Serge Daney (Cinémathèque Française)

Serge Daney : 20 ans après 
(La Cinémathèque française; 20 juin - 5 août 2012)

Vingt ans déjà. Cela fait tout juste vingt ans que Serge Daney est mort. Il n'avait que 48 ans, laissant une véritable œuvre critique, un ensemble touffu de textes sur le cinéma, la télévision, la pub, le tennis, la vie politique. Textes critiques, textes théoriques, textes de journaliste et de voyageur. Il a marqué des penseurs contemporains comme de jeunes critiques en pleine activité aujourd'hui, mais aussi des cinéastes désireux de montrer leur film à un critique « voyant ». Sa pensée a été utile en son temps et à beaucoup de spectateurs. Vingt ans après sa disparition, il faut dire aussi comment et en quoi cette pensée peut servir aujourd'hui. 

Journée de conférences (22 Juin 2012)

Serge Toubiana : « Persévérance, in extremis »  32'
Serge Toubiana est directeur de La Cinémathèque française

Dialogue avec Patrice Rollet : « Éditer Daney » 35'
Patrice Rollet est membre du comité de rédaction de la revue Trafic depuis sa création, en 1991. Il mène l'édition la plus complète de l'œuvre de Serge Daney sous le titre La Maison cinéma et le monde, aux éditions P.O.L, dont le troisième volume paraît en juin

Charles Tesson : « La carte et l'écran : voyager et écrire » 36'
Charles Tesson est critique et ancien rédacteur en chef des Cahiers du cinéma. Il est actuellement délégué général de la Semaine de la critique.

Table ronde 1 : « Serge Daney, ici et ailleurs » 71'

Avec : Hervé Gauville (journaliste, Libération), Jean Hatzfeld (journaliste, Libération), Françoise Huguier (photographe, Libération), Olivier Séguret (critique, Libération)

Lecture de textes de Serge Daney, par Melvil Poupaud 22'
Dès l'enfance, Melvil Poupaud joue dans La Ville des pirates de Raoul Ruiz. Par la suite, il a tourné avec Jacques Doillon, Éric Rohmer, Arnaud Desplechin... En 2011, il a publié Quel est Mon noM ? (Stock) où il évoque son amitié avec Serge Daney.

Alain Bergala : « Penser "à mains nues" » 26'
Cinéaste, critique aux Cahiers du cinéma, enseignant à La fémis, commissaire d'expositions, Alain Bergala est l'auteur de nombreux ouvrages sur Roberto Rossellini, Abbas Kiarostami et Jean-Luc Godard.

Table ronde 2, « Serge Daney, aujourd'hui : un critique pour le temps présent ? » 62'

Stéphane Delorme (critique, Cahiers), Jean-Marc Lalanne (critique, Les Inrockuptibles), Jean-François Rauger (critique, programmateur), Axelle Ropert (critique, scénariste, réalisatrice), Olivier Séguret (critique)

Dork Zabunyan : « Daney-Deleuze : lectures croisées, écritures sous influence » 40'
Dork Zabunyan est l'auteur des Cinémas de Gilles Deleuze et co-auteur de Foucault va au cinéma. Il enseigne à l'université de Lille 3 et dirige, aux éditions Bayard, la collection « Logique des images ».

Pierre Eugène : « Daney à l'image, images de Daney » 31'
Pierre Eugène écrit pour Critikat et Art press. Il publie un texte : « Apparitions de Serge Daney » dans le numéro 82 de la revue Trafic (juin 2012).

Table ronde 3 : Un critique et des cinéastes (22 Juin 2012) 75'

Avec : Olivier Assayas (réalisateur), Claire Denis (réalisatrice), Jean Douchet (critique), Pascal Kané (réalisateur), Serge Le Péron (critique et réalisateur), Serge Toubiana (Cinémathèque)

* * *

Serge Daney, 20 ans après. Présentation par Serge Toubiana (14/06/2012) 8'
Serge Daney, 20 ans après. Présentation par Eva Markovits (12/06/2012) 9'

* * *

Films projetés lors de la rétrospective :

• Amère Victoire - Nicholas Ray
• Ana - Antonio Reis, Margarida Cordeiro
• Au bord de la mer bleue - Boris Barnet
• Autopsie d'un meurtre - Otto Preminger
• Boat People/Passeport pour l'enfer - Ann Hui
• Boy Meets Girl - Leos Carax
• Cinéastes de notre temps - Jacques Rivette, le veilleur : le jour / la nuit - Claire Denis
• Le Cinéphile et le Village / Conversation Nord-Sud : Daney Sanbar
• Contes de la lune vague après la pluie - Kenji Mizoguchi
• Damned Daney - 1 et 2 (1988) - Bernard Mantelli (vidéo 1-2-3) 
• De l'autre côté du racisme - Pascal Kané
• Di Cavalcanti / L'Âge de la terre - Glauber Rocha
• Dodes'Ka-Den - Akira Kurosawa
• La Dolce Vita - Federico Fellini
• Du cinéma à la télévision, propos d'un passeur Serge Daney - Philippe Roger
• El / Tourments - Luis Bunuel
• En rachâchant / Trop tôt, trop tard - Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub
• L'Enfance nue - Maurice Pialat
• L'Enfant secret - Philippe Garrel
• L'Etat des choses - Wim Wenders
• La Femme d'à côté - François Truffaut
• La Femme de l'aviateur - Eric Rohmer
• Francisca - Manoel de Oliveira
• Frontière chinoise - John Ford
• Gertrud - Carl Theodor Dreyer
• Ici et ailleurs - Anne-Marie Mieville, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin
• Karkalou - Stavros Tornes
• La Loi du marcheur - Nicolas Bouchaud
• Mr Arkadin / Dossier secret - Orson Welles
• Nuit et brouillard / Hiroshima mon amour - Alain Resnais
• Pickpocket - Robert Bresson
• La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV - Roberto Rossellini
• Programme Artavazd Pelechian
• La règle du jeu - Jean Renoir
• Rio Bravo - Howard Hawks
• Un roi à New York - Charlie Chaplin
• Sayat Nova - couleur de la grenade - Sergueï Paradjanov
• Serge Daney : le cinéma et le monde - Serge Le Péron
• Serge Daney, itinéraire d'un ciné-fils, le regard du zappeur / le temps des cahiers / des cahiers à Libé  - Dominique Rabourdin, Pierre-André Boutang (prologue, vidéo 1-2-3)
• Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock
• Toute une nuit - Chantal Akerman
• Trafic - Jacques Tati
• Travail au noir - Jerzy Skolimowski
• Le Trou - Jacques Becker
• Vers le sud - Johan van der Keuken

Voir aussi :

• Bibliographie 
• 20 ans de Trafic 
• Kapo, Rivette, Daney (Bou) / Cours de cinéma de Sylvie Pierre : Serge Daney, “Journal de l’an passé” (Forum des Images; 22 janvier 2010) 57'43"
• Serge Daney (Paris, 14 juillet 1979) par Gérard Courant - Cinématon #67

Shortcomings of Subjectivity

... and the benefits of rational education, investigation, larger context, critical thinking and objectivity.

