S&S2012 Canon (3) : You are qualified to vote if...

The listmaking game for critics who have seen ALL films ever made (or almost)

Voting for a canon is no casual or trivial endeavour. People may make a number of random lists, and polls and ranking, without meeting any qualification issues. A canon is not a random list like every others. It's a very special election, and you need to know the entirety of cinema history to be able to weigh in, the evaluate the waning aura of old masterpieces and the surge to the summit of the most recent masterpieces, all this in comparison to the established standards over the years and in particular being able to appreciate and contextualize the level of today's standards.
If the umpire shows up one hour late into a tennis match, and counts the score only from this point on, he could come up with a very different winner at the end, without knowing the full picture, the full match.
We can catch up with cinema history and watch the films made before our time, but most people do not, and still want to be part of the vote for the fun, not because they feel capable to judge such a wide scope and depth of history. A film canon is not a venture for just any movie lover, it's for erudit veteran cinéphiles with a considerable cinema culture, curiosity and discernment. If you respect the purpose and importance of a canon, you should have the humility, deference, curtsy to let qualified people take that poll, and pass until you feel properly qualified.

You are qualified to vote in the establishment of an all time canon if...

1. you've seen more than 10,000 films and are able to recall/judge/compare them
2. you're familiar with ALL the Top100 titles from the previous poll, especially the long ones and hard-to-find ones (because these are the one suffering from unfavorable lack of votes). Do I need to specify seen ON THE BIG SCREEN?
3. you know inside out every period of cinema history, all the major aesthetic movements, at least, and more
4. you're not a self-confessed partisan for a narrow genre/era/country, or are using this for a publicity stunt to rescue a minority (silent films, female films...)
5. you know what the establishment of a canon consists of
6. you understand you're not doing it for your own satisfaction, but to participate in a collective enterprise where your individuality will be averaged out
7. you know a canon is not a random viewing recommendation, a beginner's road map, a dream package to carry with you on a desert island, the list of most re-watchable entertainment, or your idiosyncratic guilty pleasures.
8. you're not trying to catch everyone off-guard with crazy picks that have no chance to get into a consensual Top100
9. your ballot (which is supposed to stand until the next decennial poll!) doesn't change every day (a canon is for voters with a stable and sure taste)
10. you're not going to use quotas and other arbitrary rules to screw the deserving titles
11. you consider a nominee for its overall achievements, not just for the subject or the story or one performance or one scene or one punchline

All this would otherwise invalidate your participation, and mess up the result at worst (for other titles than those you promote) or do nothing at best (by being statistically insignificant).

These simple rules should bring down the number of canon makers to a more reasonable (and credible) elite of qualified voters, even if the downside is that the age average of these veterans will always tend to be too high for the past-conservatism to go away. But again, it's one of the defining characteristics of a canon to enshrine newer work with a certain delay, after a considerable test of time.

A useful canon is a canon which ballots are compatible for consensus and are tabulated constructively, not by antagonism and friction. 

A constructive consensus is not one that let rise to the top the lowest common denominator because the stronger candidates are diluted in a multitude of disparate selections, but is one that converges towards a limited number of the strongest titles.

There are enough "suitable" masterpieces around today to let every voter free of a personalised choice that will show their preferences and their strong stance (within the academic establishment). Your Top10 should be at least at the level of everyone else's Top100, and the ranking in the final collective Top10 will be determined by popularity among qualified voters.

The Long Tail curve is typical of an exclusive hegemony

846 voters replied before deadline, from a contingent of 1000 invitations extended out to 73 countries throughout the world. They think that expanding the voter base is an improvement, and they advertise the diversity of nationality... However if we omit the doubles due to typos (or the country of "Africa"???), the British/American critics who file in under another vacation-location in addition to UK/USA, and when we look at the proportion of English-speaking territories (56%), the "diversity" is more into the marketing talking points than giving foreigners a real shot at influencing the Euro-American establishment.

• ENGLISH =56% (233 UK; 173 USA; 26 Australia; 19 Canada; 13 Ireland; 6 South Africa; 4 New Zealand)
• EUROPE =63% (233 : UK; 50: Spain; 34 : Germany; 32 : France; 24 : Italy; 14 : Russia, Sweden; 13 : Ireland; 12 : Hungary, Netherlands, Switzerland; 10 : Poland; 8 : Slovenia; 7 : Austria, Czech Rep., Romania; 6 : Estonia, Portugal; 5 : Norway, Serbia; 3 : Belgium, Greece; 2 : Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Slovakia; 1 : Belarus, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Ukraine) 
• AMERICA =28% (173 : USA; 19 Canada; 17 Argentina; 8 Brazil; 7 Mexico; 4 Cuba; 3 Peru; 2 : Chile, Colombia; 1 : Guyana, Uruguay)
• ASIA + OCEANIA =10% (26 Australia; 12 Japan; 11 India; 13 China; 7 South Korea; 4 Thailand, New Zealand; 3 Taiwan; 2 Pakistan; 1 Philippines)
• AFRICA + GREATER MIDDLE EAST =5% (7 Israel, Turkey; 6 South Africa; 5 Lebanon; 3 Egypt; 2 Kazakhstan; 1 Abu Dhabi, Algeria, Armenia, Burkina Faso, Dubai, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Tunisa, UAE, Uzbaekistan)

Keep in mind there are redundant counting because some critics are listed under several locations.

Are you surprised now that Europe and the USA hold up over 90% of the Top100 titles?

Sight and Sound is a British magazine, so it's normal and expected they primarily cater to their local readership, their local critics and cinema professionals. No question about it. Maybe also to the English-speaking countries because the language of publication is English. Nonetheless, there is a genuine effort to expand the roster to the world.
Although it might look like a desperate attempt at positive discrimination without any real leverage...
As you can see on the graph above, the English advantage is not merely the largest number, slightly above everyone else, it singlehandedly dominates a large majority by itself. And if English-speaking voters can't even agree on a number 1 (only 22.6% of the votes), what kind of consensus has any chance to rise to the top10 for isolated voters whose indigenous taste will vanish in a multitude of residual orphan picks?

I'm glad that countries like Spain (50 voters), Hungary (12), Netherlands (12), Switzerland (12), Poland (10), Slovenia (8), Estonia (6)... get a powerful lobby at the Sight and Sound redaction for a fat quota in the roster... but other larger countries get ripped off : China (13), India (11), Japan (12), Brasil (8), Mexico (7), Russia (14)!

And when you look at which films the outsider voters pick, they favour American and European masterpieces instead of weighing in for their own culture (which is something they could and should do better than anyone else), or in general for a non-USA-Europe-biased World Cinema!

