Bordwell online

David Bordwell celebrates the first anniversary of his presence on the blogosphere, with his blog : Observations on film art and Film Art. A serious blog by a film scholar writing about current cinema with special attention to film form analysis. The insight that lacks on the internet in general and within film fans in particular.
David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson have blogged 200,000 words in one year, which could have been edited, published and sold in 2 books. It's rare to see professionals (writers, journalists, critics, professors, historians, researchers) willing to share their culture and researches freely on the internet for the cinephile community. One of the stated purpose of this blog reads as follow, ressembling the first installment of my Critical Fallacy Series :

"We’ve tried to deflate some clichés of mainstream film journalism. Writers of feature articles are pressed to hit deadlines and fill column inches, so they sometimes reiterate ideas that don’t rest on much evidence. Again and again we hear that sequels are crowding out quality films, action movies are terrible, people are no longer going to the movies, the industry is falling on hard times, audiences want escape, New Media are killing traditional media, indie films are worthwhile because they’re edgy, some day all movies will be available on the Internet, and so on. Too many writers fall back on received wisdom. If the coverage of film in the popular press is ever to be as solid as, say, science journalism or even the best arts journalism, writers have to be pushed to think more originally and skeptically."
David Bordwell

Definitely an example to look up to and to follow studiously for the cinephiles who would like to turn the blogosphere into a potent alternative to the old media.

Bon Anniversaire!

Kiarostami Interview

• Abbas Kiarostami v. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who to believe?
  No, people in Iran are not evil ! Don't bomb them...
  (Public Service Announcement of the week)

My notes on the interview of Abbas Kiarostami by Laure Adler (9-26-2007), for the exhibition in Paris MoMA : Centre Georges Pompidou. France Culture radio broadcast, available online for a couple more days (REALaudio, FRENCH-FARSI, 30').

Photograph, documentarian, filmmaker, poet, furniture designer, performance artist... a multi-talented artist.
At the head of Kannoon (Institute for the intellectual development of children and adolescents) for 20 years, Kiarostami began his cinema carreer when the Shah ruled Iran, making educational documentaries for children and about children. He learnt so much from them and by seeing himself in them. One of his close childhood friend tell him now, that the kids in his films are just like Abbas was when he was their age. I'm solitary now as an adult like I was as a child. We are all profundly lonesome beings, whatever the age, even among friends...
My job of filmmaker, ma life condition, impose this loneliness, but it's mainly because I wanted it.

There is no distinction between reality and fiction (documentaries and fictive story). Artifice and lies help to reconstitute truth on screen.

And Life Goes On... (1991) : A.K. comes back to the location where he shot his first feature film, Where is My Friend's House? (1987), which was hit by a terrible earthquake (30,000 deads). He went there with his son, 8 yold, to meet friends (protagonists of that film), and only had the idea to make it into a film, Through The Olive Trees (1994), back in Tehran. The innocence and hope in the eyes of his son confronted to the pain of life, changed the pessimistic vision A.K. had.

Taste for Secret : In The Taste of Cherry (1997) the suicide motive is mysterious, in The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), the local boy cannot reveal the subject of the documentary filmed by the guys from Tehran. Life by definition bear a secret, and this mystery of life must remain hidden. We must not reveal it.

When he set the ligthing for his photographic exhibition at Centre Pompidou, he realised the more he lowered the brightness, the more they enclosed a secret. The relationship to a work of art is to approach this secret. Maybe that's explains the black shades he wears all the time! ;)
By the way, scientists recently discovered that Monet, father of impressionism, might have had a vision disorder. There is a reason for everything...

The problem of today's movies, is there is no more mystery remaining with us when we walk out of the movie house. The essence of art is to contain this mysterious unspoken aspect. Cinema is a work of art that establishes a creative relationship between the spectator and the film, through this imaginative reaction to mystery.

To the question "why do we hear children precisely when the old man talks about the taste of cherry to convince the protagonist of The Taste of Cherry?"
AK responds : Chance doesn't exist in cinema. Everything in the film is noticed and endorsed whether it happened by chance during shooting or purposefuly. But the choice to keep it on the editing table is fully conscious.
The secret in The Taste of Cherry allows for every viewer to identify with the undefined crisis leading the protagonist to wish to terminate his life. Some believe he had a broken heart affair, others that he had depts...

Landscape : Nurturing Nature = identified to a mother. AK didn't choose Nature as a subject he was invited by Nature, who embraced him with wide open arms.

Politics : I accept the label of politically involved filmmaker. Politics + Poetics. Like in The Bicycle thieves.

My cinema evolved towards formal epuration : abstraction, contemplation, méditation of nature. Nature questions me profundly.

Location scouting and casting is the most time/energy consuming. To find the people who will say what I wrote is the most important. To meet in flesh what I imagined in my mind.His next film, Copie conforme (2008?), staring Juliette Binoche, is on hold for 3 years because he didn't find the right man to play opposite her. His producer suggested that maybe Abbas himself should play the role.

He doesn't always tell the actors what to do, who they are on set. Leaving the actors in doubt so they bear this worryness that is everyday life. The fact they doubt makes them look more like me.

In his last film, 100 women are shot looking at a white sheet of paper where they are supposed to read a story. They didn't know what the story was, didn't know what to do, and had to improvise. The story was added after with a voiceover commentary. The uncertainty creates the expression of truth. Too much information, indications turn actors into robots who try to become you, the auteur, and don't reflect life itself, naturally.

Cars are omnipresent in AK's films. He says a shot onboard a car combines his preference for stationary shots with the dynamics within the frame. The car allows for the spectator to concentrate on a static frame and still enjoy the motion of the background image.

Death : People always believe to be immortal, death is only for the neighbor. We only witness others dying. We'll never see our own death.

"I'm afraid of height because I've already fell
I'm afraid of a break up because I've already been broken-hearted
But why am I afraid of death if I never experienced death before?
If it's the feeling of not existing anymore, that's something we experience every time we sleep, yet we are not afraid of sleep..."

* * *

SHOT ANALYSIS by D.P. Caroline Champetier

The cinema of A.K. helps me to live, she says.

She was invited by A.K. to a private screening at the Paris MoMA of a piece of his latest work. She describes what she saw. It's a plan-sequence of 17 minutes filmed with a digital camera, with a lens probably equivalent to a 50 or 70mm.

We can see rocks on a sea shore, with cavities, in one of them, the highest, there are 3 seagull eggs, and the waves slam that rock.
An evident suspense is created by this simple situation without a need for explanation. The first egg is pushed out by the waves, and ends up in a lower, less secure, cavity. And finally falls off and disappears in the sea. The egg is lost. [Egg symbol of life, youth in becoming]
Then the other two eggs follow the same fate, are also ejected one after the other, and disappear.

When the light is switched back on, Kiarostami shows a contented smile, waiting for questions.
The sound is not live. This was a post-production reconstruction. Actually, even the plan-sequence is forged, with a precise montage of 15 shots spliced together.
A.K. master of space and time becomes the illusionist who make believe what he wants the spectator to believe. He recreated this made-up dramaturgy, this suspense, this succession of events that looked so natural and believable.

Afternoon Times (2005/Boonsinsukh)

File 067/Afternoon Times (2005/Tossapol Boonsinsukh/Thailand) ++

Opening Sequence : The voice of the protagonist, Bo (Pijika Hanzedkarn), is heard without image talking on the phone (pitch black screen). The offscreen conversation carries on over a stationary frontal shot of a wall scattered with photographs of friends, in dim light. We understand that Bo is opening her new cafe soon and invites various long-forgotten acquaintances to the inauguration. The camera pans to reveal Bo through the kitchen door. The long take captures a mundane activity in real time, as she hangs up, looks for the next number, dials again, and repeats her attempt. The mood of the film is set with a simple shot which contains the heart of the drama. Solitude, estrangement, nonchalance and lack of attention.

Bo, in her early twenties, engages in a new life, by starting up her own business. It's the dreaded time when everyone we used to know follow their own path, travel, move abroad, work intensively or found a family. College friends lose touch and begin a solitary life on their own, building a new social network in a new social environment.
Her friends are all there with her on the wall, nostalgic memories, still fresh in her mind, with the frozen smiles and funny faces posed for the camera. But all belongs to a bygone era of carefree entertainment. Now she's alone, desperately seeking for available friends, like a market researcher, to share her joyful pride with. She would like them to launch the word-of-mouth and bring in many customers. Unfortunately the calls we overheard don't seem very successful. She's got more friends on photos than real people in her present life. A sentiment of profound abandonment sinks in, with remarkable restraint, as the shot keeps on running long after the phone calls are over, staring at her walking around in silence.