 

Why would you blindly trust your subjectivity???

People believe what they want to believe, not necessarily what is the most probable, or the most likely...
But sometimes things are a little more complicated than what they appear, or slightly different when you change your vantage point, or more complete when you take the time to reflect.

You gotta wonder why anybody would put so much blind faith into their own personal subjectivity as if it was infallible, unique to one single person, characteristic to one's personality, superior to universal knowledge, objectivity... while in fact, experience proves that EVERYONE falls for the same tricks of the mind, optical illusions, that we are slaves to our whimsical taste for random reasons, and entertainment relies on collective conditioning to get programmed responses from us (because that's how our system, our senses, our brains are built). Why on Earth would you reject culture, knowledge, science, technique, canons, standards, education... when your subjectivity is prone to manipulation (voluntary or not)? 

Entertainment is conceived to elicit predicted emotional responses in its audience. The fact that you respond strongly to certain cues is more indicative of an efficient job on the part of the creators than an intimate connection between you and the movie. What happens inside you is what your emotional capital allows to happen. The movie is merely the trigger there at the right place, at the right time.
The regular movie goer agrees to suspend disbelief, plays the game, falls for it, draws satisfaction from it, and asks for more. This relationship is purely subjective, and should remain that way.

But when you postures as a film critic, you CANNOT limit your "critical appreciation" at whatever you felt under the magic spell of dramatic manipulation... you need to snap out of it (possibly on second viewing), and observe from an outsider's perspective whether the tricks are fair or not to the viewer under dramatic hypnosis. Does a movie work only because it's impossible to escape its spell (i.e. hyper-editing that never allows you to judge your state of mind), or because its content is profound and its art is powerful? That's what a critic is useful for.
If you believe that a movie reviewer is only there to take the drug, get an automatic high, and tell everyone that this drug is the gate to Heaven... you're just another average movie goer, victim of marketing propaganda and dramatic manipulation. Everyone can do that if they are allowed to watch movies in advance and give that superficial feedback. A film critic is a little more special than that, or else the critic's opinion is worthless. Thus the importance of education, to bring an independent scrutiny to whatever filmmakers decide to put their audience through, to look through the tricks and ploys instead of blissfully falling for it without an ounce of evaluative ability.

Related :

• Dan Kois syndrome 1-2-3
• Deficiant Subjectivity / Subjective Icecream Canon (ironic) / Emancipation du jugement de goût (Kant) 
• Misleading Choices and Pseudo Free Will (Iyengar) /  Voluntary Engineered Apathy
• Intuition, Reflection (Kahneman)
• The root of anti-intellectualism / Affection vs. Criticism (the incompatible dispute)
• Forgotten Obsolete English words #3 : Curiosity
• Reality and Representation (Bordwell) 

Forgotten Obsolete English Word #8 : Tradition

Tradition 

Origin : Middle English tradicioun, from Middle French & Latin; Middle French tradicion, from Latin tradition-, traditio action of handing over, tradition. First Known Use: 14th century

1. an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (as a religious practice or a social custom) 
2. a belief or story or a body of beliefs or stories relating to the past that are commonly accepted as historical though not verifiable
3. the handing down of information, beliefs, and customs by word of mouth or by example from one generation to another without written instruction
4. cultural continuity in social attitudes, customs, and institutions
5. characteristic manner, method, or style

Synonyms:

• custom; culture, values; heritage, legacy
• convention, rule, norm, principles, standards; form, mode; prescription

Source : Merriam Webster 

What is traditional is something fully structured, corresponding to an expected form, purposefully produced to fit in this identified norm.

The Avant Garde is against anything tradition represents! (contrary to what Matthew Flanagan was arguing with me during the Unspoken Journal preparation) There is no such a thing as an "Avant Garde tradition", it is obviously a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. No artist from the experimental margin is trying to FIT IN any pre-established pattern, or repeat what their elders have established before them, nor do they want their work or body of work to be described as a conventional tradition. And they certainly don't want to see spawning a bunch of disciples turning their unique proposition into a serial assembly line production. What is experimental is meant to remain outside of the norm, and fail to become a tradition.

Surrealism is NOT a tradition, even if there might be a lot of wannabes who imitate the outer quircky look without understanding the particular unconscious process. 

Soviet Montage is NOT a tradition, even if it had a very structured teaching but a short-lived following. There is no apparent continuity perpetuating the tenets of Soviet Montage in today's cinema or any period following the disappearance of the few Soviet Montage filmmakers. If whatever gimmicks passed on to the MTV fast editing, it's a watered down, simplified version, one that doesn't deserve to bear the name of a legacy. A distant formal influence on the mainstream formula is far from being a tradition. When Nolan or Greengrass will edit their films like Eisenstein we'll call that a tradition... 

There is no tradition before or after Brakhage, or Kubelka, or Warhol, or Maya Deren... apart from the little affinity they develop around them, in a very limited circle of like-minded artists. There is a huge step between mere affinities and an established tradition.

This should be self-explanatory enough for anyone familiar with art history (even outside cinema).
There is one main branch in the history of all arts with trans-generational continuity and conventional tradition, where the mainstream develops, evolves and perpetuates. It's not necessarily the branch that innovates, invents, reforms the succession of fads and styles, on the contrary a tradition is rather conservative and protectionist with its own rules. Eg. : the tradition of classical narrative from antic tragedy to today's cinema.

Classical Theatre Tragedy => Classical Literature => Primitive cinema genre codes => Classical Silent Cinema => Classical Early Sound Cinema => Classical Hollywood Golden Age => Classical Genres =>  Classical TV dramas => Classical Blockbusters => Classical Franchises => Today's Classical Mainstream. THAT IS WHAT IS CALLED A TRADITION!!!