In a perfect world, even Europe-based critics would be open-minded and not partial toward their own national culture... thus vote impartially for the objectively BEST FILMS IN THE WORLD, not the Best European or Hollywood films... But obviously we can observe that decades after decades, the cultural imperialists declare sacred their local masters, write cinema history accordingly, and impose to everyone else this self-marketing propaganda. Sadly, many people buy into it, and believe there isn't anything else outside of Hollywood and Western Europe (limited to France, UK, Germany, Italy, USSR and Sweden).

A greater balance with a reasonable representation by nationality, YES, although an absolute parity is impossible, nor strictly desirable/practical anyway. But this shouldn't mean to expand and dilute the number of voters to people who have no business dealing with the totality of cinema history. Maybe they are afraid to tell some voters "sorry we won't be needing you anymore", so they just add a new layer on top of an ill-conceived foundation.

The election of the all-time greatest films shouldn't be EVERYBODY's business. When you only organise a poll every 10 years, it should be taken a little more seriously than "here is my favourite memories from the top of my head, as of today". No. If there is only one vote every 10 years, every voter should make use of these 10 years to pounder over their idea of a pantheon, to revise, to rewatch, to cover your blind spots, to watch other voters's nominees, to re-rank your top100, to reconsider new configurations, to re-evaluate the past classics, to re-appraise the new masterpieces. Then maybe we'd be looking at a canon worth taking seriously! A canon which wouldn't insult its name of "canon" by disguising as a populist survey.

Related :

• S&S 2012 Canon : Number 1 / Numbers / Hollywood's Supremacy? 
• Nuances in "Art Cinema" History

S&S 2012 Canon (2) : Numbers

Giving all titles on each ballot the same weight gives a more balanced canon. But the top spots are still way above everyone else, out of reach... This is not a healthy competition, nor a credible one. Even if Vertigo and Citizen Kane are THE best films there ever were (which is at least debatable), they shouldn't be superior to the runner ups by a factor of 2 or 5! Because voters gave 10 titles, not just one on their ballot. The head-start is suspicious, most likely due to the myth surrounding the canon status quo : i.e. These films are always cited as the best films, so I must put them on my ballot or else I'll look like a fool. This kind of mentality allows a given film to raise above the rest by sheer popularity alone. Is Vertigo TWICE as great as Tokyo Story or La règle du jeu, which would justify why it gets nominated twice as many times by voters? Hell no! This is B.S. Maybe in 1930, there were a couple masterpieces that were that much superior to all the rest... But not today, not these titles.

All this becomes mitigated by the fact that Vertigo was only mentioned by 191 voters of a total of 846 participants!!!! That's barely 22.6 % of the voters! That's the GREATEST FILM OF ALL TIME for you... only backed up by less than 1 voter out of 4!!! How great and famous it is then? Not even the FIRST one on the poll is cited by EVERYONE? WTF? And the last on the top50 is "consensual" for 1 voter out of 29.

Let's emphasize this : more than 3 out of 4 alleged "experts" disagree that Vertigo belongs to a top50, and 28 out of 29 "experts" think that La Jetée doesn't belong on a top50, but both films (and all the others between them) end up being enshrined on magazine paper for posterity anyway!

What happens is that there are 50 or 100 people amongst voters who play the rules and vote for the established titles that should most likely top this canon, a convergent goal, a common target, and all the others are just shooting astray for the joke, because they don't take their task seriously enough.

That's what you get when you let people take it easy on a canon contribution, they just push their personal favourites with no regard for the actual titles that MOST EVERYONE should recognize as the CONSENSUAL GREATNESS in film culture. See : Critical Fallacy # 13 : Inconsistent Standards 

* * *

Let's forget about the particular titles cited for a moment, and break down this pseudo-consensus into statistical facts.
With an average of about 3000 films produced in the world every year, the centennial history of cinema tallies, at least, approximately 300,000 films (how many of these have you seen?). 
A Top1000 roughly corresponds to 0.3% of the total of all films that ever existed!!! A Top100 roughly corresponds to 0.03% of the total. A sample of 10 titles roughly corresponds to 0.003% of the total. So we're talking about the absolute ELITE of cinema. These films are not merely supposed to be awesome to you, today, they must be the absolute best according to all possible objective consensual criteria, across over a century of history. And if you've seen 10000 (distinct) films in your lifetime (which isn't the case of the vast majority of voters I safely assume), a ballot of 10 titles corresponds to 0.1% of your movie consumption (put that in regard to all the films you haven't seen!). It's much easier for you to select 10 films out of a 10000 seen, than it is for a canon to elect a Top10 out of  300,000 titles in cinema history.
Think about it : every film on this Top100 canon is there not because voters deemed it worthy of placing in a their Top100, but they promoted them as TOP10 MATERIAL!!! 

TOP 10

AUTEURS : 100% Male
No double citation for a single filmmaker (which happened for Chaplin in 1952, Eisenstein in 62, Bergman in 72, Welles in 72 and 82).  But for such a small sample, it's pointless to draw any conclusions on who's missing from the very top of the pyramid (by genre, decades or language)...

GEOGRAPHY : However it's important to note that the films are predominantly from the Western world. Only 4 films from the East made it in a top10 since 1952 (Ugetsu Monogatari in 62, 72; Seven Samourai in 82; Pather Panchali in 92; Tokyo Story in 92, 02, 12; all with decades-long overdue acknowledgements)... the rest are ALL either from Europe or the USA! If this British-made canon proved to be open to the non-English world (France, Italy, USSR, Denmark, Sweden) it never looked very hard outside of their immediate zone of influence (Asia, South America, Middle East), despite a wide spread presence of the Common Wealth British empire throughout the world...

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TOP 50

AUTEURS : 98% Male / 2% Female

• 4 Godard
• 3 Coppola, Dreyer, Tarkovsky
• 2 Hitchcock, Ozu, Kurosawa
• 1 Bresson, Renoir, Murnau, Lang, Kubrick, Ford, Eisenstein, Fellini, Vigo, Donen, Antonioni, WKW, Lynch, Lanzmann, Scorsese, De Sica, Keaton, Akerman, Tarr, Truffaut, Rosselini, Wilder, S. Ray, Tati, Pontecorvo, Chaplin, Mizoguchi, Marker, Kiarostami

GEOGRAPHY : 50 North / 0 South - 42 West / 8 East

• 25 Europe / 14 North America / 7 Asia / 1 Middle East / 0 South America / 0 Africa
• 14 USA; 13 France; 6 Italy; 5 USSR, Japan; 2 Denmark, Sweden; 1 Hungary, Iran, India, Germany, China, Belgium

GENRE : 32 Classical / 15 Artfilm / 8 Experimental / 3 Documentary / 2 Musical / 0 Animation / 6 Silent

DECADES : 1920s : 6 / 1930s : 3 / 1940s : 3 / 1950s : 12 / 1960s : 15 / 1970s : 7 / 1980s : 1 / 1990s : 3 / 2000s : 2

LANGUAGE : 14 English / 14 French / 6 Italian / 5 Russian / 5 Japanese...