Afternoon Times is a beautiful little film made by students with the most basic production equipment to the greatest effects. The creativity of a sobre mise-en-scene, the daring transcendence of small moments, the mundane poetry... all make it an adorable, melancholic episode suspended in time. The very prototype of the Contemplative Cinema trend. Like a haunting memory revisited intact, stripped of superfluous details, these characters are caught in a strange whirlpool of redundant events. Repetition and variation.
The careful observation of minimal gestures throughout the day recalls Chantal Akerman's film which was one of the most important pionneer of "Contemplative Cinema" : Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1976). Likewise emphasis is put on body language of non-speaking people. Stationary shots frame the situations in self-contained tableaux, that render the presence of a "surveillance camera" invisible while bringing attention to the private life happening in front of our voyeur eyes. We can see what people do when nobody is looking at them, when they don't have to play a social role in front of someone else. A perspective also featured in the segments of Hou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times (2005).

A brownish, darker evening light dominated the introductory shot, a feeling of anxiety and despair caused by the anticipation of her café grand opening. Later, a brighter sunny morning light shines on the film, tinted with a metallic blueish hue celebrating its fresh, acid, melancholic, surreal atmosphere. Congratulations to the cinematographer (Nalina Tungkanokvitaya) who does a wonderful job with natural lighting.

A delivery boy brings a baguette every morning. He's the only person Bo becomes familiar with along her redundant routine. Although their contact is strictly professional, regulated by a polite yet reserved, even timid, etiquette. Without a word he hands over the bread, she gives a banknote, he returns the change. A long trained composure. An automatized ceremonial.

The photographic memorization motif, which structures the entire film, will come as an ice-breaker for them. Upon one of his delivery he's asked to take a picture of her with her friends to immortalize the inauguration of the café. I love this type of microcosmic scenes encapsulating unspoken emotions into unsignificant acts, which we find aplenty in Miranda July's Me And You And Everyone We Know (2005) for instance. In this world of lonely disconnected individuals, every little task is an opportunity to meet with somebody else's private sphere and hopefully to step in for an instant in their sealed bubble, if the situation is not too awkward of course. Here, the favor to take a group picture for her becomes a tacit connection. The polaroid camera is used as a proxy device for interpersonal socialization with a total stranger, like with a lighter or a watch in the street. She asks "Can you take a picture for me?", but what she really means is "Hey, take a look at me please!"

This central theme of self-representation, announced in the opening shot, fully expresses the distanciation of human relationship in today's virtualized world. Without the polaroid they are confused strangers looking at their feet ashamed of themselves. But hidden behind the camera viewfinder he could lay his gaze upon her. Conversly, under the excuse of posing with her friends, she can show off her largest smile without obviously seeming to seduce him. The self-esteem is preserved for both of them.
Even though they are not aware yet of this blooming romance, the film catches there the pre-historic, founding moment of their future bond. She puts up the polaroid picture on the wall, with the other pictures. But what it stands for is less the friends we can see on the image than the invisible photographer who took it.

After this defining moment, that will only become meaningful to them and the audience later on, the daily routine and the recurring scenes will unfold according to the slow pace of time flowing by. Careful shots of dishwashing, window cleaning, housekeeping in silence and solitude. Times of inner ruminations, patient wait and reverie accompanied by the absorbing melody on a diegetic cassette with classical music. A catchy repetitive soundtrack reminiscent of Kikujiro (1999). Meanwhile the short length of this one music track marks the passage of time, as she has to rewind the cassette manually to repeat the play. Another little task indicative of the actual duration of life moments. Another opportunity for him and her to connect through a common taste for this music.

The whole story is articulated in seasonal chapters entitled "Afternoon Times", "Summer", "Rain", "Winter", "Summer later"

In a funny scene, Bo dresses like a tourist, with sunglasses, backpack, camera, and pretends to visit this splendid café for the first time. She contemplates cautiously every little object decorating the place, with a self-satisfied admiration, projecting into this fictional character the ideal customer she'd like to serve if the turnout wasn't so poor. She then unpacks her sleeping bag on the floor and stares at the ceiling. It's nice to remember a similar scene in Me And You And Everyone We Know when the kids wondered what it would be like if the world was upside down.

On a rainy day, he's soaked and she gives him a towel. Is it because the light is darker, because the rain pours outside, because the wet clothes wear out the usual respectful distances, or because of this tender gesture showing care? After so many meetings at regular hours for the bread, they seem to look at eachother with different eyes this time. No word spoken yet, no effusion of sentiments. Just a memorable moment shared intimately, the secret happiness of being together. An awkward silence extended indefinitely, planted face to face, which would normally make anybody uncomfortable. Though none of them seems in a hurry to break this tensed silence. They soon return to their lives without uttering a word.

The cassette jams in a bundle and so begins the time without music.

The next visit, surrealism creeps in for a moment of arrested poetry. Within the uncut course of a long take stretching over 6 minutes, they are mysteriously locked inside when he delivered the bread. The locksmith can't even rescue them because rains is still pouring outside. By a welcomed enchantment they are miraculously stuck together for a while. They resolve to wait, and she offers to cook a meal for him. The strange ways of fate has kept them close together for a longer time than their usual commercial transaction. As oddly as it occured, the temporary spell is broken when he finished his food and the door now opens naturally. He wondered why the habitual music wasn't playing and promises to bring her a new tape. But he doesn't come back the next day, someone else's delivers bread.

She paints dozens of childish drawings representing a fish, a horse, a camera (again the motif of self-representation), countless rows of dashes... and a delivery boy with a baguette in a bag. She loses appetite. Her business is running down. She has to move out. The walls are covered with copies of the same drawing of the delivery boy, like the identical frames of a film strip, like a dismantled cartoon. The paintings have replaced and covered up the photos on her wall. A new medium of representation illustrates the memories of her second life, leaving the photos behind.

Another uncut long take runs for nearly 15 minutes for the second last scene. In one plan sequence the whole set is packed into boxes, just like if the shooting was over, she clears the borrowed premises, helped by a friend. All drawings are picked up one by one, all pictures, and decorative objects. When he asks why she paints, why she takes pictures, she replies "to kill time", "no particular reason" to futher burry her feelings and regrets...
We realize that life is like a movie production, good times are like afternoon times, they last only a while and then we have to move on and get over them. Memories fit in a little box.

The closing shot, brings back the music in the film, after a long silent shot onboard a taxi, showing a close up of her disillusionned face. Her music, their music, re-appear in non-diegetic form, as if the cassette was playing in her mind, and puts a gentle smile on her face. The film considers the archiving of vain memories, as well as the unconscious, intangible making of important ones. The smallest moments of life we never pay attention to, which slam back in our mind when the loss become more sensible. This is a delicate and touching expression of the construction of our sentimental personality.

(s) ++ (w) ++ (m) ++ (i) +++ (c) +++

• If you're interested in seeing this student film (not yet available commercialy), please contact directly the director, TOSSAPOL BOONSINSUKH, at this email.

P.S. My apologizes to Tossapol for taking so long to finally write up this long overdue review. And many thanks to CelineJulie at Limiteless Cinema for recommending this beautifully contemplative film.

Erice-Kiarostami

Victor Erice - Abbas Kiarostami. CORRESPONDANCES
Paris MoMA Sept 19, 2007 - January 7, 2008

The meeting of two contemporary masters : what a perfect cinephilic event in all imaginable ways. Their full filmography will be screened over 4 months which is a rare occasion in itself, as their films are usually hard-to-see. It's always admirable when artists are celebrated at this level before passing away. This exhbition was first created in Barcelona in February 2006 by Alain Bergala and Jordi Ballo. Then moved to Madrid, now Paris. Australia booked it, and it will probably tour around the world. The presence of these filmmakers will be the major asset of this exceptional event to dialogue with eachother and with the public. Two conferences will be broadcasted live online!

• L'Histoire des Trente, Year 2000 : Films on Time (Sept 22 / 18:00 GMT+2) with the short films projected : Ten Minutes Older (2001/Kiarostami); Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet : Lifeline (2002/Erice); Roads of Kiarostami (2005/Kiarostami); La Morte rouge (2006/Erice)
• Question de Cinema (Dec 8 / 14h30-19h GMT+1) with Victor Erice, Abbas Kiarostami, Alain Bergala, Fabienne Costa, Jean-Michel Frodon, Stéphane Goudet, Youssef Ishaghpour, Jean-Pierre Limosin, Jean-Philippe Tessé, Marcos Uzal.

Kiarostami will also stage a live performance with video installation.

The centerpiece of this event will be the 10 video-letters Erice and Kiarostami have been exchanging the past 3 years at the suggestion of Alain Bergala. This could be as consensual and formulaic as a portemanteau project commissionned by a third party who imposes an idea to creators who don't need directions. But this project sounds really exciting.
Both filmmakers who happen to share the same age of 67 are discreet and introverted (especially Victor Erice who makes one new movie per decade) accepted to interact artistically by investing the short format of video-essay. Looking at the sent dates, Kiarostami seems less motivated or slower, but looking at the stills from the videos his contribution seems less literal (in a penpal way) and more abstracted, poetical (in the production of stand-alone pieces). Imagine if we could have a trace of a correspondance between Tarkovsky and Bresson, Satyajit Ray and Kurosawa...