In the margin of the comformist mainstream, there are many sub-branches of various free-form explorations, without rules, without standards, without conventions, without imitation, without respect for the past... this is the frontline of formal invention. The links from one generation to the next, or from one precursor to successors is NOT one of a traditional transmission, but if we want to be more precise and nuanced, one of partial stylistic influence or bifurcation or secession or antagonism or revolution or tabula rasa that characterises the NON-TRADITIONAL evolution of marginal art-cinema (umbrella term for all the various shapes and forms of non-mainstream cinema).

What is the direct traditional ancestry leading to David Lynch? Harmony Korine? Charlie Kaufmann? Miranda July? Matthew Barney? Todd Solondz? Eugene Green? James Benning? Charles Burnett? John Cassavetes? They are not completely sui generis of course, some of them largely borrow from the basics of narrative cinema, even most of the film grammar issued from Classical Cinema... but this is the most elementary technical substrate common to almost anything shot on film, due to the specific constraints of the medium and how the best intuitive solutions have been implemented to communicate with an audio-visual audience. This is what makes cinema cinema. These basics do not define the classical nature of mainstream cinema.
The classical norms (5 acts structure, shots-countershots, formated screenplays, standardized shots, reaction shots, symphonic scores, star system, contrasted stereotypes, family-friendly themes, heroic triumph, lyrical escapism, taylored dialogue...) are what unite all films made under the classical tradition, and sets apart films not made to honor and perpetuate this tradition (and clearly the names cited above do not rely on these traditional cues, nor do they repeat models from other traditions so blatantly).
A traditional filmmaker makes sure to be identified as belonging to the codes of a certain tradition. When a filmmaker doesn't follow cues, hit the conventional marks, respect the genre, then (s)he doesn't try to abid to the tradition, doesn't want to fit in, doesn't seek for his or her body of work to be filed under a pre-existing tradition!

How do you demonstrate any kind of tradition before or after Robert Bresson? Jean-Luc Godard? Luis Buñuel? Jacques Tati? Chris Marker? Chantal Akerman? Marguerite Duras? Straub-Huillet? Leos Carax? Roy Andersson? Michel Gondry? or even between eachother? How could there be ONE SINGLE TRADITION, the so-called "art cinema tradition" represent and define the stylistic identity of each one of them, of all of them as a whole? These figureheads obviously represent their own stylistic branches of cinema, and few of them formed disciples who faithfully carried on the exact values of their master in order to build up and maintain its identity in a traditional transmission. Yet they end up scooped up in the same bag, one indifferentiated bag called "art cinema" (like what David Bordwell purports). Why?

What differences can you make in cinema history if you disregard probably the most obvious one separating the TRADITIONAL evolution of film form within the classical mainstream establishment, and the NON-TRADTIONAL evolution of MULTIPLE (sometimes incompatible) film forms developed in the margin of the dominant film grammar.

Related :

• Asian "Minimalism" (Bordwell)
• Wolves are not alone (the critic who cried wolf)
• Nuances in "Art Cinema" History 

French Critics Legacy 7

Michel Ciment (Positif) slams Nick James (Sight & Sound)

"Quelle mouche a piqué Nick James, le rédacteur en chef de l'excellente revue britanique Sight & Sound, qui, dans son éditorial de juillet 2012, se lamente sur l'état du ciné français ?  Dans une publication qui ne se caractérise pas par son esprit polémique (on est loin du sang chaud de la cinéphilie française!), le ton et les réserves ne manquent pas de surprendre. [..]
Certes l'abondance de la programmation dans les grands festivals ne permet pas d'avoir une vue d'ensemble, mais Le Grand Soir de Kervern et Délépine (primé à Un Certain Regard), Journal de France de Depardon et Nougaret, Camille redouble de Noémie Lvovsky, Adieu Berthe de Bruno Podalydès ont retenus l'attention de la presse internationale, sans oublier Thérèse Desqueyroux du regrété Claude Miller. De rouille et d'os, que Nick James n'estime guère, figurait dans les cinq films préférés du panel de critiques étrangers (dans Screen International) auquel il participe, tandis que Vous n'avez encore rien vu figurait très haut pour nombre d'observateurs. [..] Et si Nick James ajoute, pour faire bonne mesure, 'Je me demande si le désir de transformer des gens comme Haneke ou Kiarostami en réalisateur français ne se fait pas au dépens de jeunes talents locaux', on peut penser au contraire que cette ouverture sur le monde témoigne d'une cinéphile active et féconde. [..]"

Droit de réponse (editorial, Positif, n°619; Sept 2012)

Lire aussi:

• Slow Films, Easy Life (Sight&Sound) / Being Cassandra (Nick James 2) 
• French critics legacy 1-2-3-4-5-6
• Hollywood émigrés 

Misleading Choices and Pseudo Free Will (Iyengar)

Sheena Iyengar: The art of choosing (TEDglobal; July 2010) 24'08"

Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices -- and how we feel about the choices we make. At TEDGlobal, she talks about both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions.

Sheena Iyengar studies how people choose (and what makes us think we're good at it).

We all think we're good at making choices; many of us even enjoy making them. Sheena Iyengar looks deeply at choosing and has discovered many surprising things about it. For instance, her famous "jam study," done while she was a grad student, quantified a counterintuitive truth about decisionmaking -- that when we're presented with too many choices, like 24 varieties of jam, we tend not to choose anything at all. (This and subsequent, equally ingenious experiments have provided rich material for Malcolm Gladwell and other pop chroniclers of business and the human psyche.)
Iyengar's research has been informing business and consumer-goods marketing since the 1990s. But she and her team at the Columbia Business School throw a much broader net. Her analysis touches, for example, on the medical decisionmaking that might lead up to choosing physician-assisted suicide, on the drawbacks of providing too many choices and options in social-welfare programs, and on the cultural and geographical underpinning of choice. Her book The Art of Choosing shares her research in an accessible and charming story that draws examples from her own life.

False assumptions :

1. Make your own choices
2. More options => Better choices
3. Never say no to choice

* * *

Malcolm Gladwell: Choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce (TEDtalk; Feb 2004) 17'34"

Malcolm Gladwell : Detective of fads and emerging subcultures, chronicler of jobs-you-never-knew-existed, Malcolm Gladwell's work is toppling the popular understanding of bias, crime, food, marketing, race, consumers and intelligence.