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TOP100

AUTEURS :  98% Male / 2% Female

GEOGRAPHY : 99% North / 1% South - 89% West / 11% East

• 63 Europe / 31 North America / 10 Asia / 1 Middle East / 0 South America / 1 Africa
• 31 USA; 22 France; 9 Italy; 7 UK; 6 Japan; 5 USSR, Sweden; 4 Germany; 2 Denmark, Taiwan; 1 India, Iran, Hungary, Belgium, China, Spain, Georgia, Senegal

GENRE : 63 Classical / 29 Artfilm / 11 Experimental / 4 Documentary / 2 Musical / 0 Animation / 11 Silent

DECADES : 1920s (or before) : 10 / 1930s : 7 / 1940s : 9 / 1950s : 25 / 1960s : 21 / 1970s : 14 / 1980s : 6 / 1990s : 5 / 2000s : 3

LANGUAGE : 38 English / 24 French / 9 Italian / 6 Japanese / 5 Russian / 5 Swedish / 4 German...

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A canon should not be built on representational diversity (in order to make everyone happy, and show a politically correct panel), but we may nonetheless take a look at the quota-free poll results, and detect what are the predilections of the voters (not individually, but as a collegiate mind, as a timely mentality). This lack of diversity does not reflect a meaningless canon, on the contrary (if we can trust the voting standards) this shows the hierarchies of the establishment, and possibly the state of cinema in the world.
*IF* the ballots are educated, the first culprit is the world : other countries outside of Europe and the USA just don't make as many masterpieces as well. Which is partly true, sadly, in all objectivity. There are great films made in the world, but when it comes to elect the 100 best films of all time, the competition level is very high (as evidenced by the quality of the films present).

However, we cannot discount the absence of curiosity of the voting panel (which I suspect mainly  consists of English-speaking reviewers or European, even though the electorate increased from 150 to 846 this year). And there are obvious blind spots, overlooked masterpieces that are never included within the "usual suspects". 

There aren't too many candidates which absolutely do not deserve a spot in a top100... it's always debatable to an extent. Personally I would strike out less than 20. Meanwhile, there are more than 20 that I would add to the roster for being superior to the ones locked in... but these choices are arguable (because they only reflect MY opinion). Even though, the ones overlooked would probably improve the ultimate diversity of the canon. Half of the Hollywood-made films, and even some European ones get a free ride, out of deference for an established reputation, out of habit or familiarity, rather than because they persist to earn their spot against newer films. 

The Silent films were all the rage in the 40ies and 50ies, because cinema was half as old than today, there were less existing films, and the sound era was too inexperienced. Gradually, although very slowly, the silent masterpieces met their match and yielded their spot to newer films. Silent masterpieces are still excellent by all means, but 80 years since the peak of the silent era, cinema history lines up A LOT MORE titles, and the number of great films exploded, while the limited space in a top100 doesn't budge. We must judge past history in comparison to today's greatest achievements. Even if most academics and critics are fond for their impressionable youth, truth is we can make films today as great as in the silent era, or the Hollywood classical golden age for that matter.
I'm glad that the canon-making made adjustments in recent decades, not only by stoping this blind worshipping of Citizen Kane this year, but also by letting go of overrated darlings such as Casablanca, Gone With The Wind, Intolerance, The Wizard of Oz, Jaws, Birth of a Nation, Black Narcissus, The Maltese Falcon, E.T., The Red Shoes, Bonnie and Clyde, Broken Blossom ... which belong to a canon of a bygone era; they just look "dull" alongside the greater masterpieces on a list of only 100 bests. And this is not the arguable part of the canon, they lost their edge a long time ago! 

Did you hear anybody complain about the scandalous lack of women in the canon, like it happens every year for the line up of Cannes??? No. Because these clueless pundits don't give a shit about gender equality... they just have an anti-Cannes axe to grind.

Overall (Top50), Godard gets the most citations (4 titles) but fails to place one film in the top10 (161 votes for all his entries). Meanwhile Welles hugged number one for such a long time, but barely place a second film in the top100 (157 votes in total)... Hitchcock is the winner with the most votes (225) from only 2 films.
However Godard is hardly the greatest filmmaker ever! Hitchcock has a defensible shot at the title, but has been surpassed by the apparition of an Eisenstein, a Ozu, a Bresson, a Kurosawa, a Kubrick, a Tarkovsky, a Lynch, a Kiarostami... They are at least as masterful and perfectionist (and Godard doesn't reach this level of perfection). Why would the "establishment" only want to remember one and kind of underplay/overlook the others? We should see at least some fair competition between them, neck and neck, not such a wide gap of notoriety. Welles and Hitchcock already monopolized the laurels for half a century, it's about time to accept to let go of these safe, convenient idols. It's about time to realise the possibility of cinema to improve the quality level (however paramount in its own time) of the Classical age.

Largely overlooked : South America (Mexico, Argentina most notably), China (and Hong Kong), India (obviously), Iran, Taiwan or South Korea. And in Europe we could cite as well Greece, Spain, Portugal, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Romania... Or Canada in North America.

If we take a look at the language spoken in the world (or at least in the world of cinema-producing countries), Chinese (Mandarin), Spanish, English, Hindi, Arabic should dominate film culture... However, only English (mainly thanks to Hollywood) really stands out. India or Japan make the most films in quantity, but unfortunately they don't make the best films in term of quality... there should be more canon-worthy masterpieces in the lot.
If China (Wong Kar-wai, Jia Zhang-ke, Zhang Yimou, Fei Mu, Sun Yu) is a mid-range player in the masterpieces field (except maybe Taiwan with Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Tsai Ming-liang who are Top-range), Japan is one of the world's top players (Ozu, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Oshima, Naruse, Kobayashi) and is clearly underrepresented in the canon.