• 1) El Jardin del Pintor (Erice/Spain) VE to AK, 22 april 2005, 9'30"
• 2) Mashhad (Kiarostami/Iran) AK to VE, 5 Sept 2005, 10'
• 3) Arroyo de la Luz (Erice/Spain) VE to AK, 22 Oct 2005, 20'18"
• 4) The Quince (Kiarostami/Iran) AK to VE, dec 2005, 12'
• 5) José (Erice/Spain) VE to AK, 18 Jun 2006, 7'19"
• 6) Sea Mail (Erice/Spain) VE to AK, 10 aug 2006, 3'49"
• 7) A Rainy Day (Kiarostami/Iran) AK to VE, 11 mar 2007, 11'10"
• 8) A la deriva (Erice/Spain) VE to AK, sep 2006 - mar 2007, 13'24"
• 9) Treasure Map (Kiarostami/Iran) AK to VE, apr 2007, 7'23"
• 10) Escrito en el agua (Erice/Spain) VE to AK, may 2007, 2'35"

Accompaning these videos, an exhibition of multimedia works by the two artists around the themes they have in common : childhood, landscape, roads, trees, silence... Notably there will be an artificial forest scenographied by Kiarostami himself. As well as their latest short films : Roads of Kiarostami (2006/Kiarostami), made for the Korean festival, and La Morte Rouge (2006/Erice), made for the original exhibition in Barcelona. The good news is also that Victor Erice is currently working on a new series of films called "Memories and Dream"!

RETROSPECTIVE (list of films projected)

Of Victor Erice I've only seen 2 (El Espiritu de la Colmena, El Sol del Membrillo) so I'm most excited to finally discover El Sur, and his short films.
I know very little of Kiarostami (Close Up, The Wind Will Carry Us, The Taste of Cherry), his films are not projected very often, especially the lesser-known. Thus I'll be able to catch up with this major oeuvre of our time that everyone around is praising.
I would love to see everything, and I'll try but if I can't, please let me know which titles I must not miss in priority.

ERICE'S CARTE BLANCHE

Since Erice filmography is considerably shorter he was offered a Carte Blanche to show alongside films he liked.The original list Erice submitted was declined by the curators because the titles were too familiar for the French public and had enough exposition already. So these films will not be shown at the exhibition but it's important to know Erice elected them originaly to illustrate, inspire, nourish and dialogue with his own filmography :

• The Kid (1921/Charles Chaplin/USA)
• I was born but... (1932/Yasujiro Ozu/Japan)
• Treasure Island (1934/Victor Fleming/USA)
• Germany Year Zero (1947/Roberto Rosselini/Italy)
• The Bicycle Thief (1948/Vittorio de Sica/Italy)
• Los Olvidados (1950/Luis Buñuel/Spain)
• Moonfleet (1954/Fritz Lang/USA)
• The Night of the Hunter (1955/Charles Laughton/USA)
• Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959/François Truffaut/France)
• Ivan's Childhood (1962/Andrei Tarkovsky/Russia)
• Mouchette (1967/Robert Bresson/France)

The recurring theme was obviously "childhood" as seen by classic masters of cinema history.
Meanwhile, it's a pleasure to discover, instead, more films recommended by Erice as his favorites, ones we never heard of or aren't as widely available as the above titles. So here is the final list, that will be screened :

• Las Hurdes (1933/Luis Buñuel/Spain) Short DOC
• Espoir, Sierra de Teruel (1939/André Malraux/France) director's cut
• The Saga of Anatahan (1953/Josef von Sternberg/USA)
• Chibusa yo eien nare (1955/Kinuyo Tanaka/Japan)
• Acto da Primavera (1963/Manoel de Oliveira/Portugal) DOC
• El verdugo (1963/Luis Garcia Berlanga/Spain)
• La Tía Tula (1963/Miguel Picazo/Spain)
• Uccellacci e uccellini (1966/Pier Paolo Pasolini/Italy)
• My Childhood (1972/Bill Douglass/UK)
• Queridísimos verdugos (1973/Basilio Martín Patino/Spain) DOC
• L'Ordre (1974/Jean-Daniel Pollet/France) Short DOC
• Lost, lost, lost (1976/Jonas Mekas/USA)
• My Ain Folk (1976/Bill Douglas/UK)
• We Can't Go Home Again (1976/Nicholas Ray/USA)
• My Way Home (1978/Bill Douglas/UK)
• Dalla nube alla Resistenza (1979/Straub/Huillet/Italy/France)
• La verdad sobre el caso Savolta (1980/Antonio Drove/Spain)
• El viaje a ninguna parte (1986/Fernando Fernán Gómez/Spain)
• A Comedia de Deus (1995/João César Monteiro/Portugal)
  
  One last choice was denied by the right holders :
  Khaneh siah ast / The House Is Black (1962/Forough Farrokhzad/Iran)

The recurring theme here would be "resistance". I love to look at a Carte Blanche listing, because like a favorites list, it tells so much about someone's personality and particularly about their cinema vision and sensibility. And it's the opportunity to share a part of this filmmaker's cinephile culture.

More later when the exhibition opens... [video-letters 1 - 2]

Related : Exhibition coverage in e-Cahiers (Sept 2007); Errata podcast, Robert Davis and J. Robert talk about Kiarostami's Homework (1989); Girish : Abbas Kiarostami's Early Films; Zach Campbell : Kiarostami Until 1987

Rosenbaum, Dreyer and cynicism (4)

Take a look at Rosenbaum's review (in Chicago Reader) for Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves and let me know if you can spot a pattern between Bergman and von Trier in regard to a certain NYT op-ed piece. Déjà vu? Also interesting to note the generational argument that Bordwell also lifts in his recent post. Here are the highlights :

"I'm far from sharing von Trier's cynicism, but I think there are many reasons for respecting it, most of them generational. People born before 1950 often had good reason to feel hopeful, at least during the late 60s and 70s; those born later -- von Trier was born in 1956-- had less and less reasons to feel that way. A massive backlash against the earlier generation's optimism is still going on, an indication of how potent the optimism was. (...) Within such a context, a passionate desire to create and even respect a character like Bess--however many stylistic and thematic paradoxes this entails--is clearly a heroic aspiration.
Von Trier may be deeply cynical, but he's less so than Terrence Rafferty was when he recentlly wrote in the New Yorker, "If Breaking the Waves becomes a hit, von Trier will have proved that the american audience for foreign films wants today precisely what it wanted in the boom years of the 50s and early 60s: nudity plus theology." A little later he added, "It's tempting to attribute the decline of the European film to the increase, over the years, in the erotic explicitness of American movies." When he says "decline" and "the European film" it can only be in the context of the American marketplace--specificaly the European films selected by American distributors, the tip of the iceberg Rafferty seems happy to accept as a whole. Apparently he believes the only reason films are made in Europe is to satisfy Americans who want to see tits and ass mixed in with their theology, and if these needs can't be met, European filmmakers might as well han over their assignments to "pure" American artists working free of such pressures. (...)

I can't recall much nudity or theology in European movies such as Mon Oncle, Breathless, The 400 Blows, Jules and Jim, Last Year in Marienbad, Eclipse, Ashes and Diamonds, or [Bergman's] The Magician--to cite only a few of my favorites that did well during those "boom years" (alongside such commercial flops as Pickpocket, Lola and Dreyer's Gertrud). (...)

I can certainly understand Rafferty's anger at the sarcasm and falsity underlying von Trier's approach--since I become angry every time I think of Breaking the Waves "replacing" Ordet (though that's surely a false syllogism). (...)

A less sympathetic reading of this flexibility might be that von Trier is "too cynical to believe even his own cynicism"--as Andrew Sarris once said of Billy Wilder. But I would prefer to regard Breaking the Waves as a search for belief that acknowledges the land mines separating a 70s consciousness from that goal, a search that burrows ever deeper into irony and ambiguity without reaching the sincerity it strives for--but without collapsing into the nihilism that I see all around me in commercial fare. (...)

Is Breaking the Waves a religious film? I doubt that von Trier knows the answer to that question--just as I doubt that Dreyer would have known the answer if he'd been asked the same question about Ordet. A vast universe of thought, feeling, and artistry divides the two films, made over 40 years apart, but this uncertainty is the point at which both of them become interesting."

Jonathan Rosenbaum in "Mixed Emotions" : review of Breaking the Waves, Chicago Reader, Dec. 6, 1996. Also in Essential Cinema (2004), chapter "special problems"

Now I can agree with Rosenbaum's 1996 reasoning. Thank you for correcting what sounded wrong in the 2007 NYT.
Though it seems that anyone making films around Denmark must be compared to Dreyer... I see the connection between Breaking the Waves and Ordet, but Dreyer is not the end all argument to judge a film in particular. Not every cinema has to be about Dreyer, has it? We certainly could look past this aspect to focus on the film itself. What is the connection between Bergman and Lars von Trier?