Malcolm Gladwell searches for the counterintuitive in what we all take to be the mundane: cookies, sneakers, pasta sauce. A New Yorker staff writer since 1996, he visits obscure laboratories and infomercial set kitchens as often as the hangouts of freelance cool-hunters -- a sort of pop-R&D gumshoe -- and for that has become a star lecturer and bestselling author.

* * * 

Baba Shiv: Sometimes it's good to give up the driver's seat (TEDxStandford; May 2012) 9'48"

Over the years, research has shown a counterintuitive fact about human nature: That sometimes, having too much choice makes us less happy. This may even be true when it comes to medical treatment. Baba Shiv shares a fascinating study that measures why choice opens the door to doubt, and suggests that ceding control -- especially on life-or-death decisions -- may be the best thing for us.

Baba Shiv studies how “liking” and “wanting” shape the choices we make, and what that means in the world of marketing.

* * * 

Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice (TEDglobal; Jul 2005) 19'40"

Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.

Barry Schwartz studies the link between economics and psychology, offering startling insights into modern life. Lately, working with Ken Sharpe, he's studying wisdom.

Related :

• Voluntary Engineered Apathy
• Subjective Ice Cream Canon (ironic)
• Hollywoodworld Monoculture (Segrave) 
• Variety, Balance, Diversity (Stirling)
• Forgotten Obsolete English words #3 : Curiosity

The Decline of the Hollywood Studios (France Culture)

LA SITUATION DU CINEMA AMERICAIN (Projection Privée; France Culture; 1er Sept 2012) [MP3] 1h

Roundtable on the state of American Cinema today

Avec : 

• Jean-Baptiste Thoret (historien et critique cinématographique) 
• Jacky Goldberg (critique cinématographique)
• Philippe Rouyer (critique à Positif et Psychologies Magazine)
• Stéphane Delorme (rédacteur en chef des Cahiers du Cinéma)
• Michel Ciment (rédacteur en chef de Positif)

Filmographie citée :

Positif / Success

Négatif / Failures

Newer : J. Edgar (Eastwood) Terri (Azazel Jacobs) Keep The Lights On (Sachs) Twixt (Coppola) Dark Horse (Todd Solondz) The Beasts of the Southern Wild Take Shelter (Nichols) Mission Impossible IV 4:44 Last Day on Earth (Ferrara)  Damsels in Distress (Stillman) Inception (Nolan) Bug (Friedkins) Magic Mike (Soderbergh) Black Swan (Aronofsky) Avatar 3D Alice in wonderland 3D Hugo 3D  Wall-E Older :  Sex, Lies and Videotapes

Newer : The Dark Knight Rises Spiderman John Carter Battleship Cars 2 Rebel MIB3 Older : Tarzan franchise Steven Segal franchise Heaven's Gate (Cimino) The Sorcerer (Friedkins)

Key points :

• Hollywood is in denial about the creative/financial crisis ($100 billion loss in the last 10 years)
• Saturation of prequels, sequels, reboots, franchises...
• Hollywood afraid to take risks, sterilized by Wall St.
• Projects built on bank-ability, BO predictions, whatever the public wants
• Failure of 3D 

* * *

Festival de Deauville (Mauvais Genres; France Culture; 1 Sept 2012) [MP3] 2h

avec : William Friedkin et Florent Emilio Siri

En ouverture de sa 15e saison, Mauvais Genres dressera ce soir son antenne à Deauville, riante cité normande où se tient la 38e édition du Festival du film américain (son directeur, Bruno Barde, ouvrira l'émission). Une édition à haute teneur en mauvais genres : ouverte par le "Mud" de Jeff Nichols, close par "Savages" d'Oliver Stone, elle recevra, outre Harvey Keitel et Melvin van Peebles, WILLIAM FRIEDKIN dont le dernier film, "Killer Joe", polar "white trash", sort le 5 septembre dans les salles. Friedkin ! Et les images d'affluer : la partie de bras de fer surnaturel avec geyser de bile, spiderwalk et sommier volant, entre la fillette possédée (Lynda Blair) et Father Merryn (Max von Sydow) ; Gene Hackman mettant fin, d'une balle dans le dos, à l'issue d'une poursuite automobile mythique, à la cavale new-yorkaise de Marcel Bozzufi ; la camion hanté de "Sorcerer" progressant dans la nuit glauque d'une jungle détrempée ; William Dafoe, le dandy faussaire, l'ange pervers de "Police Federal Los Angeles".

Voir aussi:

• 38ème Festival du film Américain de Deauville (31 août-9 Sept 2012)
• Blockbusters Yield to Magic (Manohla Dargis, AO Scott; NYT; 8 Aug 2012)
• Cinema admission pricing in the USA (1929-2002) / Hollywood 2009  
• Old, New, Borrowed, Déjà-vu / Hollywood System Auteurs?  
• La consomation culturelle (Montebello)

S&S 2012 Canon (5) : 1950s standards

How great were the 50ies? And are there any later films that are better?

When introducing younger generations or casual movie goers to cinema's most prestigious legacy, the natural impulse is of course to turn them to Classical cinema, to Silent films, or to Black&White films in general... because these are fading from the collective memory, from current cultural references, but also from repertoire screenings, from DVD availability and restoration. When confronted with an audience who only watches the current offer, i.e. commercial genre, action entertainment, romance, horror and teen comedies... the imperative to educate their taste and to open up their horizon is to promote and rely on the good, safe oldies. It never fails, and it source of great joys and amazing discoveries about the lost art of caring about mise en scène and content.

However, the formation of a canon is a very different operation, with a different purpose. We can't use a pseudo-canon as a publicity campaign for forgotten (outdated) masterpieces of the past. A canon is produced at a certain point in time and should reflect the standard of greatness attained by cinema. This is not the canon of our youth, or the canon of our ancestors. This must be the canon of 2012, even though we know very well, it's conservative nature will barely make up-to-date with how it should have been in 2002.

That's why, the Top10 entrants of the past must defend their title with the greater masterpieces produced since. If cinema really hasn't improved since 1959, then there is no reason why newer films should make an appearance in the Top10, not the Top250 for that matter. But no matter how high a summit cinema reached in the 50ies... Apparently some people believe that and bath themselves in blissful nostalgia.