I have to say that given the relatively limited spread of French language in the world, France is making a remarkable show in this Top100 with nearly a 1/4 of the films (and tied with English in the Top50!) for such a small country. And there are still "cinéphiles" who think that Hollywood is THE most important contributor to film culture, auteurism and film literature... But let's be honest, if France objectively deserves one of the top spots in cinema history for all its auteurs, films, critics... a quarter of the Top100 for a single country is way too generous, and denotes an obvious bias in the accounts of the cinema legends.

We can also note that Europe gets almost twice as many spots in the Top100 as the USA does. And this is an English-centric canon made by Sight and Sound (so the bias towards Hollywood and British cinema is overinflated to begin with). Where is the cultural hegemony of Hollywood in the highest spheres of film culture? Everybody keeps talking about it, but I don't see it. Must be a self-affirmative mantra that American reviewers and historians love to tell themselves. MY canon would be more fair toward World Cinema and even less partial for Hollywood.

English and French language films take up 62% of the Top100... which leaves a little more than 1/3rd for all other languages in the world! Is it a fair representation of cinema greatness in the world? Or is it slightly inflated by the exclusivity of self-centric English and French film literature? Objectively we can only recognize this consistent quality in research and development of new film forms... the USA and France do stand out as some kind of leaders in the world of cinema; but maybe not to such extent, and such lopsided fashion, which explains why less obvious countries get shut out of the canon. Marginal countries need more supporters among the "expert-voter" (who would qualify to vote if they were).

Related :

• S&S 2012 Canon (1) : Number 1 
• Presumptuous Best Film in the World 
• The 2012 Sight & Sound Poll [Part 1]: Don’t Call it a Consensus
(Andrea Comiskey & Jonah Horwitz; Antenna; 6 Aug 2012)

BFI statistical yearbook 2012

BREAKING NEWS : More arthouse screens in the UK than in the USA !!!

Source : BFI Statistical Yearbook 2012 (released on 26 July 2012) [PDF]

• USA (Population 314 Million inhabitants) : 250 arthouse screens / 0.6% of total commercial screens [estimation]
• UK (Population 62 Million inhabitants) : 266 arthouse screens / 7.2 % of total commercial screens [governmental survey]

And the UK boasts a 4% increase in number of arthouses and arthouse screens. So they are working on this shameful shortage and it's working slowly, but at least improving.

Meanwhile, the USA closes down more and more arthouses, without replacing them (forget about increasing the numbers!), and don't seem to care a damn about the dire straits situation they're in. 

Guess where cinéphilia is dying and where it's trying to survive (both against the same overwhelming domination by Hollywood marketing)?

So?




Related :

• Specialized Films (UK) / European arthouses (Jäckel) 
• The sad state of the American cinéphile "elite" 
• The myth of an arthouse circuit in the USA / Assumed Obscurity in "art cinema" (USA)
• Understanding "Artfilms" (France)

S&S 2012 Canon (1) : Number 1

Why it's a good thing that Citizen Kane finally takes the back seat? And why the number one shouldn't matter...

"I'm not a number. I'm a free man"

Citizen Kane was certainly one of the best films made in 1941, even though Sight and Sound, like all American critics, failed to acknowledge it right away back then. So it was anointed late (only since the 1962 poll, 21 years after its première!), and now overstays its welcome by 5 or 6 decades...

Orson Welles's debut is a solid all around masterpiece, the perfect candidate for a canon no doubt, for all its accomplishments, stylistically and dramaturgically. Nobody should discount its presence in a Top100, meanwhile its spot in the Top10 is at least debatable, and the 1st spot is not its exclusive property. Crowning the canon all by itself for 60 years is close to ridiculous.

Ossifying a canon around a single film sends the wrong message in film culture : it suggests that cinema hasn't evolved since 1941, or could not possibly improve on Welles's achievements. It totally ignores the fruitful production of the 60ies for one (Bresson, Bergman, Antonioni, Satyajit Ray, Cassavetes, Fellini, Tati, Resnais, Kurosawa, Herzog, Sembene, Leone...), one of the best decades in cinema history by all standards, and all the subsequent masterpieces made more recently (Angelopoulos, Kieslowski, Lynch, Kiarostami, Sokurov, Tarr, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Fassbinder, Wong Kar-wai, Tsai Ming-liang, Jia Zhang-ke, Weerasethakul, Ceylan...). And these candidates can easily measure up to Citizen Kane. When we remember that the 40ies were the all-time peak of cinema attendance in the USA and in the UK (3 times the number of today's spectators), it comes as no surprise why titles from that period left a more enduring mark in the collective consciousness...

Apparently this year each title on the ballot is worth exactly the same point as the others, so all ballots are effectively unranked for all intent and purpose. I don't know if this was always the case in the past for all the older polls, but it sounds to me to be the best compromise. It relieves the pressure put on having to determine if such film is really better than that one. All voters need to do is to pick 10 films worthy of a top10. It's a puzzle to be asked to order such equally great masterpieces in so little spots. Ranking them is rendered meaningless when thinking about all the runner ups left out in the rest of the top100.

This is also how readers should consider this final top100 canon : only as a bulk, regardless for the fine details of the ranking which only reflect the popularity of each title among voters, the one that most voters thought about (or saw at all) and wanted to include on their ballot. This distinction usually goes to the most "mainstream" film among equally deserving masterpieces, because it is the most widely known, watched,  written about, talked about, analysed, taught, published, cited. So Citizen Kane is this "idol", this diva, this pundit's favourite, this fetish, this token name-drop, this default reference. For this reason, it snatches the most ballots, and therefore, trumpeted as the all-time NUMBER ONE by appearing on every canon... it continues to feed this unquestioned reputation, and more people vote for it because they've been told it is THE "numero uno". It's a cliché perpetuating the cliché to remain a cliché.

The benevolent "anti-Citizen Kane campaign", this past couple years, in the anticipation of the new utterance of the decennial poll, achieved its goal against all odds, even if the means were not really fair play. Making a point NOT TO vote for Citizen Kane (157 votes in the Top50) helped to end its reign, only to let the ex-number 2 (Vertigo : 191 votes) fill the void artificially created. A necessary evil maybe to break the streak.
Sight and Sound also campaigned in their own pages (since January 2011), by promoting potential Citizen Kane substitutes in a written appreciation : Vertigo (191 votes), L'Atalante (58), L'Avventura (43), Mulholland Dr. (40), La Grande Illusion (22), Beau Travail (21), The Magnificent Ambersons (20), The hour of the Furnaces (0)... (not the most decisive list of number 1 contenders... more like random personal favourites)

Unfotunately, Vertigo only moves the top spot toward a slightly more recent era (17 years forward)... The epitome of greatness still remains entrenched in the 50ies, with a very CLASSICAL film if truly masterful. But for a postmodern title to win the prize, it will take more rounds of film education to freshen up the conservative taste of the voters, and maybe by asking them to WATCH more films before being allowed to vote.