My unanswered comment at the Chicago Reader's blog [EDIT: Rosenbaum replied on his blog since]:

"Why would Bergman's use of "torture" on his fictional characters be different, in principle, to Dreyer's (or Bresson's)?
Jonathan, in your Essential Cinema essay, you seem to be more generous towards Lars Von Trier's cynicism in Breaking the Waves, than you are for the entire oeuvre of Bergman. You reckon there are creative, interesting ways to deal with misantropy.
If the debate is about the content and moral purpose of such sadism, then we shouldn't stigmatize "misanthropy" in itself, and focus on Bergman's hollowness (if that's the case) rather than "sadism" (which is a cliché).
I don't know what you think of these following auteurs, but on the specific case of "misantropic treatment" what degrees separate the "cynicism" of, say, Bresson (Balthazar, Une Femme Douce, L'argent, Le Diable Probablement), Kaurismaki, Herzog, Cassavetes, Elaine May (Mickey and Nicky), Peter Watkins, Alan Clarke, Polanski, Kubrick, Kurosawa (Dodesukaden, The Lower Depths) , Kim Ki-duk...
If you admire any of these, what justifies their harassment of fictional characters that doesn't work with Bergman (and I think he's at least greater than a few on the list)."

Could someone answer me?

Rosenbaum v Bergman (3)

(Continuation from posts 1 and 2)

I'm having trouble to finish my commentary because I can't wrap my head around his talking points. They sound self-contradictory and we could track down quotes from his past articles where old Rosenbaum disagrees with new Rosenbaum. Nothing really makes sense, and I need someone to explain it all.
Although he knew what he was doing when he wrote that (he called it upon himself), I feel bad about continuing this investigation because Jonathan is understandably worn out by all the heat he got... And I still admire the cause he defends. I just can't accept that he would point finger to a scapegoat in order to raise attention for his victimized champions. In the end this is about the lack of wide public fame of Dreyer and Bresson, because within the private circles of auteurists, scholars and cinephiles, none of these masters have been forgotten. His only rational to apply different standards to various parts of cinema is to oppose favorite auteurs to least favorite auteurs.
I agree that it's a shame that other masters' death have been overlooked, but that's not a reason to scorn Bergman because he's lucky to get more posthumous attention. The mainstream attention is elective and lacunary... so what? We're not going to change the mass by burning idols... Rosenbaum's wrath goes against the mainstream cultural awareness, yet all his accusation are directed at Bergman himself, who had no business in moving and shaking public trends...

"Of course, if anyone wants to argue that Bergman deeply altered our sense of film language and/or had fresh things to say about the modern world to the same degree as these other filmmakers, I'm all ears. The article is meant to stir the pot, not close the lid. (...) I'm perfectly happy to listen to counter-arguments defending the beauty, seriousness, authenticity, and/or importance of Bergman's thoughts and emotions and what they contributed to our own thoughts and feelings. Maybe Bergman DID have something to teach us all about the Death of God." J. Rosenbaum (at a_film_by)

So the burden of proof rests onto Bergman's defenders, as if we had to justify ourselves. Before to bring counter-arguments, we'd like to see solid arguments in the first place. It was his job to at least sketch out a potent framework, an insightful angle that seriously puts into question Bergman's merits. He didn't. That's not a fair debate.

"I'd just like to hear more about (...) what he did to enrich (as opposed to confirm or ratify) other people's views of the world, hopefully in terms that I don't find overly familiar or glib or boring. All of which I find in some of the larger claims made for Bergman that I've been hearing for almost half a century. This is what my piece was reacting to." J. Rosenbaum (at Scanners)

Now he wants us to write a book-length appreciation of Bergman's legacy with never-heard-before ideas, to disprove his 1000 words-long unsubstenciated gratuitous mood piece...
This is very difficult to engage with this polemic without starting from scratch to debunk the classic shortcomings reproached to any controversial filmmaker. The tabula rasa proposed to re-evaluate every steps of the oeuvre makes Bergman an exception in the auteurist realm, where we ought to demonstrate all over again his legit signature and the cinematic value of his style.
It doesn't seem to me that he's shown a willingness to open and encourage this debate.

If at least he would distanciate himself from this shaky article, I could reconcile his usual sound arguments with this one-time provocational rant. But he's in denial. All he's been doing lately was to justify his editorial line through formal limitations (he blames the NYT editor, the word count, the imposed timing, the NYT hype, the short notice, the --not so forgotten-- Bergman fandom...) instead of backing up or revisiting his allegations.
He's on defensive mode and doesn't make the discussion easy to engage for his contenders, raising the stake of legit dissent to hard-to-meet requirements. Now he has seen Fanny And Alexander, he asks his detractors to watch both versions, the theatrical and the long TV version before they could dare to dispute his claims...

I appreciate how Jonathan took the time to respond to the attacks on several blogs, replying to Ebert, Bordwell and the guys at a_film_by. Though all my comments (on his blog in particular) have been ignored so far [EDIT: he's replied since, see the comments in my next post]. I thus undersand my response is not welcome to stir his pot. He hasn't developped further any of his arguments either, patiently waiting for detractors to come up with all the ground work to re-demonstrate that Bergman is not a minor auteur. Even if it is flagrant, it is not as quick and easy than to ruin a reputation with a few punchlines.

Then again, he digs his own hole (about Bordwell's take on his op-ed piece) :

"Although I haven't yet made it to the end of David Bordwell's piece apart from skimming it (I tend to get bored when he writes long, no matter how accurate he often is), I agree with most of what he said in the first two-thirds or so. I even emailed him to agree with him that nothing I was arguing was especially new. I also agreed with his statements about generations. (...)
All perfectly true. And I do value a lot of David's work for these reasons. But as a nonacademic, I have to admit that there are times when I'm more interested in reading writers who are factually unreliable but do more to stimulate my imagination and sometimes do even more to change the way I watch films. The classic instance of this: Noel Burch." J. Rosenbaum (at Chicago Reader)

Are we to understand that his (factually unreliable) op-ed piece is meant to "stimulate the imagination"? I wonder how trashing unsubstentially any critically acclaimed master can change the way we watch films... since it's what any uneducated viewer could do when they are bored by a challenging work of art. He thought that the NYT was the right platform to further blur the line between gratuitous slander and educated, analytical criticism. Therefore degrading the level of film criticism in the public mind.
Bordwell took the time to elaborate a thought-out response to some of the challenges thrown out in the NYT, yet Rosenbaum doesn't even care to read Bordwell's post from end to end??? Did he want to open a debate or not?

Next : Rosenbaum, Dreyer and cynicism (4)

Rosenbaum v Bergman (2)

Continuation from first post (here):

I knew Rosenbaum didn't like Bergman as much as I did, because he prefered to have 19 Godard films in his Top1000 Personal Favorites and could only squeeze in 3 Bergman's (Sawdust And Tinsel, The Magician, and Persona, incidentally they are the ones cited in his article to point to Bergman's flaws, that's how much he loves them). Our tastes are opposite regarding this pair of auteurs as I would reverse the numbers (20 Bergman's and 3 Godard's). Ironically, if we replace "Bergman" with "Godard" in this op-ed piece, I would probably agree with everything he says about the intellectual hype, the idolatry around JLG, the ego, the absence of form invention, the fakery of his gimmicks, the fading of his aura, the overrated canonization. And that's bogus. It's so easy to give a caricatural overview actually. I can't wait for Godard's funeral... ;)

From the outrage of seeing such a wide coverage of obituaries in the mainstream press, Rosenbaum can't stand that this type of (popular) cinema would be associated any longer with "art cinema", the pure cinema (non theatrical, in Bazin's terms) thus redraws the line between him and the rest of hardline auteurs who never met critical or public success. Obviously Bergman's fame is too suspect for the low-budget, unpopular camp of obscur artists. Excommunication is inevitable. Bergman, "founding father" of "boring art films", must be excluded from his own family. If he gets so much love after his death, he can't be boring enough.
Basically Rosenbaum tells the world : "All of you who came to art films with Bergman and found it entertaining, well, you haven't seen boring yet, this isn't the real thing, art is not that easy to watch, I'm talking about Dreyer and Bresson, they couldn't entertain an audience to save their lives. If you have fun, if you see boobies, if you can follow the story... you're not seeing art, and I don't even call it cinema!" (sarcastic dramatization intended)
And I doubt insulting people who made the effort to go to Bergman has any chance to open Dreyer and Bresson to a wider audience (if that was the intended goal)... This baseless condemnation is not even going to help the "cause" anyway.
For the record, let me say that I do love all three, Bergman, Bresson and Dreyer! I can see a difference of style, ambition and achievements between them, but it's only a global estimation of all of their respective caracteristics (and my subjective taste) that would help me to rank them (if I had to). I wouldn't dismiss one just because he works differently from the other. I wouldn't use the quality of one to gauge all the others. I wouldn't oppose them. The referential standard should be external to the trio, a vision of cinema as an art, not as the embodiement of one particular auteur's craft, for all others to be compared to.

