24 juillet 2009

World Artfilm Blogs United

Please add your recommendations for film writers in these countries in the comments below or email to me, provided they fit the criteria : (1) mainly about artfilms, documentaries, experimental cinema (2) preferably written in English, or else in local language (3) eventually a local resource. See introductory post here. Subscribe to updates of this post (RSS feed for comments thread) Seeking Artfilm Blogs Desperately
Wide Middle East
IRAN جمهوری اسلامی ايران - [Farsi/Persian]
TURKEY Türkiye Cumhuriyeti [Turkish]
Africa
ALGERIA الجمهورية الجزائرية الديمقراطية الشعبية [Arabic] [Tamazigh] [French]
  • ?
EGYPT جمهورية مصر العربية [Arabic]
  • ?
MALI République du Mali - [Bambara] [French]
  • ?
MOROCCO المملكة المغربية - [Arabic] [Tamazigh] [French]
  • ?
SENEGAL République du Sénégal - [Wolof] [French]
  • ?
Asia
CHINA 中國 [Mandarin] [Cantonese]
HONG KONG 中華人民共和國香港特別行政區 [Cantonese] [English]
  • ?
TAIWAN 臺灣 [Mandarin] [Taiwanese] [English]
SOUTH KOREA 대한민국 [Korean]
JAPAN 日本国 [Japanese]
INDIA भारत गणराज्य [Hindi] [Tamil] [Telugu] [Kannada] [Malayalam] [Bengali] [Marathi] [Gujarati] [English]
South East Asia
THE PHILIPPINES Republika ng Pilipinas [Filipino] [English]
THAILAND ราชอาณาจักรไทย [Thai] [English]
MALAYSIA [Malay]
SINGAPORE [English] [Malay] [Chinese] [Tamil]
Latin America
ARGENTINA [Spanish]
MEXICO [Spanish]
BRAZIL [Portuguese]
PERU [Spanish]CHILE [Spanish]
Eastern Europe
RUSSIA Российская Федерация [Russian]
ROMANIA România [Romanian]
SLOVENIA Republika Slovenija [Slovene]
BULGARIA Република България [Bulgarian]

Underexposed Western Europe
Portugal [portuguese]
Spain España [spanish]
Germany Deutschland [German]
Worldwide
General sites on unsung world cinema
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21 juillet 2009

Eire to Iran

Sunday Bloody Sunday, from IRA 1972 to IRAN 2009

Old mural in Belfast (left) & Protest in Iran (right)
Snickers sponsors the Iranian civil war!
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Screens - World Cinema Stats (4)

Active cinema screens (2008) top 16 nations + EUNotes :
  • Most recent data, either 2008 or 2007 for most countries.
  • EU is there as an indicator as member states of the European Union are already present on this chart. But it shows the European countries put together become comparable to the top players (USA, China and India), which is a legit place.
  • China is also split in 2 figures. One only registers what they call "modern theatres" (comparable to worldwide theatre screens). But we see that the other one, including all types of screenings (maybe in community centres in rural China, and video projectors), corresponds more to what we'd expect from a population of over 1 billion people! And it puts China above India (unlike on the Admissions chart, which was probably calculated from the "modern theatres" data)
  • Curiously, despite the best scores on Production and Admissions, India is 4th, behind USA, China and EU. I wonder if the data corresponds to "modern screens" here as well. And like we noticed with the low score on the attendance per capita chart, India should build more theatres. In any case it shows that theatres in India must be packed, at every show, for every film, to sell so many admissions with so few theatres. Which is the contrary to China, where theatres are probably deserted (but reliable data is required to figure this out).
  • Conversely, the USA has the largest park of screens in the world, and one of the best "attendance per capita" ratio, but doesn't sell as much as India with lower proficiency. This is explained by the difference in populations by a factor 3.8. We'll see more about that in the next post with theatre seats statistics.
  • After the 3 major players, the other countries are roughly in the same ballpark, on a much smaller scale, from France (5426) to Russia (1890). The latter making a very low score for such a large population. Mexico, Japan and Brazil as well should be higher in the ranking given their population size.
  • These inconsistencies between population size and screens capacity reveal a lack of enthusiasm for cinema by local population, or a lack of infrastructures investments in their exhibition circuit.
Active cinema screens (2008/2007) 48 smaller nationsMore countries at the low level, to get a more complete picture worldwide. Likewise, data are either from 2008 or 2007 when available. But as data for smaller countries are harder to find online (because they interest less statisticians and economists...) sometimes the number comes from up to 10 years ago. But it gives an idea of their ranking anyway, since a park of screen doesn't vary dramatically (except in case of a major economical phenomenon).
We may compare the respective ranks of these countries, with their ranks in the previous graphs. But we'll get a better idea with the oncoming "screens per capita" and "audience per screen" charts.
Let's note that from Lebanon downward, there are only a double digit number of screens available for local filmmakers to show their films in their original language to their domestic population. Imagine how one could fund a reasonable budget and plan a profitable career for a film, less than 100 screens at the time, in a couple of weeks! It's like a "limited release in selected cities" in the USA, except that there is no hope to expand in case of success.
It is unbelievable that stars manage to arise and prosper on the international scene in countries like Lebanon (Hadjithomas/Joreige), Serbia (Kusturica), Lithuania (Bartas), Cambodia (Panh)... Please be kind when you insinuate certain indie filmmakers don't make films to please their domestic audience, but allegedly to appeal to international festivals or foreign critics. Cinema is an expensive industry that cannot sustain itself with a handful of spectators only.