Voting for an ALL-TIME GREATEST FILM CANON should be a privilege, requiring a minimal qualification, rather than being a VIP invitation sent out to colleagues and friends as a form of flattery...

You'll never reach an educated consensus by asking 846 random reviewers to share their idiosyncratic taste. But we'll look into this aspect deeper when they publish the detailed ballots online.

Related :

• Forgotten Obsolete English Word #7 : Canon 
• Citizen Kane (Ishaghpour)
• Sight & Sound Film Poll: Critics’ Picks (Kevin B Lee, David Jenkins, Vadim Rizov, Bill Greorgaris; Press Play, indieWIRE; 18 April 2012) / Not simply the best  (Press Play, indieWIRE; 18 April 2012)
• John Ford and the Citizen Kane assumption (Kristin Thompson; 6 March 2012)
• Is Citizen Kane still the greatest? (Matthew Sweet; Telegraph, 27 July 2012)
• The Battle Over Citizen Kane (1996) 1h53' 

Constructive Disagreement (Margaret Heffernan)

Dare to disagree (Margaret Heffernan; TED talk; June 2012)

Most people instinctively avoid conflict, but as Margaret Heffernan shows us, good disagreement is central to progress. She illustrates (sometimes counterintuitively) how the best partners aren’t echo chambers -- and how great research teams, relationships and businesses allow people to deeply disagree. The former CEO of five businesses, Margaret Heffernan explores the all-too-human thought patterns -- like conflict avoidance and selective blindness -- that lead managers and organizations astray.

Related :

• Forgotten Obsolete English Word #1 : Dialectics 

Forgotten Obsolete English Word #7 : Canon

Literary Canon (Wikipedia English): "A group of literary works that are generally accepted as representing a field."

Aesthetic Canon : "a criterion or standard of judgment. a rule or especially body of rules or principles generally established as valid and fundamental in a field or art or philosophy."

Vitruvian Man (1487) Leonardo Da Vinci

Le Modulor (1945) par Le Corbusier

Do you look like Vitruvian Man? Is your height 1.829m like the Modulor? Likely not...
A canon is not representative of diversity, of particularities, of individualities, of radicality, of edginess, of you personally, of me as I see myself, but is a universal reference for an ideal standard, a perfect (abstract) model, a mathematical equation, a geometrical composition, a flawless silhouette, an identifiable pattern, a respected profile... 

* * *

Cinema Canon 

The establishment of a filmic canon for all of cinema history is meant to represent the aesthetic values invented, developed and solidified by film artists, film technicians and film theorists. It consists of standardized shot scales, points of view, composition, blocking, camera movements, timing, lighting, contrasts, colorimetry, soundscape, sound design, dramaturgy, acting performance, diction, storytelling, character development, plot articulation, photo chemistry/digital recording, cinema technique, cinema aesthetic, cinema artistry... moreover the socio-political perspicacity, the philosophical aspiration, the original poetry.

These are objective criteria providing a point of reference for everyone working in the cinema industry, an ideal model to attain, to transcend or to transgress. This objective canon allows the existence of ANY POSSIBLE comparison between two given films, two given shots, two given actors, two given directors... Without a common reference, a golden standard, to measure the quality or failure of any cinematic achievement is baseless, arbitrary and unaccountable. A film canon is what helps any cinéphile (with the necessary film history education at their disposal) to engage in a constructive conversation with another interlocutor. Objective references give the framework that positions, qualifies and values each and everyone's subjective perceptions, opinions, tastes and hierarchies.

Like in literature, sculpture, painting, music or dance... the canons of cinema could be illustrated by a series of EXEMPLARY models (films or filmmakers). 

Some people believe they can publish a canon all by themselves with a self-centered list of 1000 titles. The other mistake is to confound a canon with a democratic poll... by expanding the number of voters to representational statistics! These two extremes interpretation, even though quite widespread, are both a misuse of the word canon, and contribute to undermine cinema culture by discrediting the idea of standard levels. 

A canon is necessarily a collective endeavour (precisely to negate any personal bias or conflict of interest) and the EDUCATED selection by a chosen few EXPERTS (to avoid great films faring poorly because too many voters didn't see them)! 

When you put together a list of THE BEST FILMS OF ALL TIME, voters are not just sharing their whimsical personal taste nor their daily random draw, but are expected to KNOW ALL the meaningful cinema history milestones, to be familiar with film theory and film technique, to be capable to distinguish their subjective taste from their understanding of an objective, universal cinema greatness. Voters who don't know some of the most prominent candidates for a top100 will alter and offset the final result!!! All the better if you know "better" films on the side, but to give value to your alternative canon contribution, you need to have seen the consensual canon first (as established earlier). 

A canon is not the space to promote your personal agenda... it is a collegiate contribution to cinema history, where you don't represent YOURSELF, but you put your knowledge of cinema history to the service of the society, as ONE OF MANY expert opinions on the subject. The goal of a canonical poll is understood to produce a meaningful compilation of votes that CAN add up to eachother because they rank films according to the same scale of greatness and the same definition of greatness.

Nick James (Sight & Sound editor, invitation memo to the Top10 list of Greatest Films) : "We realise that this is not the easiest of tasks, but we want you to know that this is a major worldwide endeavour that will help us all to remind people of film's rich history and to refine what we mean by the best of cinema.
Please draw up a list of ten films only, in order of preference or, if you'd rather, alphabetically. The order does not matter to the voting system - we will allot one vote only to each of your ten films. We also invite you to add a short commentary after the list explaining why you have chosen the films in your top ten.
As for what we mean by 'Greatest', we leave that open to your interpretation. You might choose the ten films you feel are most important to film history, or the ten that represent the aesthetic pinnacles of achievement, or indeed the ten films that have had the biggest impact on your own view of cinema."

Opening the poll to mediocre reviewers with a weak knowledge of film history, with an infamous bad/limited taste, leaving the definition of greatness up to the voter, showing a laid-back, lax attitude towards to content of everyone's contribution, is a sure way to end up with a bullshit ranking that is not worth tabulating, and sharing to the public eye. See : Critical Fallacy #13 : Inconsistent Standards / Double Standards (Film Comment) 4

A canon is not the place to impose quota limitations (by decades, by country, by gender, by genre, by filmmaker...) which would give a positive affirmation spotlight to "runner-ups" by disqualifying arbitrarily GREATER films/filmmakers just because they made TOO MANY great films. A canon ranks ALL GREAT FILMS regardless for who made them. If the council of experts all agree that one filmmaker hogs 4 spots in the top10, so be it. It only weakens the value of the final canon to give visibility to inferior films out of charity. A canon is not a platform to flatter as many artists's egos as possible. To reflect the true achievements reached by the art of cinema at a given point in history (to the best of the experts's objective estimation), it should feature all the prominent titles, and only those, considered to be representative of the highest achievements.