"Rosenbaum", "New York Times", "Bergman" : 3 reasons (each alone would suffice) why there shouldn't be any fallacious rhetorics in this article! There are more credible ways to propose a re-evaluation of a long time resident at the cinema pantheon. If it's ok to question Bergman's authority, we could legitimately question Rosenbaum's authority as well, right?
Though he has since posted a few needed clarifications (on a_film_by, at the Chicago Reader blog, and at Scanners) :

• "It's true that I praise Bergman as an entertainer and compare him to George Cukor (which to me is no insult)"
• "I'm certainly not trying to say that Bergman is beneath anyone's interest"
• "Welles could even alter our sense of film language while remaining a fluid storyteller, so I'm not even arguing that these values are always mutually exclusive"
• "Bergman's taste for silhouettes moving across horizons" was a compliment
• "Bergman's 'seeming contempt' for digital video in Saraband isn't a sin in my book but a plus"
• "Bergman is not a poor director"

Wasn't it Rosenbaum who reproached to Farber we couldn't tell a compliment from a blame in his criticism? This is the same situation here. Considering the controversy raised on a_film_by and on the blogosphere, I'm not alone being confused. If Rosenbaum had to explain that he didn't believe Bergman was bad there was something wrong with the overall irony in his writing.

What annoys me most is that his argumentation mixes legitimate issues that become dubious when combined. 1) Disputing canon, 2) Observing social trends and 3) Comparing auteurs. We could argue all year long about who the greastest filmmaker of all time is, rank them artificially, number their works, mesure their popularity... but in the end subjective popularity and critical evaluation only overlap by coincidence not by causality. Everything he describes (about overblown cult, overrated acclaim, under/overexposition), could be said of Bresson, Dreyer, Tarkovsky, Welles, Godard, Tarantino, Spielberg... given the proper timeframe and geographical context. Are we looking at the big picture or at minor historical incidents?

1. CANONIZATION
   "My reason for being rude was to bring up what I see as either limitations in his work or limitations in the way his work is usually received and discussed"
   Rosenbaum thinks Bergman's position in canons and pertinence in today's film culture should be re-evaluated. OK. We could blame academics and critics for overrating him. We could reconsider the reasons why history has given him so much importance THEN, and why it is obsolete NOW.
   What we can argue about are the critical judgments, the premise and limitations of certain theoretical concepts (such as "auteurism", "art film", "modern cinema"), whether Bergman's individual films or entire oeuvre belong or not to such or such label, whether such labels grant/deny him a seat in the pantheon.
   But we can NOT use a starting point nobody would agree on (the alleged fact that Bergman is forgotten) and use it as a common ground for the discussion. Reality is not debatable. And this fact is not even relevant, and never will be, to define someone's historical importance.
   We could compare the strengh and weakness of some auteurs. We could compare all sorts of dichotomic arguments : classic/modern, narrative/experimental, sophisticated/rough image, stylized/naturalist performances, auteur/acteur-driven stories, politicized/fictional inspiration... but to assume there is a consensual agreement about the hierarchy of these aspects of cinema that justifies a place in the canon requires at least a demonstration because I doubt everybody will agree to set the standards on this proposition.
   
2. FAME
   Rosenbaum thinks that Bergman's popularity is undeserved, that his audience likes his films for the wrong reasons. OK. He speaks of "availability", "uncontestable major figure" (among mainstream obituaries), "Google hits", "vitality", "visibility", "outsized reputation", "appeal", "New York audiences"... this is a rhetoric in reference to his public image which is unrelated to an academic estimation of his historic importance. The 2 phenomena are non sequitur, yet a causal tie underlies throughout the article. Fame has nothing to do with artistic authority. Bad artists can foster a huge fandom without any trace of talent.
   Rosenbaum declares he meant to emphasis "fashion" (Bergmania trend) for "its immediate impact" (on NYT readers). It's fine to highlight a sociological study on the good/bad reasons why cinema gets incorporated in the general culture at various levels. But the main issue with the piece is that it blames a social phenomenon on an academic canon, and vice-versa.
   
3. EQUIVALENCY
   "Part of what I was trying to get at in the article was the interesting paradox that Bresson and Dreyer were widely regarded as beyond the pale in the 60s, when Bergman was at the height of his fame, and that audiences are now beginning to catch up with what they were doing while we're less likely to understand more things about his work now than we did in the 60s or 70s." (a_film_by)
   Oh the irony! So what? How does this matter other than for the historical anecdote? Are we talking about how famous an auteur can get, or how high an auteur can climb the canon?
   Rosenbaum likes and prefers Dreyer and Bresson, so be it. He should write us a great book to celebrate them instead of blaming Bergman and complaining how the rest of the world doesn't share his personal taste. This hatchet job looks like getting rid of the top contender in order to undermine the competition and leave more room to the runner-ups (he would prefer to see at the top). We all have underdog favorites in our individual pantheon. But we have to realize that a global establishment is a collective consensus that doesn't match each individual pantheon perfectly. There will always be someone in the canon we don't like and it doesn't matter, because the canon doesn't represent us individualy, but a conservative highest common denominator.

"(...) I don't think history can ever be repeated -- either in film history or in the history of film reception and film appreciation. That's why I can only laugh when one of my colleagues remarks that none of the recent films can "duplicate" or "match" or "equal" or "approximate" the masterpieces or classics of the past, because my own definition of the singularity of a major film, tautologically speaking, is that it's singular."
Jonathan Rosenbaum in Essential Cinema (2004) -- Introduction.

Why confront auteurs in deathmatches if their works are singular?

To be continued ... (part 3)

Rosenbaum's prejudice in Bergman obituary

Bergman aside (we'll get to that later), Jonathan Rosenbaum's contrarian reaction to this filmmaker's legacy (article in NYT, August 4th) only demonstrates a selective memory, dishonest arguments, double standard principles and the poorest clichés on art cinema.

"Almost every statement in this rather shallow article could be challenged on the ground of irrelevance, biased vision,unfairness, questionable reasoning or sometimes even plain silliness. I am surprised that this comes from a critic of J. R.'s stature"
Jean-Pierre Coursodon (on a_film_by)

Let's just do that (for those who only skimmed through the article) :

1. Deception #1 : "Like many of his films, “The Magician” hasn’t been widely available here for ages." (Anecdotale Fallacy)
   
   Sure, from a filmography of 62 films, only few made it to DVD yet, but that's more than most auteurs have (including Bresson or Dreyer with a smaller filmography, respectively 14 and 23). Who are we kidding?
   He corrects on a_film_by : "I agree that many Bergman films are out on DVD, even though it's obviously a much smaller fraction of the whole work than one finds with Dreyer and Bresson."
   Only 34 of his films are available on DVD at FNAC !
   _
2. Deception #2 : "His works are seen less often in retrospectives and on DVD than those of Carl Dreyer and Robert Bresson" (Unrepresentative Sample Fallacy)
   
   Does Jonathan Rosenbaum (JR) assume the American distribution market alone defines the worldwide relevance of an auteur? I considered JR as the less insular of American critics until now.
   _
3. Manipulation #1 : DVD availability and Academic syllabus (hic et nunc) are the absolute reference to measure the long term relevance of an artist in film history. (Appeal to Authority Fallacy)
   
   JR usually protests the contrary when defending his overlooked champions (Burnett, Tashlin, Tarr, Ivens in his book Essential Cinema). Not to mention the entire history of film criticism proven wrong time and again after a misguided disdain (La Règle du Jeu, Lola Montes, Welles, Ford, Hitchcock, Hawks, Nick Ray, Ozu, Kurosawa) or premature appraisal (Duvivier, Autan-Lara, Delannoy, Clément, Wyler, Stevens, Zinnemann...). Of course JR didn't forget that, so why even trying to push THAT argument to demonstrate anything about an auteur's stature?
   I can't comment on the presence of Bergman in Academia, especially not in the USA, but I doubt it's true worldwide, and there are probably other possible, practical explanations than a fall in disgrace. Persona, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Cries and Whispers are often cited by film scholars and published in referencial books.
   Even if it was true, we could only regret that one filmmaker is forgotten. The idea to rejoice about certain films being left out of film studies is a sad thought, and a shame for the diversity of cinema culture as a whole. Why would an ecclectic critic like Rosenbaum use this argument to establish a false "common wisdom"?
   _
4. Simplification #1 : "Bergman isn’t being taught in film courses or debated by film buffs with the same intensity as Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles and Jean-Luc Godard" (Unfair comparison)
   
   What JR disputes is that Bergman is "an uncontestable major figure in cinema" and he uses (greater) major figures to diminish his stature in comparison. But *if* he's inferior to these names (which is itself a whole aesthetical debate and certainly not a given), it doesn't mean that he's not part of these major figures. I can think of many mediocre films by these 3 masters that don't mesure up to Bergman's consistant oeuvre. Why even oppose masters against eachothers as if the unique quality of one excluded the other unique quality of the other.
   _
5. Manipulation #2 : "two master filmmakers [Dreyer and Bresson] widely scorned as boring and pretentious during Mr. Bergman’s heyday"
   
   Bergman has always had a "boring" label attached to his cinema, though maybe not by the same public. But JR uses references of various reliability, eras and demographics (DVD industry, obituaries, film buffs or Google) to assert Bergman's reputation, then he equates that directly to the critical pan of a specific time and place for Dreyer and Bresson as if there was a valid correlation to find in such a nebulous comparison.
   Fame v. Critical appreciation (= equivalency?) .
   We can clearly read between the lines that JR's actual grudge is not Bergman (whom he kindly aknowledges some talent), but the circumstances that have given Bergman the celebrity his favorites (Bresson and Dreyer) deserved. Well, Bergman is not responsible for the blindness and favoristism of critics at large and the audience throughout ages, no more than he should feel guilty about the decent fame his films earned (within the Art Film league, which is definitely smaller than the Mainstream league!).
   _
6. Truism #1 : Obituaries are unanimously respectful, admirative and complacent.
   