World cinema screens history (1985-2008) 10 major nations + EU
Backtracking a couple of decades to see if there are notable trends and variations. Globally there is constant growth between 1985 and 2000, almost double the park of screens everywhere. And then a certain stagnation since then.
Too few data for China and India! Anyone knows where to find a more comprehensive survey for these major cinema nations?
Note: the anomaly for Italy (1996-97) is probably due to a change of survey criteria, making 2 sets of databases that might not cover the same types of cinemas.

World cinema screens history (2005-2008) 19 smaller nations

World cinema screens history (2005-2008) 22 smallest nations


See:

Source:

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20 juillet 2009

Seeking World Film Bloggers Desperately

The majority of film bloggers on the English-speaking blogosphere come from the USA essentially, or the UK, and Europe more generally. This is evident on the maps of tracking counters placed on various English film blogs. Very few visitors are outside Europe and North America (which owns the most part of the worldwide internet bandwidth anyway). I suppose this is particular to the English language of course (though it should be the most popular internationally). The situation in France is even worse, French blogs are only visited by people from France (or Belgium and Switzerland).
But I would like to expand the circle of cinephiles to most places on Earth, in order to communicate with local audience, who watch the foreign films we love in their original language, or even films from our countries. Just to establish a contact worldwide beyond language barriers.

I dream of a blogosphere we could navigate to meet film lovers from any imaginable country, and be able to read their thoughts on cinema, in their own language, or translated (one way or the other). I talked about this project for a long time now (here for example), without being able to discover new blogs out there on my own, so I hope to find some help in a collective effort for everyone interested in this endeavour. All help is welcome if you share this concern to meet foreign film bloggers.

If you are a film lover, a film writer, a film critic, a film student, a film scholar, a filmmaker from non-English speaking nations or if you know someone, if you know places where to find them, if you can read these local languages, please join in on this quest to connect cinephiles around the world and gather around the same table.

The area of interest of your blog should be focused on "art-films" of course (I'm less worried about connecting the fans of Hollywood blockbusters), which means the major festival line-ups, local indie films, documentaries and experimental cinema.

To start, in a first phase -urgent priority - the main countries (either because they host the best contemporary masters or because they have a massive movie-going demographic) should be considered in priority on the radar :
But there are many other under-represented places in the world of cinema, like Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia, Egypt, Singapore, Israel, Palestine, Georgia, Armenia, Cuba...

And even in Europe, outside of France and the UK, I would like to know where to find the most passionate film bloggers from the underexposed European countries (on the English blogosphere) : Romania, Ukraine, Czech Rep., Iceland, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Poland, Belgium, Netherlands, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Switzerland, Greece and to a lesser extant Spain, Italy, Germany...


In a next post (go here), I'll keep updated a list of the links found in every country, by continent. And we'll have 3 categories :
  1. local/foreign blogs in English by local people (for direct international communication), or bloggers speaking English as well
  2. local blogs in local language or non-English foreign languages (requiring proxy translation, which could be worked out eventually with the help of the community or Google Translate)
  3. And if there is no personal contact to be found, a local film journal accessible online would be also precious.
Contact me via email (see my profile) or in the comments below. Volunteers to help coordinate, investigate, scout the web, translate are welcome. Use your own blogs, contacts, Twitter, Facebook... to relay the announcement of this research and spread the word around.
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18 juillet 2009

Journalists vs Academics

In response to the debate at Girish : Building large conversation (7-13-2009)
Opposition of film analysis by film critics and film scholars :
FILM CRITICS↔ FILM SCHOLARS
• Journalists↔ • Academics
• Work for the media
(industry of communication)		↔ • Work for the university
(institutions of knowledge)
• Servant of the collectivity↔ • Research activity
• Part of the union of film critics↔ • Part of the society of film studies
• Short articles↔ • Long erudit essays
• Incisive phrases↔ • Demonstrative rhetoric
• Clichés↔ • Jargon
• Burden of proof↔ • Evidence in methodology
• Subjectivity↔ • Science
• Judgement↔ • Understanding
• Taste↔ • Knowledge
From La Critique de Cinéma, by René Prédal, 2004
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Interpretative Institutions
Comparison with (1) Journalistic criticism, (2) Essayistic criticism and (3) Academic criticism