I find it hard to believe that the level of cinema excellence, cinema's aesthetic achievements, cinema's depth, cinema's poetry hasn't at least equaled (if not surpassed) the 1959 quality, thus rightfully challenging the highest ranks of the canon with the familiar canonical title of the past. Let's compare...

What is the reason why we endlessly keep Citizen Kane and Vertigo at an unattainable level??? Is it because Tarkovsky or Ozu don't know how to use a camera? Is it because voters didn't bother to watch a single Kiarostami film? Or is it because these safe and proven tokens are convenient, lazy choices?

There are many ways for a newer masterpiece to surpass one of the past. Either straight up : meeting the old standards by their rules, on the old territory, by being superior at filming classically, abiding to the genre codes... (this would be neorealism, New Hollywood...) Another way is to challenge the old establishment, by criticizing or perverting or subverting the old rules, by commenting them... (this would be post-modernism). And probably the most impressive and celebrated, but also the most difficult to sell, is to invent new rules, a new style, a new narration, a new image, new performances, a new medium, a new technique, a new genre (this would be Surrealism, Dadaism, New American Cinema, Structuralist films...) 

1950s Standards

Hypothetical 1959 Canon (spanning the 1895-1959 history of cinema), corrected with 2012 hindsight (alphabetical order), that are still relevant to today's highest standards :

• Battleship Potemkin   STRONG CONTENDER
• Citizen Kane  STRONG CONTENDER
• Journey to Italy   ARGUABLE
• The Last Laugh   ARGUABLE
• Late Spring   ARGUABLE
• Ordet   STRONG CONTENDER
• Pather Panchali   STRONG CONTENDER
• Pickpocket   ARGUABLE
• La règle du jeu   ARGUABLE
• Sunrise   ARGUABLE
• Tokyo Story  STRONG CONTENDER
• Vertigo ARGUABLE

Keep in mind we are voting for the ALL-TIME Top10, so only 10 slots on the ballot. There are many outstanding masterpieces, but we can't keep them all. So which ones could be swapped easily, due to personal preferences of the expert. Some are clearly surpassed today, technically or dramaturgically or in term of content. So even if we save these (like the ones I cited in my second post), they don't stand a chance head-to-head against the 10th best of a 1960-2011 list. The point is to figure out which pre-1960 canon-grade masterpieces are truly considered timeless, and could easily compete today with the contemporary's best standards (given that the cinema excellence has raised the bar since the 1950ies).
"Strong contender" means they easily have a chance to get into today's canon. "Arguable" means they could make a case for their inclusion, if there isn't enough canon-worthy titles post-1960.

TODAY'S STANDARDS

Greater (canon-grade) masterpieces made since 1959 (spanning the 1960-2011 history of cinema) :

• 8 ½
• 2001 : A Space Odyssey
• A Brighter Summer Afternoon
• Aguirre : the Wrath of God 
• An Autumn Afternoon
• Andrei Rublev
• L'Année dernière à Marienbad
• Apocalypse Now
• Au hasard Balthazar
• L'Avventura
• Ceddo
• Close-Up
• Cries and Whispers
• Death in Venice
• La Dolce Vita
• L'Eclisse
• El espiritu de la Colmena
• Flowers of Shanghai
• Hara Kiri
• High and Low
• The Hole
• The Hourglass Sanatorium
• In the Mood for Love
• Jeanne Dielman
• La Jetée
• Kagemusha
• Mirror
• Mulholland Dr.
• Nostalghia
• Once Upon a Time in the West
• Opening Night
• Persona
• Play Time
• Psycho
• Ran
• The Sacrifice
• Sátántangó
• Songs from the Second Floor
• Soy Cuba
• Stalker
• Taxi Driver
• Time of Gypsies
• Touki bouki
• Trois Couleurs : Rouge
• Trois vies et une seule mort
• Veronika Voss
• Werckmeister Harmonies
• The Wind Will Carry Us
• Woman in the Dunes
• Yeelen

And if we respect the unspoken rule of waiting at least 10 years before proposing a recent film to the canon, these canon-worthy titles should wait till the next poll to be nominated : A Separation; Once Upon A Time In Anatolia; Uncle Boonmee; Caché; Melancholia; Woman on the Beach, The Turin Horse...

Look at this post-1960 list! These films aren't inferior to whatever the height of Classical Cinema was back in 1959. They are easily as great (objectively), if not (arguably) greater for some of them. Obviously the older canon will suffer from the comparison to the latest standard. This is inevitable...
How could anyone think for one second that Some Like it Hot, Intolerance, The Lady Eve, Bringing Up Baby, The Red Shoes, The Wizard of Oz, Black Narcissus, the silent King Kong (1933), His Girl Friday, Le Voyage dans la Lune, The Big Sleep, Duck Soup, Gone with the Wind...  could take any one of the limited spots reserved in a Top10 for later masterpieces??? It doesn't mean they are not great films, but not Top10-worthy any longer. These lesser films still get votes by the dozen from people who don't realize what voting for an up-to-date canon means! You can't keep voting for the same titles just because they've made the Top10 once, or because of their historical importance alone.
All we need is to handpick the 10 best of these post-1960 masterpieces to keep out ANY pre-1960 masterpieces! And there is enough of a taste spectrum there to choose from, and still compose an individual ballot reflecting your preferences, while selecting from a list of objective canon-worthy titles.
But there is always room for a few pre-1960 masterpieces in an up-to-date canon. The masterpieces from the silent and classical era that still defy contemporary achievements on equal footing, those with a chance to win any canonical title (arguably). But this number is a lot smaller than what it was before the boom of the 60ies (which produces a lot of canon-worthy masterpieces) as well as all the following decades (which opened the canon access to a lot more marginal countries).
I only listed 50 films there, the consensus among experts should be restricted to this range of choice, and argue together over which ones of these deserve better the Top10 privilege (even though they are all more or less on equal quality level, all part of the top tier masterpieces. This is my list of 50, but it could be another one if you really think I'm way off-base... I readily admit such pre-selection must not be made by a single individual. A canon must be built around the expertise of many, which should cancel out odd preferences and solidify the safest standards (among expert standards, not the safest among random mainstream beliefs). The point is to build a credible consensus around few potential candidates, not let people randomly pick 2000+ films, which cannot possibly be all Top10-worthy. A top10 is only 10, not 2000! We can allow some room for subjectivity and expert disagreements by extending the pool to 50 instead of 10 and narrow it down by popular vote. But if you START the selection by a popular vote from 2000 nominees narrowing it down to 10 by a "majority" of less than 22%, you'll never get a credible consensus, an expert statement, an historical establishment.