   An obituary is a boring job, you remind people who the person was and what achievements of theirs are left in History. Have the "socially aware adults" lost any sense of respect for someone's funeral memory? Bergman's thunder had to be shared with Antonioni already!
   It's not an opportunity to spit on someone's grave, for curtesy sake! Bergman only made 1 film in the last 10 years. JR believes mourning has lasted long enough (5 days) to begin right away with the free bashing. If the biased adoration had lasted months after his death, I could understand JR's impatience to balance with a dissenting view. Sure, every proclaimed master can and should be scrutinized and desacralized, no question about that, but each thing in its own time.
   It's not like if JR had only this one time soapbox-opportunity to seize, in order to restore the truth... he's got a weekly column for himself in the Chicago Reader (among other platforms). [EDIT: Rosenbaum corrected this assumption of mine on his blog]
   _
7. Manipulation #3 : "If you Google 'Ingmar Bergman' and 'great,' you get almost six million hits." (Appeal to Popularity Fallacy)
   
   Now JR gets his audience poll from an internet search engine, with a laughable query! (it doesn't even mean that the adjective "great" on these pages is associated to Bergman, or that these pages shine a positive light on him. One could think of "great failure/disappointment" for example...) How come someone could publish THAT in the New York Times???
   If you like silly populist statistics, here's IMDb top250 The Seventh Seal makes #81 (18,700 votes!) and Wild Strawberries #158 (10,460 votes), Dreyer (film with most votes : 6,600 votes) and Bresson (film with most votes : 2,000 votes) are nowhere to be found. What does it prove about their respective popularity among IMDb voters?
   _
8. Simplification #2 : Bergman circa 50ies reduced to superficial clichés only the shameless populist reviewers would dare to mention : sexiness, nudity, beautiful actresses. (Caricature)
   _
9. Manipulation #4 : Blaming Bergman for his imitator (Woody Allen) and his incidental/local fan base crowd (which is assumed unworthy). (Guilt by Association Fallacy).
   _
10. Deception # 3 : "Mr. Bergman’s star has faded" (Begging the Question Fallacy)
    
    Evidences produced were false or deceiving so how is that conclusive? It's not because you say it or wish it that it's a reality. Here are some surveys showing that not everybody has forgotten about Bergman yet... (I'm not suggesting these consensual/local/timely polls represent a solid foundation to determine someone's universal pertinence but apparently they contradict JR's sense of reality)
    - The 13th Most Influential Director of All Time (2002 MovieMaker Poll)
    - Survey of Filmmakers: Top 25 Directors (2005 poll by The Film Journal)
    - The Top 100 Directors #7 (They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? December 2006) 11 films ranked in the top1000 (for comparison : Dreyer #13, 5 films in top1000 / Bresson #16, 9 films in top1000)

There is an ongoing debate around the article at a_film_by where Jonathan Rosenbaum responds to certain accusations.

Zach Campbell at Elusive Lucidity also debunks some of JR's fallacies.

Jonathan Lapper at Cinema Styles does the same breaking down job to uncover the fallacies.

And Girish shares his reservations too.

There are probably many things to denote about Bergman's stylistic (arguable) achievements and content (arguable) value, but serious critics shouldn't have to resort to fallacies and other smoke screens to put a critical point across in the hope to confuse and persuade an ignorant readership. This is low standard criticism in my opinion (for whatever it's worth).

Next we'll look into the critical accusations...

Blind spots in film history

"It's been four years since this prophetic and poetic masterwork was made, and it's just arriving in Chicago. But I wonder if we're ready for it even now. For starters, what do we know about Joris Ivens? Although he's generally considered to be one of only a handful of great documentary filmmakers, history and politics have conspired to make most of his work unavailable and unknown in this country. I suppose some would argue that this was partly his fault -- because he had the bad taste to become a communist filmmaker and to work for much of his life in communist countries as opposed to the "free world". Unfortunately, the freedoms granted in our "free world" haven't yet included the opportunity to see most of Iven's work. He's made more than sixty films, including antifascist work, work supporting Indonesian independence (which led to the withdrawal of his Dutch passport), and work in collaboration with Ernest Hemingway, Jacques Prévert, Gérard Philipe, Lewis Milestone, Frank Capra, Jean-Luc Godard, William Klein, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and Agnès Varda (the last five worked with him on the 1967 sketch film Far From Vietnam). He died during the early summer of 1989, just before most of the communist world in the West collapsed.

A Word of advice to film artists who want to get ahead : don't move around too much. Film history often gets subsumed under national film history, so filmmakers who keep moving risk getting lost. And stay out of politics, since getting into them invariably puts you on either the winning side or the losing side. If you're on the losing side, many national film histories will write you out entirely; if you're on the winning side, chances are your film will date faster than last week's newspaper."

(About Joris Iven's A Tale of the Wind) Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader, May 29, 1992. Also in Essential Cinema : On the Necessity of Film Canons (2004)

Deauville 2007 - Asian cinema festival

Deauville 2007 - Asian cinema festival
March 28 - April 1st 2007 official website

• Homage to Park Chan Wook (South Korea) 9 films - the "asian Gus Van Sant"
• Homage to James Lee (Malaysia) 5 films - almost the "asian Bresson", young promising chinese talent based in Malaysia.
• 3 documentaries on sports in North Korea, by Daniel GORDON (the only filmmaker allowed to export cinema outside N. Korea)

03-31-2007 : Michel Ciment on France Culture (REAL audio, French, online for a week)
Guests :
- Bruno Barde (Artistic director of the Deauville festival)
- Jean-Pierre Dionnet (Video editor for popular asian movies, who introduced Kitano, Miyazaki, Johnny To, Kim Ki-duk to the West)
- Pierre Rissient (critic, filmmaker, festival curator, discovered Eric Khoo, Lino Brocka, King Hu, and helped Lester James Peries, HHH, Edward Yang, Hong Sang-soo)

Here are my notes, rough transcript of the conversation (if you're interested in following the talk in French with the audio file)

