notable expension of the Cannes event, is actually a side show that is not an integer part of the Film Festival : Le Marché du Film; which doubled in size since 1994 (435 projects for sale), reaching a peak in 2008 (1004 projects). 876 films last year. But this part of the event is reserved for buyers (and the press), and is only there to benefit from the media coverage energized by the festival competition and the presence of red carpet galas!

The films selected in competition are the cream of the crop, at world-class level for the current year, these are the films critics must see and review. But critics don't need to watch all (if any) of the projects (often unfinished or not even started) promoted on the marketplace. So these should not count in the survey of the festival evolution. Most of these projects are not even great in the first place... it could easily be the commercial fare, at a mediocre level. If producers can afford to showcase a bad film in Cannes, nothing prevents it. While the Cannes competition is a serious process of selection from the best filmmakers in the world. Not necessarily the very best of the year (some may surface in Venice or Berlin), and sometimes films are invited for their original or risky aesthetics even if they don't measure up to the world's top tier. But the selection is artistically sound, contrary to the marketplace.

Do not mistake the marketplace event (commercial business) with the Festival competition (non-commercial celebration of art cinema). 

Number of films at the marketplace (Cannes 1994-2010)

Related:

• International Film Festivals (stats) 1