Related :

• S&S 2012 Canon : Number 1 / Numbers / You're qualified to vote if... / Hollywood Supremacy? 
• Forgotten Obsolete English Word #7 : Canon 
• Subjective Ice Cream Canon (ironic)

Subjective Ice Cream Canon (ironic)

Top10 Favourite Ice Cream Flavours :

1. Vanilla (29%)
2. Chocolate  (8.9%)
3. Strawberry  (5.3%)
4. Neapolitan  (4.2%)
5. Chocolate chip  (3.9%)
6. French vanilla  (3.8%)
7. Cookies and cream  (3.6%)
8. Vanilla fudge ripple  (2.6%)
9. Praline pecan  (1.7%)
10. Cherry  (1.6%)

As voted subjectively by the association of movie reviewers against objective canons who can't help but participate in every canon they can find anyway. 

Since this is a popular and democratic consensus based on subjectivity, the result shows the most widespread taste among the majority of people polled. It tells us about the people who voted and nothing about the quality of the ice cream itself. When the poll question is SUBJECTIVE, when the poll voters respond SUBJECTIVELY, the addition of the votes could only tell something about the relative demographic size of groups who prefer such or such flavour. 

There are more people who like vanilla flavoured ice cream over cherry flavoured ice cream. But we are not informed in any way about the quality of the product itself, about the proportion of quality vanilla ice creams compared to the proportion of bad vanilla ice creams. Or quality cherry flavoured ice cream for that matter.
How many voters made their choice based on a childhood memory (influential to their life, but from a random ice cream sample that was most likely NOT the best ever made)? How many base their idea of a best flavour on whatever they consume at the supermarket (probably artificial, chemical flavour)? How many are actual ice cream amateurs who weed out the industrially made ones from the superior home-made ones? How many have tried the most prestigious ice creams made by great restaurants?

People pick an ice cream on a menu based on its nominal flavour, as a name tag, as a recognised label, because they are conditioned by their cemented taste to respond to a flavour name rather than the actual taste of the product. People never ask whether the coffee ice cream is better made than the vanilla ice cream... they just know they want anything with vanilla.

Is there only 10 ice cream flavours in the world that are enjoyable by anyone, or at the very least edible? Definitely not. Because such list is not the end all argument of what to eat. It's merely an excerpt from the full poll, the majority opinion... it does not reflect the infinite minority opinions (the long tail), the acquired taste that could never reach a consensus, the little known flavours... all of which may or may not be much superior to the usual suspects, in quality, in ingredients, in texture, in flavour depth, in nuances... but will be ignored because they are not acknowledged by the majority of voters (because they are only expert of their own short-sighted navel! experts in flavour names, not in product quality control).

Here it's normal to see a consensus of only 29% for the first spot, because voters probably only nominated one flavour each (the more flavours getting votes, the less maximum votes the #1 can get), one at the exclusion of all others.
If 70% of voters are lactose-intolerant, will they vote for their favourite fruit instead? Thus screw the results?

People's taste is influenced/conditioned by availability too. Maybe vanilla is what the least people strongly dislike, therefore more ice cream makers put it out to secure safe sales. Thus its (omni-)presence alone will make more converts and continue its dominance. It's harder to escape the mainstream taste once it started the snowball effect of supply-demand mutual influence. The simple presence of a dominant choice, in terms of offer availability and exposure, will inevitably cast a darker shadow all around on the lesser known, lesser exposed, lesser sought after, lesser tried, lesser liked flavours. And people who stick to their comfort zone, their tried-and-true favourites (lifetime establishment once and for all), who are less tempted to risk to be disappointed by a never-tried-before flavour, aren't the ones who will help make the mainstream status quo evolve when necessary.

There are other reasons why we may not have an expert view on ice cream excellence... because sometimes the best ice creams are very expensive, and we cannot eat it every day. Maybe we tasted one once, and base our perception of greatness based on an isolated sample, which may or may not be the best of the best, just one among the bests, and possibly a low tier one.

We only know which ice cream is the GREATEST, when expert ice cream makers, or reknown pastry chef, or food critics, or expert gourmet get together and vote for the best made ice cream according to the objective criteria of its recipe, or the quality of its ingredient, of the perfect execution. Chefs don't just pick their favourite flavour... nobody cares about a chef's favourite ice cream flavour, we care about their expertise on the product, any ice cream, any flavour. And if it's not the ice cream with your favourite flavour that wins, it doesn't matter, because it was not the purpose.

That is why subjectivity is only meaningful to individuals, not to groups, not to consensus, not to canons.

IF YOU VOTE SUBJECTIVELY THERE IS NO POINT TO ADD UP YOUR VOTE WITH ANYBODY ELSE'S! 

NOBODY FORCES YOU TO PARTICIPATE IN CANON FORMATION IF YOU DISAGREE WITH OBJECTIVE STANDARDS

A subjective vote should only be displayed as an individual opinion, which reflects the personal taste of a particular person. (favourite listing)
The participation to a collective project, such as a canon consensus, should follow objective criteria in order to produce a convergent result, the purpose of which every voter knows and agrees with. (all-time best of)

What's the point to compare your subjective taste to the mainstream consensus? It's only a social statistic that a profit-oriented ice cream maker would like to know (in order to predict the relative surplus/shortage of each flavour, and stock accordingly, and bait the widest range of clients by proposing the most liked flavours in priority over a diversity offer)!

Do you feel pride if the majority validates your taste? Do you feel less unique if you realise your individual taste falls exactly into the national average? Will you change your favourite for the sake of individuality, to show your personality more, to prove you're not a sheep? Will you feel comforted that you're not a weirdo who likes something nobody else likes? Would you be pissed off at the canon if they didn't list your favourite flavour? Would you be pissed at yourself if your favourite flavour is on it?
Why do you need your personal subjectivity to be recognised by an objective canon that is there to serve film culture in general (not you specifically and solely)?