• P. Rissient : in 1975 he restored for the Cannes Festival the director's cut of King HU's Touch of Zen (1973), which was a commercial and critical bomb. Brings Lino Brocka's Insiang (1976) in Cannes in 1978.
  Showed a film by LEE Han-sang to WANG Bing (West of Tracks) who said it was the most mandarin film he saw.
  James LEE (Things We Do When We Fall In Love) is part of a chinese trend of young cinema in Kuala-Lumpur, Malaysia, with HO Yuhang (Sanctuary) or TAN Chui Mui (Love Conquers All).
• J-P Dionnet : lots young Hong Kong filmmakers look now towards mainland China, a market opening to violent movies. Tsui Hark, John Woo, Ringo Lam return from Hollywood to work in China. Hideo Nakata says he lost 5 years of his life in Hollywood. Friedkins said, upon watching Nakata's film, he's a master of fear, it's more frieghtening than The Exorcist, which used more grandilocant ways.
• J-P Dionnet : Odd inspiration of the new asian generation from the popular european cinema, maybe unacademic. Mamoru Oshii's favorite film is Kawalerowicz's Mother Joan of the Angels (1961). PARK Chan-wook projected Chabrol's Le Boucher (1970) during shooting of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002). John WOO's slow-mo were inspired by Lelouch's Un Homme et Une Femme (1966), and the idea of trio protagonists is from Robert Enrico.
• P. Rissient : SHIN Sang-ok's lost film, Arch of Chastity, (restored for Cannes Classic 2007).
• B. Barde : Festival jury members, especially in France, aren't enthused by asian cinema in general, and need to be convinced, seduced more. While asian cinema is the most inventive today, succeeding in festivals around the world.
  Only 38 asian films officialy distributed in theatres in 2006 (5 % on a total 700 films distributed in France) = 1% of total audience.
• M. Ciment says French filmmakers are attracted by Asia. Benoit Jacquot filmed in India, Olivier Assayas in Hong Kong.
• J-P. Dionnet : cultural barrier between the West and Asia. We don't understand the mix of genres, the rhythm. Pang's Re-Cycle (at Cannes 2006) about the culture of abortion in China (for a male heir desired by families) dealt with the memory of these forgotten "lost" babies, while the West misinterpretated it as a pro-life film. The asian culture has its own aesthetical referents so should be explained to western audience.
• M. Ciment : The first and only asian film awarded a Palme D'Or in Cannes was Farewell My Concubine (1993). While Venice awarded Rashomon in 1951, and continues to celebrate asian cinema. French and European audience for asian films is not as wide as it should.
• P. Rissient : HHH (only popular success is City of Sadness because of the Golden Lion) and Tsai Ming-liang have a very small audience at home in Taiwan. Jia Zhang-ke only begins to be projected in China with a small audience. Auteurist cinema in Korea beguins to struggle (Hong Sang-soo, Im Song-soo, Im Kwon-taek). Im Kwon-taek's Seopyeonje sold 1 milion admissions in 1992 (record breaking before the new soar of Korean market). Lee Chang-dong's Peppermint Candy in 2000 (700,000). Bong Joon-ho's The Host in 2006 (15 milion, record to date). Then Park Chan-wok I'm a Cyborg, but that's ok in 2007 makes 700,000 and is considered a bomb because his previous films made 3 or 4 milion admissions, because of a new culture of blockbuster in Korea. Korean auteurs struggle because actors refuse to work with non-bankable directors.
• J-P Dionnet : Kitano was despised in Japan until he received a Golden Lion in Venice, and could then make a career at home. Miike went from direct-to-video to theatre distribution thanks to his European fame. Kyioshi Kurosawa's films have more success in Europe than in Japan. The auteurist asian cinema in Japan, Taiwan or Korea is essentially supported by its European success.
• P. Rissient : Korean producers irrealistically want to mimic Hollywood big budget debauchery. Actors are overpaid.
• B. Barde : Dangerous economical inflation in Asian cinema. Kurosawa's last films were supported by USA or France production (Anatole Dauman, Serge Silberman). Asian distributors ask for excessive fees just because the film was selected in a major international festival in Europe. The major French distributors who know the market prices make a pass. The big films end up with small distributors that postpone distribution for years because they don't have the budget to market them appropriately. While the internet-savvy fans know very well how old is the movie. Fans can't maintain the original excitation so long. Fans wants the fresh movies.
• P. Rissient : international distributors for asian exports ignore the reality of the market prices and hold back releases because of high prices. Like for Hong Sang-soo's Woman on The Beach, still not distributed in France, despite the friendly support of Marin Karmitz (who distributed his last 3 films with success) who proposed to buy the film before its production, an offer too small was turned down. [Which explains why I still haven't seen this film, while usually Hong's film were released every year after Cannes] His new film will be in Cannes this year and will compete in theatres with the previous one. Hong Sang-soo is like Rohmer, needs a release with 2 years apart to let the audience wants for more.
• J-P Dionnet : Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), and the japanese new wave was supported by European funds. There should be a better cooperation between Asia and Europe or USA if it wasn't about absurd market prices and regulations/quotas, treaties, institutional disagreement to define the nationality of the production of a film. Korea wanted to sell Samsung and Hyundai to the USA, thus agreed to drop the cinema quotas (that protected national films).
• P. Rissient : KOFIC subsidies ($400,000), unchanged, didn't go up with the market boom so is not a significant help for production anymore.

DIGEST : Mars 2007

Unreviewed screenings, current reads, links, recommendations, free talk, questions, thoughts, informal conversation, anything... comments welcome.

>> updates below (sticky entry for a month)

Digital filmotheque of Alexandria

"Digitizing film ashes"

Following the recent debate around a universal cinema digital database started by 3 articles in the New York Times (March 18 2007) :

• Manohla Dargis : The Revolution Will Be Downloaded (If You’re Patient)
• A. O . Scott : The Shape of Cinema, Transformed at the Click of a Mouse
• Noah Robischon : Little Films on Little Screens (but Both Seem Set to Grow)

Later put into perspective with a reality check and some ethical questions :

• Dave Kehr
• Kristin Thompson : The Celestial Multiplex (thorough analysis)

"A screen is a screen is a screen" (Dargis)

From the consumer's POV, maybe, but from a critic I'd expect a little more subtlety in comparing a Kinetoscope, a theatre and an iPod...The miniaturization of the image causes obvious aesthetic issues that we can't just ignore because everybody else doesn't mind. If the audience only cares for stories, whatever size they come in, critics at least should defend the inherent properties of a projected image and the fine details on a panoramic screen.
I prefer to hear critics complain about how the frame composition of a widescreen movie was optimized to fit the 4/3 TV ratio. Do we want the film grammar to become iPod-complient with adjusted colors and extreme close ups to compensate the end-size loss?

There are 3 ways to look at the situation. The consumer, the producer and the historian perspectives. Each have their own desirs and limitations. They aren't quite compatible.

1. The average consumer wants access to fashionable movies, here and now, and doesn't care about copyright infringement or the way of living of its makers, cost of the digital-transfer, scarcity of the print, perenity of the source, authenticity of the version (director's cut, censorship, bootleg, betrayal of translation), profitability of the transaction. The consumer is not stubborn, if the download is not accessible it's easier to click on another title that could be seen now. There is too much choice, too little time and the unicity of films doesn't stand out to them. Movies are interchangeable commodities.
   Not everyone in the world wants to see every films ever made, even if they are available and free!
   
2. The producer (in a broad sense, including director, copyright holders and distributors, everyone with financial interest) follows the natural law of the market : demand and supply. Popularity makes profitability. They want to reach the masses, the mainstream taste and sell a product to the wider population even if it means adapting non-offensive material, P.C. cuts. They want to invest in what can pay back, and prefer to shelf an item that becomes too costly to maintain available to the public. They don't have a long term historical perspective, but the terms of their bank loans. Perennity of "out-dated" (non-marketable) sources is not their priority.
   
3. The historian (archive, scholars, festivals, critics, filmmakers, cinephiles) doesn't care about availabilty to the public, or profitability of any given title, but unlike everyone else, they care about the survival of films, undiscriminatively. And if we let films decay and get lost we'll never have a universal cinemathèque...

The priority here is not universal access to a miniaturized digital version of every movies, because that's not even what consumers ask for. Kristin Thompson explains very well how this utopia is not only unpractical, but also unreachable.
The priority is to save original prints! It's no time for arguments... film stocks' lives are limited and original colors fade away quickly.

Oddly enough Dargis and Scott both embrace the consumer perspective, in a blissful and naive technological utopia, without considering films that will never be digitzed. Instead of complaining about the poor distribution of foreign and older films on american theatre screens (ruled by Hollywood hegemony : 95% of projections!), critics in the New York Times apparently prefer to speculate on whatever might become available on iPods... as if it was a society column about new behaviors rather than their take on the fate of cinema.
Kristin Thompson checks the feasability of the operation assuming the Producer's perspective.

I'd like to ignore consumerism and capitalism for a moment, and recall the invaluable mission of Henri Langlois.
The idea of a Cinémathèque, that seems natural today, was born in total illegality. Thanksfully Langlois identified the only rightful priority before it was too late. Regardless for copyrights, legitimacy, maintenance or restoration costs, he went for the urgency and saved, stole, bribed, deceived, exchanged, bought on the black market everything he could. Many key treasures of cinema history would be unknown and forgotten for ever had he respected the rules and waited for funds or a commercial viability. The reason I mention Langlois is because the digital stage of film history brings up the same problems he once faced.
Clearly the idea of a universal cinematheque shall not be put in the hands of the market or copy right holders. Public availability is minor issue. I don't care if I can't watch all films I want, here and now, as long as I know the masters are all in a safe place and that they will make film prints or digital versions become accessible one day, to me or my children and their children.
The history of cinema is over 100 years old and it's about time its preservation should be taken into consideration on a global scale, as a worldwide heritage! We lost too many originals already.
Just like architectural sites meaningful to humanity are protected worldwide by international laws (UNESCO), we need an international consensus and uniformization of regulations, control and formats to ensure, facilitate and optimize the preservation of a maximum of films across the globe.

The superior ethical question is to protect the source material. Only afterward could you contemplate the wonders of making it available at the click of a mouse... And I don't care much which format the majority of consumers will choose to watch them on. We can't stop the progress of technology, and we can't control the (bad) habits of new generations. The critic is there to set an example not to encourage the latest ephemeral and silly trends. The VHS came and went, leaving us with the same problem of film masters unchanged.