PUBLISHING FORMAT
  1. Newspapers and popular weeklies (e.g., New York Times, Village Voice)
    Television and radio programs
  2. Specialized or intellectual monthlies or quarterlies (e.g., Cahiers du cinéma, Artforum, Partisan Review)
  3. Scholarly journals (e.g., Cinema Journal)
FORMAL INSTITUTIONS
  1. Employment by periodical
    Professional associations (e.g. NYFCC)
  2. Employment by periodical
    Galleries, museums...
    Colleges or universities
  3. Colleges or universities
    Centers and government agencies
    Academic associations (e.g., Society for Cinema Studies)
INFORMAL INSTITUTIONS
  1. Invisible colleges (network of acquaintances, mentors, disciples...)
  2. Circles and salons around periodicals
    Invisible colleges
  3. Invisible colleges
    "Schools" (group of practitioners or particular theory or method; e.g. auteur criticsm, feminist criticism)
From: David Bordwell, in Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema, 1989.
::

And to the above taxonomy I would add the internet branch of article publications, for those complaining about the crisis of paper publication, since it is possible to find a readership and "peer recognition" online in case of barrage by traditional publishers.
Though these links would probably fall under one of Bordwell's predefined categories (online journals = publishing format; podcast = formal institutions; blogs/forum = informal institutions) :

FILM WRITING IN NEW MEDIA
Likewise : (1) Journalistic criticism, (2) Essayistic criticism and (3) Academic criticism :
  1. Professional online press / blog (NYT, Le Monde, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Jim Emerson, Serge Kaganski...)
    Corporatist online journal (Undercurrent, Criticine...)
    Independent online periodical (The Auteurs Notebook, Indian Auteur, Daily Plastic...)
    Independent blogosphere (Strictly Film School, Independencia, The Evening Class, The House Next Door...)
    Podcast (Le Masque et la Plume, Daily Plastic...)

  2. Academic online revue (Offscreen, Rouge, cinemascope.it, Undercurrent, Eclipses, Senses of Cinema...)
    Institutional blogs (World Film Festivals, Moving Image Source...)
    Professional websites (The Criterion Collection...)
    Personal webpage / Blogosphere (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Girish, Dave Kehr, Serge Toubiana, FilmJourney, Elusive Lucidity...)
    Video essays (Shooting Down Pictures, Michel Reilhac, The L Magazine...)
    Podcast (Projection Privée, L'Avventura, Pinewood Dialogue...)
    Forum (Girish, Film of the Month Club...)

  3. Scholar online journals (Rouge, e-Jump Cut, Image & Narrative, Journal of the Moving Image, Rhizomes, Cadrage, cinetext...)
    Personal webpage / Blogosphere (David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson, Spectacular Attractions, DinaView, Craig Keller, Film Studies For Free...)
    Forum (Film-Philosophy, a_film_by, Dave Kehr...)
    Audio-Video masterclass (La Cinémathèque Française, Centre Georges Pompidou, Canal-U, Les Belles Captives Cinématographiques, Berkeley, Monash University, Ciné-Philo, Forum des Images...)
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17 juillet 2009

Bordwell on cliché in criticism

If Critics can use the artist's statements as evidence for their interpretation, artists versed in interpretative procedures can use the critics.
A complete list of topoi* at work in film interpretation would run very long, but let me pick out a few which have given pleasure over the years.
  1. A critically significant film is ambiguous, or polysemous, or dialogical.
  2. A critically significant film is strikingly novel in subject, theme, style, or form.
  3. A critically significant film takes up an oppositional relation to tradition (old version: ironic; new version: subversive).
  4. A film should make its audience work.
  5. Putting characters in the same frame unites them; cutting stresses opposition.
  6. Montage is opposed to mise-en-scène, or camera movement.
  7. The first viewing is different from later viewings.
  8. Lumière is opposed to Méliès.
  9. The image always escapes verbal paraphrase (old version: through richness; new version: through excess or plenitude).
  10. The filmmaker in question is not solely a master of technique; the film also harbors profound meanings.
  11. In the artist's late period, technique is thrown aside and the work becomes simpler, more schematic, and more profound.
  12. The film asks a question but doesn't answer it.
  13. The film is a reflection or meditation on a sophisticated philosophical or political issue.
  14. The film is Shakespearian (Anglo-American version) or Racinian (French) or Faulknerian (either).
  15. The film's style is so exaggerated that it must be ironic or parodic (useful for Sirk, late Vidor, Visconti, Ken Russell, and so on).
  16. Previous interpretations of the film are inadequate, if not downright wrong.
David Bordwell, in Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema, 1989.

* Topos (plural: topoi) : literally "common place".
a traditional theme or rhetorical motif or literary convention
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10 juillet 2009

Indie film parody



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BAFICI 2009 ads : Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente
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