So, do you think cinema is like ice cream? Should moviegoers just define greatness from whatever they consume daily (regardless for eventual greater criteria they aren't aware of due to low diversity choice)? Should everyone just pick their favourite flavour in cinema (regardless for the actual quality of the product)? Should whatever we crave supersede what is honorable? Should what we need now be more important than what mankind will remember in the long term? Should we let anyone vote, and skew the results, even though they didn't taste all available flavours in the history of cinema?

This is bullshit! Bullshit-flavoured ice cream...

Related :

• Critical Fallacy #13 : Inconsistent Standards 
• Forgotten Obsolete English Word #7 : Canon
• Affection vs. Criticism (the incompatible dispute)
• Deficiant Subjectivity

Hiroshima-Godzilla-Fukushima (France Culture)

Hiroshima, mon amour (Les grandes traversées; France Culture; 15 août 2012) [MP3] 48'

Le scénario du film d’Alain Resnais tourné en 1959 est lu par l’auteur (Marguerite Duras) et par la comédienne Emmanuelle Riva.
En Août 1957, à Hiroshima, une actrice française termine un film sur la paix. Elle s'éprend d'un architecte japonais le dernier jour du tournage. Ils ont 24 heures devant eux pour vivre cette passion fulgurante. Cet amour impossible réveille en la jeune femme son premier amour : elle avait 18 ans, c'était à Nevers en 1944. Elle aimait un jeune bavarois que les combattants du maquis abattirent. Elle fut tondue, ses parents la cachèrent dans une cave. Son amant japonais lui fait raconter sa tragédie, la soulageant ainsi d'un atroce souvenir. Mais l'amour qui les lie l'espace d'une nuit ne peut résister aux impératifs et aux contraintes sociales.
Diffusé au Japon sous le titre Une histoire d’amour de 24h, le film n’est resté que 15 jours à l’affiche…

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La Catastrophe dans l’imaginaire cinématographique (Les grandes traversés; France Culture; 17 août 2012) [MP3] 48'

Tokyo détruite par les flammes, ravagée par un monstre, le Japon submergé par les flots : le cinéma japonais aime à se faire peur et cela ne date pas d’hier. Ou plutôt cela a commencé dès 1954 avec Godzilla, ce monstre à tête de lézard enfoui dans la terre et …réveillé par des essais nucléaires… Comme en écho, des années plus tard, en 1988, Akira raconte la destruction de la capitale nipponne par des armes nucléaires. Avant queLa submersion du Japon ne réalise en images dès 2006 la prophétie de la catastrophe du 11 mars 2011.

Décryptage de cette imaginaire cinématographique avec Claude Estèbe (enseignant à l’Inalco sur l’histoire visuelle du Japon).

Bibliographie : 

• La submersion du Japon (2000, Sakyo Komatsu)
• L'Apocalypse nucléaire et son cinéma (2012/Hélène Puiseux)
• Sinking of Japan (2006, Shinji Higuchi)
• La Tombe des lucioles (Nosaka Akiyuki)

Filmographie : 

• Godzilla (1954/Inoshiro Honda/Japon)
• Le tombeau des lucioles (Isao Takahata)
• Ponyo sur la falaise (2009/Hayao Miyazaki/Japon)
• I wish (2012/Hirokazu Kore-Eda/Japon)
• Hume / Dream (Kurosawa)

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La tectonique des images (Les grandes traversés; France Culture; 14 août 2012) [MP3] 48'

La catastrophe du 11 mars 2011 a été vécue et vue en direct par le monde entier. Filmé en temps réel : le séisme. Capturées par téléphone portable : les vagues du tsunami. Enregistrés : les montagnes de débris. Disparus : le corps des victimes. De la destruction partout mais pas de morts… Dans ce tsunami d’images personnelles et médiatiques, quel récit se dégage ?

Analyse du film des événements par Yoann Moreau (anthropologue, spécialiste du Japon, chercheur à l’EHESS sur la catastrophe et son traitement dans l’actualité)

Bibliographie : 

• L'archipel des séismes : écrits du Japon après le 11 mars 2011 (Cécile Sakai, Corinne Quentin 2012)
• Le grand tremblement de terre du Kantô (Akira Yoshimura, 2010)
• Après le tremblement de terre (Haruki Murakami, 2012)
• Tsunami (Andoche Praudel, 2012)

Filmographie : 

• selection de vidéos amateurs et reportage TV 

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Related :

• Hiroshima, mon amour (Thomas) 

S&S2012 Canon (4) : Hollywood Supremacy?

Without data on USA attendance prior to 1946, we'll just focus on post-1939 canon titles. The mid-forties were the all-time peak in theatre attendance for both the USA and the UK. The drop (mainly due to the TV competition) is quite dramatic ever after. And you can notice that the post-1939 titles in the S&S Top50 are very dense in the 50ies and more generally earlier than the mid-60ies. The canon is a lot more picky for the next 50 years!!!

• More audience in the theatres = More masterpieces in the collective unconscious = More critics recall this period as "important" = Larger consensus around certain masterpieces
• Less audience in the theatres = Less buzz around cinema greatness in the public opinion = Less critics noticing the greatness of films = No clear consensus around any masterpiece

Does it mean the canon is right, thus cinema was actually greater in the 1950ies and 60ies? Or is the canon really conservative, nostalgic and slow to adapt, thus ignoring newer masterpieces for more than 20 years after their releases?

What about the myth of Hollywood's supremacy?

The heydays of Classical Hollywood, or Golden Age, was THE greatest period of cinema history back in the  50ies, because sound cinema had reached true mastery of the medium in the Hollywood Studios, and they also greatly benefited from the emigration of many great European masters (notably the jewish filmmakers refugees before and during the Second World War, persecuted in the German territories; see Hollywood émigrés). There was a perfect convergence of talent, technique, equipment, infrastructure and budgets like nowhere else in the world. Until 1960, Classical Hollywood (in red) was THE referential standard worldwide (especially thanks to the re-appraisal by French criticism, which American critics rather forget), therefore had a rightful shot at stealing and monopolizing most places on a canon Top10 back then, if they disputed the privilege to the masters of the late Silent era (who equally deserved the crowning title, if not more for some of them). And this was possible because some of the non-English films (Ozu or Satyajit Ray for example) you see in this period on the above graph (in grey), were not acknowledged (or even released at all) in the UK-USA at that time.
The difference of conservative degrees for an English-centric canon is that Hollywood or British films are canonised immediately or within 10 years (the close influences by importation like Germany, France or Italy also get this advantage to some extent), but for Japan, India they have to wait decades. A stricter conservative bias for non-Euro-American cinema.