• It's intolerable, in the face of art history, that studios have the final decision on keeping films on the shelf for ever.
• It's intolerable that countries who can't afford a decent restoration would let their archive perish.
• It's intolerable that films keep on dying every year despite the available technology to save them today.

What can be done about it?

The Air Is On Fire!

david K lynch

I visited the David Lynch exhibition yesterday at the Paris Fondation Cartier. Having seen some of his paintings online already, some of his photographs and most of his short films/animation, I wasn't as overwhelmed/surprised as I imagined. The scenography is rough and colossal (industrial scafolding structures) but there are only 4 rooms to cross, bathed in a semi-darkness, kinda half-night. Although some of the pieces are really impressive and worth a direct contact. Others require some explanations/guidance... You can imagine the typical Lynchian soundscape resonating in the speakers, especially certain paintings have their own sound with a pushbutton.

There are about 30 canvas, and some big ones, bigger than me. The hall they are installed in is a glassbox where the sun casts changing shadows on the painting surfaces. They are in tune with the work he did at the Art School (like the ones we see in his short films : Six Figures Getting Sick only more abstract/trash formally and more focused on sexual trauma and dreamwork). He refused to order them chronologically so it's impossible to make correlation with the evolution of his filmography... it's a shame.

With his return to the roots in INLAND EMPIRE, especially the scene towards the end, when Nikki/Grace shoots The Phantom in the face, that looks a lot like one of his large canvas titled "This Man Was Shot 0.9502 Seconds Ago" from 2004 (see e-Cahiers Feb. 2007, p. 28). I would love to see him develop this kind of experimental video-collage palimpsest in his future features, as well as playing around with non-representional sculptures like he did in The Grandmother or Eraserhead. That would create captivating atmospheres, and shake up the classicist establishment of movies.

Although among his hundreds of doodles (on post-it's, napkins, script pages, bills...) we can note the current obsession with a certain movie, either by the inclusion of names, words or special design refering to one of his film. Hey there is even one doodle with "Jonathan Rosenbaum" written on it! aint it cool? are they friends? ;)
There are also tel numbers, addresses, overheard lines, various notes incorporated under the drawing or decorated around. This guy never stops drawing everywhere he goes it seems, on any material, with any pen and with a free wheel inspiration. More than with his films, we could talk of the surrealist gameplay of automatic writing for his doodles (or canvas). "Automatic doodle". The shapes developped to fill the page with geometrical pattern carefuly avoid the usual conventions of classicism symetry, orthogonality, equilibrium, continuity. Rarely does he include ready-made recognizable shapes, sometimes diformed characters. It's a universe of texture and lighting vibration rather than a representation. It's fascinating to see his constant research for original creativity, something that doesn't look like something else, new shapes, new signs, a life of its own striking the imagination of the viewer (and Lynch himself too obviously) in unexpected ways. It's a kind of a Rorschach inkblot test Lynch imposes onto himself. Or maybe the tentative re-enactment of a nightmare peculiar atmosphere. His canvas too eschew formality, but melting a 3D amorphous character into the background of the same color. Meanwhile he likes to add letters and words as if to spell out each elements, each action, each moment.

He has blown up a few of his doodle in large serigraphies, which highlights a powerful design with the scale leap (harmonious abstract composition, simple colors, graphical dynamics). Lynch says they'd make amazing rugs and I agree, a huge thick "contemporean design" carpet or a mural Aubusson tapestry (like Cocteau used to do).

The mini drawing of a room materialized into a piece of set we can walk in is a cool experience. The carpet is made out of a handdrawn pattern and the walls with childlike paintings, even funky furniture with soft edges.

They also installed a small theatre, with black curtains and the 4th wall opened, where Lynch's experimental shorts and web animation are projected in loop. There I watched Out Younder, Six Figures Getting Sick, The Alphabet and The Grandmother.
So it's funny to stand there watching his films, surrounded by his photographic work on the walls. I really like the wall projected films in exhibitions, it adds a multimedia experience and also decontextualize the animated image. It's like watching a movie in a cinema while walking around the room, without sitting at the same place all the time.
They do that at the Cinémathèque exhibitions too. Last year they projected Renoir films on the walls (next to Auguste Renoir paintings), Almodovar clips on transluscent panes hanging from the ceiling (visible from both sides), and for the German Expressionism exhibition too, loops of silent scenes next to the wall sized posters. Films used to animate screen-walls create such an interactive theatrality within our environment.

The Photoshop doctoring of old pornographic photographs or recent nudes, dismembering their bodies into alien shapes, is among the most interesting researches. We can feel a distant influence of Max Ernst collages, Dali's soft bodies, and of course Bacon's carnal butchery. Which takes a disturbing dimension when fabricated from photos of real-life people, rather than from paintings.

Cinema Talk Webcast Vault

You will find here various audio/video broadcast (radio, TV, internet, ciné-club, conference, YouTube) available online (permanently or temporarily) regarding the broad topic of cinema. Critics debate, weekly radio broadcasts, lectures, Cinémathèque Ciné-Club discussions, interviews, soundbytes... In French or English, from the past or the present.
Some links might go broken after a while (usually a week for the regular broadcasts), others are archived by the server, so you never know if they are still available.

I'll post all the audio links here, for archival purpose, instead of placing them in the monthly DIGEST posts. Feel free to add your own precious findings here and to discuss the content. The thread of comments will serve both as a link/updates log and open comments for visitors.

Access to this archive post from the Navigation Menu at the top of the sidebar. Subscribe to the updates of this post with this RSS feed.

Find below the links to websites with permanent collections of feeds, archive and links :

LATEST MUST LISTEN

• Où va la critique? Nouveaux objets, nouveaux supports, nouveaux enjeux Roundtables (Centre Pompidou, Paris) Video 1h52' FRENCH
  

PERMANENT ARCHIVES

• Video-on-demand schedule/archive at Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris MoMA) FRENCH
• Les Belles Captives Cinématographiques : conferences from La Cinémathèque Française (recorded on France Culture) FRENCH
• Mardi Cinéma (France Culture) FRENCH
• INA : Institut National de l'Audiovisuel - Archive pour tous FRENCH
• La Voix de Gilles Deleuze (Université Paris 8) FRENCH
• La Cinéphilie - Antoine de Baecque 2005 - part 1 & 2 (France Culture) FRENCH
• Profession Critique (by Jullier) : Michel Ciment / Jean-Michel Frodon / Serge Kaganski FRENCH
• Le Son des Cahiers - Interviews FRENCH
• UBUweb Sound (music, interview, poem) ENGLISH-FRENCH
• Roundtable on Jean Eustache (Centre Pompidou) FRENCH
• "Director's Cut" Symposium (Toulouse, 01-31-2007) 1, 2, 3, 4 FRENCH
• Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub with Thierry Jousse (1997) (Film de Culte/net4image) FRENCH
• German Expressionism, Paris Cinémathèque lectures : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
• La Lumière au Cinéma, Paris Cinémathèque lectures : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
• The Film-makers' Coop (Avant Garde interviews) ENGLISH
• Arte-audio (soundbites, Flash player, free MP3 download) FRENCH
• La Machine et l'Artiste Jean Douchet, 26 parts (France Culture) Radio FRENCH
• Film Forum (archive) Q&A podcasts ENGLISH
• Moving Image Pinewood Dialogues (MP3 + transcripts) ENGLISH
• Monash University Film & TV studies (MP3 + videos) ENGLISH
  
• Canal-U Université Ouverte des Humanités (MP3 + videos) FRENCH
• La critique de cinéma et le défi Internet : de la revue au blog ? Roundtable (Cinémathèque) Video 1h58' FRENCH
• Film Criticism in Crisis (Film comment - NYFF2008) Videos + transcript ENGLISH
• La Cinémathèque Française (conferences, events videos) FRENCH
• Movies and the Imagination (videos + transcript) Berkeley ENGLISH
  

AUDIO BROADCAST

• Projection Privée (France Culture) Radio FRENCH RSS Feed
• Le Masque et la Plume (France Inter) Radio FRENCH RSS Feed
• L'Avventura (France Culture) Radio FRENCH RSS Feed
• Actualité du Cinéma (RFI) Radio FRENCH
• Le Cercle des Cinéphiles (Cadrage) Radio FRENCH
• La Bande à Bonnaud (France Inter) Radio FRENCH
• Errata (Robert Davis) Webcast ENGLISH RSS Feed
• TSPDT Project video essays (alsolikelife) Video webcast ENGLISH
• Edelstein (npr) Radio ENGLISH
• This conference is being recorded (Workproject) Webcast ENGLISH
• Rocchie's Online Film Community (Cinematical) Podcast ENGLISH
• Expanded Cinema (Joao Ribas) Webcast audio-video ENGLISH RSS Feed
• Hors Champ (Radio Campus Paris) Podcast FRENCH RSS Feed
• Cinéma et Dépendances (France Inter) Radio FRENCH RSS Feed
• Pierre Murat (Télérama) Webcast FRENCH RSS Feed