Now, if a canon is structurally educated and objective (ideally), it could be (and generally is) rather conservative, by definition, because experts are asked to judge by the current accepted standards of appreciation. This might be unfair to the most recent film form that escape or explode the current rules of cinema, or the most experimental, challenging the most commonly accepted criteria...

Thus, contrary to populist belief, a canon is not meant to SURPRISE or to IMPRESS by its boldness, broad taste and contrived representativity. A canon is not a user guide to DISCOVER new, underexposed titles... If the voters qualification, the voters's choices and the tabulation are done right, it should surprise no one (nobody who is familiar with cinema history, past canons and film literature). We do not expect a canon to change entirely from one poll to the next, even if they are 10 years apart. The fact that titles remain in the top10 many times in a row is proof that it was a good idea to elect them in the first place, because they stand the test of time, and compete head to head with the other masterpieces made after their time.

This said, a canon can be wrong, and take time to correct itself (partly for the limitations and conceits cited above)... We can question and challenge the establishment of a canon, but only for the good reasons, and not against features that a canon is NOT EXPECTED to perform in. Criticizing a canon for conservatism (at least as a principle), for poor diversity, for redundancy, for safeness, for predictibility is all wrong.

However we could interrogate why the council of experts (if their qualification is not suspect) fails to embrace a radical change in cinema history (like the transition to sound and colour, like the revolution of La Nouvelle Vague, like the emergence of Modernity, like the development of the Contemplative mode...). Sometimes a legit canon can be wrong, or outdated. But we expect a canon to reflect conservative values, conservative taste, and a certain inertia to sudden changes... this is the very nature of a canon.

The purpose of a canon is to protect a safe, stable, uncontroversial establishment. It should eventually update and adapt to the always evolving cinema history. It only takes more times than for early adopters. Even some reviewers, individually, some critics, some historians, some filmmakers and of course the audience, to embrace new standards right away... The process of a consensual film canon, its voting system, its slowness, its respect for the test of time for any new masterpiece will make the incorporation of the cutting edge of film form incremental and prudent. Inevitably. 

We can also notice the total hegemony of Hollywood-centric (50ies) and Europe-centric (60ies) taste, by American and European voters for a Western public. The fact is that cinema production has dominated in visibility, superiority and self-congratulation in this area of the world, to the detriment of the East and the South. Ditching the Western masterpieces (by pretending they are NOT masterpieces worthy of a canon) is obviously a fallacious way to deal with it, and it cheats the canon. One way to counterbalance this lopsided influence, is to get voters to WATCH, FAMILIARIZE, UNDERSTAND the underexposed, underestimated titles coming from the corners of the world too often overlooked by film literature, film distributors and movie reviewers... 

Related : 

• Critical Fallacy #14 : Equivalence / Short Sightedness 
• Consensual criteria for a good critic / Anti-curriculum vitae / Defining a critic / La condition critique / Contra-contrarianism (IFFR) 5
• Deficiant Subjectivity / The root of anti-intellectualism / Subjective, subversive, sensationnelle, cinglante
• Affection vs. Criticsm (the incompatible dispute) 

Frémaux-Taddéï (France Culture)

Le tête-à-tête (France Culture; 15 juillet 2012) 59' [MP3]

Frédéric Taddéï s'entretient avec Thierry Frémaux, programmateur du Festival de Cannes.

Il a longtemps vécu aux Minguettes, dans la banlieue lyonnaise.
Il est ceinture noire de judo et dirige désormais l’Institut Lumière à Lyon.
Mais il est surtout délégué général du festival de Cannes depuis plus de dix ans, poste qui fait de lui l’un des hommes les plus courtisés du cinéma mondial. Il voit 700 films par ans au minimum et en sélectionne 50 pour le plus prestigieux festival de cinéma du monde.

Voir aussi : 

• Female Glass Ceiling in Hollywood (CUFF) / Repeat Whiner (Koehler) Season 2 Episode 2
• Cannes 2012 : Quinzaine des Réalisateurs / Semaine de la Critique (On aura tout vu; France Inter; 5 mai 2012)
• "Quinzaine des réalisateurs", Edouard Waintrop, délégué général
• Le festival de Cannes est-il trop sage? (Newsring; 20 avril 2012) 
• A quoi servent les festivals? / Fonction d'un festival (Boyer)
• Repeat Whiner (Gavin Smith) Season 2 Episode 1
• Festival Pundits (Spoiled Brats) / Clueless Anti-festival clichés
• Without Festivals / Sans Cannes / Maronniers Cannois

Projections itinérantes

Réenchanter le destin: "Cinéma itinérant : La valse des bobines" (Sur les docks; France Culture; 5 Juillet 2012) 56' [MP3]

Dans le département de la Dordogne, "Ciné passion en Périgord" est un circuit de cinéma itinérant qui va là où le cinéma n’est pas desservi.
En se déplaçant dans les villages éloignés des salles de cinéma et en pratiquant des tarifs très accessibles, Laurent, projectionniste depuis plus de dix ans, réunit les périgourdins bien disposés à ne pas manquer cet événement.
« Ciné passion » ce sont plus de 500 projections chaque année, 14 000 spectateurs et 50 000 kms annuel que Laurent parcours à bord de sa camionnette blanche.
Ce projectionniste est salarié par l'association pour charger le matériel, conduire sur les routes de campagne, installer le cinéma, vendre les places en improvisant un guichet et enfin et surtout assurer la projection. Plus tard après avoir échangé avec les plus passionnés, il remballe et reprend la route.
Qu'il vente ou qu’il neige, son camion roule toujours en direction des villages, assurant ainsi les séances où il est tant attendu. Avec lui le cinéma à la campagne  n’est pas une utopie.