So in hindsight, we can see today, that the Hollywood-made masterpieces (in red on the graph) aren't as dominant as the American patriots would like us to believe... Even in the 50ies, when they should reign supreme, the red is matched by the grey, if not outnumbered! The last "studio-movie" in the canon (not just from the Golden Age limited period) is Psycho in 1960, the last American-made movie is Apocalypse Now in 1979 (and not even a studio movie, more like an independent film from the New Hollywood secession! like The Godfather 1 & 2 and Taxi Driver). So the last genre-movie coming from the USA in the Top50 is The Godfather 2, which came out nearly 40 years ago! And it's a canon voted by American and British critics!!! How great is recent Hollywood genre again? That's what a canon is for (when done properly), to hold current production up to the highest standards in history, and adjust your own over-praise accordingly.

So where is that supremacy of Classical Hollywood, or American indies, or Hollywood genre??? Even when the Commonwealth votes, the non-English masterpieces (mostly artfilms) dominate, either from Europe or Asia. So now that the (conservative) canon has came to term with this 1950ies mascarade, it's about time that critics start to absorb this fact too, in their weekly writings, and stop deluding themselves in thinking that Hollywood has any exclusive stronghold on canonical laurels or auteurism credits. Citizen Kane is the tree hiding the forest, or the lack thereof... The number 1 title is the only thing remembered by the public opinion, and the commonplace issued from there is that Hollywood is king of the world. But you can't reduce a canon to its (English-biased) first spot.

Hollywood didn't produce any canonical film (Top50) since the 1970ies !!! (No, Mulholland Dr. isn't American, ABC ditched it and France produced it!)

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2012 Sight & Sound Poll (Critics votes), Directors ranking (cumulated votes by director's country)

1. USA (Hitchcock, Welles, Ford, Coppola, Murnau, Chaplin, Scorsese, Lynch, Keaton, Donen, Wilder) 1542 votes !!!?
2. France (Godard, Renoir, Bresson, Buñuel, Vigo, Lanzman, Truffaut, Tati, Marker) 773 votes
3. Japan (Ozu, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi) 401 votes 
4. Italy (Fellini, Antonioni, Rossellini, De Sica, Pontecorvo) 389 votes 
5. USSR (Takovsky, Eisenstein, Vertov) 309 votes 
6. UK (Kubrick, Powell & Pressburger) 241 votes
7. Germany (Murnau, Lang) 225 votes 
8. Denmark (Dreyer) 158 votes 
9. Sweden (Bergman) 143 votes 
10. China (Wong Kar-wai) 42 votes
11. India (S. Ray) 31 votes
12. Iran (Kiarostami) 31 votes

Are you serious? Talk about an American-centric bias in the poll due to an overwhelming majority of British and American voters. France is also heavily favoured in the number of auteurs, but not as much in terms of votes... So that's the mathematics of this flawed poll, of these biased voters. But does it reflect the actual situation of world cinema history accurately? Not quite!


The mainstream mindset

So, was cinema greater in the 50-60ies or is there a nostalgic bias at work? When you see the density of canonical masterpieces before 1970, you wonder if cinema has declined ever since... As if Wong Kar-wai, Jia Zhang-ke, Zhang Yimou, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Tsai Ming-liang, Ozu, Kurosawa, Oshima, Naruse, Kobayashi, Lee Chang-dong, Hong Sang-soo, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Abbas Kiarostami, Tarr Béla, Aleksandr Sokurov, Theos Angelopoulos, Alain Resnais, Michael Haneke, Ousmane Sembene... never made masterpieces as great as anything made before the 60ies! This is ludicrous. I know the canon's inertia is full of nostalgia and conservatism... but this is forgivable for 10 or 20 years (2 polls time to adjust), not for 50 years! There are limits to the test of time, if a film critic needs 50 years to assess objectively whether a masterpiece is over-inflated by timely buzz/trend/zeitgeist... why the fuck are they even bothering writing on a weekly basis??? this is pure incompetence, this is bullshit!
We need a referential canon made by people who are more diligent to judge newer masterpieces (10 or 15 years at the maximum is acceptable) and revise the higher standards attained by recent cinema, instead of relying on outdated standards from the Classical era, when storytelling was much simpler, codified, censored and content more superficial. It's about time to give it's due distinction to the superior cinema of Modernity (which should be the center of gravity of cinema standards to date) for one, and to the very contemporary world cinema, from outside Western Europe and the USA. Because the greatest cinema is now made in Asia, Eastern Europe or South America... that's just a fact. And they deserve the recognition, the attention, the support from the critical institution, and from spectators.


From the directors cited in the Top50 Canon (+ the omitted masters; "?" not highest canonical level) :

	American canonical masters	Rest of the World canonical masters
Pre-1960	Hitchcock (UK) Welles Murnau (DE) Ford Keaton Chaplin (UK) Lang (DE) Donen (?) Wilder (?)	Ozu Eisenstein Kurosawa Bresson Mizoguchi + Murnau (German period) Vertov Renoir (French period) Rosselini De Sica Dreyer Lang (German period) Fellini Vigo (?) + Buñuel
Post-1960	Kubrick (UK) Lynch Coppola (?) Scorsese (?) + Cassavetes + Altman + Malick	Tarkovsky Bergman Bresson S. Ray Antonioni Tarr Béla Wong Kar-wai Kiarostami + Hou Hsiao-Hsien + Jia Zhang-ke Akerman (?) Tati Truffaut (?) Godard Marker (?) Lanzmann (?) Pontecorvo (?) Powell & Pressburger (?) Edward Yang + Oshima + Angelopoulos + Sokurov + Kurosawa  + Ozu  + Resnais + Ousmane Sembene + Buñuel  + Lee Chang-dong + Hong Sang-soo + Kobayashi + Roy Andersson + Kieslowski + Fassbinder + Victor Erice + Werner Herzog

Related :

• S&S 2012 Canon : Number 1 / Numbers / You're qualified to vote if... 
• Attendance History - World Cinema Stats (23) 
• Hollywood System Auteurs? 
• Poll dance (Tom Paulus; Photogenie; 9 Aug 2012) 
• Aesthetic Hegemonies in Cinema History