Avec :

• Laurent Xerri, projectionniste
• Raphael Maestro, directeur de Ciné passion
• Julien Robillard, programmateur et projectionniste
• Pierre Campos et les commerçants de Rouffignac
• Juliette Duretete, SPIP
• les détenus du centre pénitencier de Neuvic sur l’Isle
• les enfants du centre de Loisir « Les Petits loups » ainsi que l’équipe pédagogique

Lire aussi : Derrière l'écran (Pascal Garnier, 2007)


Voir aussi :

• "Enquête auprès des circuits itinérants en vue de la transition numérique" dossier du CNC [PDF]
  Dans le cadre de la numérisation des salles de cinéma et dans l’objectif de mettre en place des modalités spécifiques d’aide financière, le CNC a mené une enquête en vue d’estimer les besoins de financements des circuits itinérants.
• "La géographie du cinéma" dossier du CNC [PDF]
• Site de l'ANCI, Association Nationale des Cinémas Itinérants
• « Un homme, une passion, un réseau », les moteurs du cinéma itinérant" par Chantal Gerard [PDF]
• Site de l'association Ciné-passion en Périgord

Masterclass Asghar Farhadi

La Master class d’Asghar Farhadi
28 juin 2012 (forumdesimages) 1h32' [Farsi/Français]

Une rencontre exceptionnelle avec le réalisateur iranien Asghar Farhadi dont le dernier fi lm Une séparation a remporté l’Ours d’Or et l’Ours d’Argent du meilleur acteur à la Berlinale 2011, et les César et Oscar 2012 du meilleur film étranger !
Cette master class (Forum des Images) est animée par Pascal Mérigeau, journaliste au Nouvel Observateur.

Un coup de tonnerre. L’effet produit par Une séparation partout où le film est passé fut celui-là en effet. Un coup de tonnerre parce que le film d’Asghar Farhadi a suscité une unanimité critique et publique devenue très exceptionnelle de nos jours. Un coup de tonnerre également en ceci que s’il est rare qu’une production ni américaine ni française, ni même européenne, rencontre le succès, personne sans doute n’aurait pu imaginer qu’un film iranien soit vu en France par plus d’un million de spectateurs.
Pourtant, les chiffres ne sont que pour mémoire, et encore à peine, il importe bien davantage que cette réussite soit celle d’un immense cinéaste, aujourd’hui courtisé par les producteurs et les acteurs du monde entier. Asghar Farhadi était alors âgé de trente-neuf ans seulement, mais les cinéphiles avaient repéré déjà son À propos d’Elly (2009), chronique magnifique d’une disparition, et auparavant, pour quelques-uns, La Fête du feu (2006), deux films parmi les cinq qu’il a réalisés à ce jour et qui témoignaient déjà des mêmes qualités d’écriture, d’interprétation, de réalisation. Farhadi travaille longuement avec ses acteurs avant le tournage, “tant que c’est nécessaire, dit-il, tant que leur texte ne leur est pas devenu si naturel qu’à l’écran ils paraîtront l’improviser”, c’est une des données essentielles de son cinéma, qui active par ailleurs des mécanismes scénaristiques dont la virtuosité extrême est mise au service du dénudement des comportements humains au sein de la société.
Cette société est celle de l’Iran, mais au-delà de particularismes aisément repérables, les tensions, les ressorts, les enjeux sont universels. Entre autres et nombreux mérites, les films d’Asghar Farhadi offrent la confirmation que le cinéma ne peut jamais prétendre mieux à l’universalité que lorsqu’il s’attache à décrire le particulier. Que l’auteur soit également écrivain et dramaturge n’est certes pas anodin, et ses références sont pour la plupart littéraires et théâtrales, plus que cinématographiques. De tout cela, il sera question avec lui au Forum des images le 28 juin au soir, un an après la sortie en France d’Une séparation, à quelques semaines seulement du début du tournage, à Paris, de son nouveau film, avec notamment Tahar Rahim.
Pascal Mérigeau

Critique au Nouvel Observateur, Pascal Mérigeau a publié plusieurs ouvrages sur le cinéma dont “Pialat” (Éd. Ramsay, 2007), “Cinéma : autopsie d’un meurtre” (Éd. Flammarion, 2007) et “Depardieu” (Éd. Flammarion, 2008).

Filmographie d'Asghar FARHADI :

• Untitled (2013/Farhadi/France)
• Une Séparation (2011/Farhadi/Iran)
• A propos d'Elly (2009/Farhadi/Iran)
• La fête du feu (2007/Farhadi/Iran)
• Les enfants de Belle Ville / Shah-re ziba (2004/Farhadi/Iran)
• Dancing in the dust (2003/Farhadi/Iran) 

Related :

• A Separation (Farhadi) / A Separation can't be divorced from Iranian politics (The Guardian; 5 July 2011) / Israeli auds separate art, politics. Nation's filmgoers flock to see Farhadi's 'A Separation' (Variety; 10 Mars 2012) / Reluctant Distribution for Foreign Films (USA) 2
• Panahi : le cinéma au tribunal / Iranian Dissidence in Real Life Peril

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

Collaboration / Contribution (Puig)

Conférence "Les enjeux des pratiques collaboratives et de la contribution
23 juin 2012 (forumdesimages) 1h20'

Conférence au MashUp Festival (Forum des Images)

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

Related :

• PolemicTweet (IRI) [English/French/Japanese] / Polemic Tweet : dispositif d'annotation 
• Le ciné-tourisme comme pratique allographique (Hécate Vergopoulos et Michaël Bourgatte; Téoros; n° 30-1; 2011)
• Le cinéma à l’heure du numérique (dir. M. Bourgatte & V. Thabourey; juin 2012) 
• Cinéma et réseaux sociaux (Michaël Bourgatte; Télécom; juin 2012)
• Droits d'auteur, copyrights et nouveaux usages  
• 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) 

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

Selon Georges Didi-Huberman, Pier Paolo Pasolini
16 mai 2012 (centrepompidou) 1h38'

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

* * *

Faire l'histoire des sans-noms (23 Mai 2012) vidéo 1h22'

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

Théâtre sans soi (24 Mai 2012) vidéo 2h13'

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

L'Homme sans nom (30 Mai 2012)

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

Une autobiographie de philosophe, forcément impersonnelle (31 Mai 2012)

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

Gestes de guerre (8 Juin 2012) vidéo 37'35"

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

Related:

• Selon Georges Didi-Huberman : Hors-Je (Cycle Centre Georges Pompidou 16 mai - 8 juin 2012) / Parole au Centre (Georges Did-Huberman, Jean-Pierre Criqui; Centre Georges Pompidou) vidéo 32'25"
• Quand les images prennent position (Georges Did-huberman; 6 mai 2009; Centre Georges Pompidou) vidéo 1h44' 
• Lire, voir, écrire (Georges Did-Huberman, Marianne Alphant; 2010) vidéo 1h23'

Canadian indie distribution (KinoSmith)

The Seventh Art: Issue 4 (May 2012)

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

Related:

• Skimpy Specialty Distributors 
• Reluctant distribution for foreign films (USA) 1 (The Artist) - 2 (A Separation)

Beauty, Art, Inutility and Subjectivity

The Avengers (2012) : beauty?

"If the contemplation of something beautiful arouses pleasurable feelings, this effect is distinct from the beautiful as such. I may, indeed, place a beautiful object before an observer with the avowed purpose of giving him pleasure, but this purpose in no way affects the beauty of the object. The beautiful is and remains beautiful though it arouse no emotion whatever, and though there be no one to look at it. In other words, although the beautiful exists for the gratification of an observer, it is independent of him."

Eduard Hanslick; music critic (1854)

Picasso (1937) : not beauty?

* * *

Why Beauty Matters (BBC2; Roger Scruton; 2009) video 59'

Philosopher Roger Scruton presents a provocative essay on the importance of beauty in the arts and in our lives.In the 20th century, Scruton argues, art, architecture and music turned their backs on beauty, making a cult of ugliness and leading us into a spiritual desert.
Using the thoughts of philosophers from Plato to Kant, and by talking to artists Michael Craig-Martin and Alexander Stoddart, Scruton analyses where art went wrong and presents his own impassioned case for restoring beauty to its traditional position at the centre of our civilisation.

Roger Scruton is well meaning, and, at the very least, provides a crash course in Aesthetics for dummies, which would have been perfect circa 1900. Unfortunately, it is a backward looking at Art, as it was conceived until the XXth century, a conservative and classicist approach to the wider spectrum of artistic possibilities. So for people who believe that everything is subjective and that only what they like can be art, that what doesn't fit their taste cannot be art, that there cannot be such a thing as an objective standard... this documentary answers to their uneducated self-deception. 

But this is the basic understanding of Art explained to beginners. Like I said, it was perfectly valid and complete until the XIXth century, because art had always been conceived and admired by and for these conservative ideas. And, these classic artists might have achieved the highest peaks of perfection in Art history. 

However, it's not because Modern Art, Contemporary Art or Conceptual Art may not (yet) be as perfect and transcendent as 2000 years of "classical" history (like DaVinci, Michelangelo, Raphaël, Botticelli, Rambrandt, Wermeer, Velazquez, Dürer, Rubens, Titian, David...), that we should dismiss them entirely.

Scruton makes two mistakes that conveniently rule out or disqualify anything that isn't "pretty", "sacred" or "ancient", one is theo-centrism (equating true art with sacred art because he's a religious believer) the other is  being retrograde (judging NEW art movements through the obsolete paradigms that could only validate CLASSICAL art). 

Speaking of "beauty" is already a self-limitation. Even if I agree with most of what he says, with the gist of his argument (if we understand a broad definition of "beauty" as including a more modern acception of beauty, less about cuteness or transcendental holyness, and more about a conceptual idea of aesthetic), Scruton still instills the whole discourse of outdated references that new art just cannot live up to, precisely because it was produced in reaction to these classical canons of beauty. The Classical Age being outdated, doesn't mean the old masterpieces aren't as great as they used to be. But that the definition of art that was pretty much consistent throughout millennia, has encountered many transformations, mutations, revolutions, in the last century alone. And to account for these changes (which brought us Picasso, Monet, Kandinski, Cézanne, van Gogh, Matisse, Mondrian, Warhol, Schiele, Miro, Chagall, Klee, Malevich, Dali, Ernst, Modigliani, Giacometti, Bacon...), we cannot continue to refer to a definition of Art that only validates the Classical Age.  

Beauty is no longer prettiness. Art is no longer figurative. Art is no longer material. Art is no longer a simple object, a product of the art market. What I mean is that Classical Art is still considered great art as always, the only difference today is that the expanded definition of art is more tolerant of non-classical experiments, thus the advent of Modern Art, Surrealism, Cubism, Constructivism, Abstract Art, Conceptual Art, Minimalism, Postmodern Art, Contemporary Art, Performance Art, Digital Art, Virtual Art...

I understand he's angry at Duchamp, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Michael Craig... for discrediting the prettiness and meaningfulness of figurative/sacred art. But it's a very simplistic way of looking at the history of arts. It's not because you don't find it pretty, yourself personally, that it isn't, or that it cannot possibly be considered art.

The market of art which gives sometimes an overestimated attention to artists who seemingly don't seem to put much efforts in their work, has its excesses and perversions. But the mercantile market of art, hic et nunc, doesn't define what we should or should not accept as art, now and for posterity. In 2009 for Scruton, or today for us, we just CANNOT fall back on such antiquated definition of art, even if we don't understand the point, the substance, the purpose of everything going on in the realm of Contemporary Arts. 

Related :

• Eye of the Beholder (Philoctetes Center 2007) video 1h46'
• How beauty feels (Richard Seymour; May 2011; TED) video 17'
• Individual character and ideas of beauty (Alexander Nehamas; Princetown; 2011) video 51'26" 
• Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed in the Digital and Global World (Howard Gardner; Harvard; 2011) video 1h25'
• Emancipation du jugement de goût (Kant) / Object and Substance / Perception de la beauté cinématographique (Merleau-Ponty)

Children Ciné-Clubs (Beeban Kidron)

Beeban Kidron: The shared wonder of film

May 2012 TED Salon London 13'13"

Movies have the power to create a shared narrative experience and to shape memories and worldviews. British film director Beeban Kidron invokes iconic film scenes -- from Miracle in Milan to Boyz n the Hood -- as she shows how her group FILMCLUB shares great films with kids.

Beeban Kidron is a British filmmaker who successfully navigates between pop culture and society’s darkest underworlds. Kidron is best known for directing Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004) and the Bafta-winning miniseries Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1989), adapted from Jeannette Winterson’s novel of the same name. She is also the director of To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995) and Antonia and Jane (1991), as well as two documentaries on prostitution: Hookers, Hustlers, Pimps and their Johns (1993) and Sex, Death and the Gods (2011), a film about “devadasi,” or Indian “sacred prostitutes.”
In 2006 Kidron, with journalist and film critic Lindsay Mackie, founded FILMCLUB, an educational charity aimed at transforming the lives of young people through film. Through FILMCLUB, schools can screen films at no cost, and afterwards students discuss and review the films. Each week the charity reaches 220,000 children, in over 7,000 clubs.

FILMCLUB : Weekly Film Screenings in schools

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

Films cited :

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

Related :

• Jehane Noujaim: TEDPrize wish: Unite the world on Pangea Day
• Film World, online publication by FILMCLUB [PDF]