Critical Fallacy #13 : Inconsistent Standards

FIGURE SKATING

Old system (until 2005) detailing individual judges notes (1997 European Figure Skating Championships; Paris) :

Meaning of the marks : 0 = not skated ; 1 = very poor ; 2 = poor ; 3 = mediocre ; 4 = good ; 5 = very good ; 6 = perfect and faultless

Average mark (mean) for Technical Merit : 5.73 | Standard Deviation for Technical Merit : 0.1

Average mark (mean) for Presentation : 5.83 | Standard Deviation for Presentation : 0.07 

New International Judging System for Figure Skating :
Judging in figure skating is inherently subjective. Although there may be general consensus that one skater "looks better" than another, it is difficult to get agreement on what it is that causes one skater to be marked as 5.5 and another to be 5.75 for a particular program component. As judges, coaches, and skaters get more experience with the new system, more consensus may emerge. However, for the 2006 Olympics there were cases of 1 to 1.5 points differences in component marks from different judges. This range of difference implies that "observer bias" determines about 20% of the mark given by a judge. Averaging over many judges reduces the effect of this bias in the final score, but there will remain about a 2% spread in the average artistic marks from the randomly selected subsets of judges. (Wikipedia) 

A Standard Deviation of 0.1 is what Figure Skating calls "subjective" or "observer bias"!

* * *

CINEMA

The year-end poll (LA Weekly-Village Voice) works quite similarly to the old figure skating system. Except not really...

• unlike everyone else, 47 reviewers out of 95 don't believe The Tree of Life is Top10 material (or didn't watch it)
• 54/95 don't believe that A Separation is Top10 material (or didn't watch it)
• 61/95 don't believe that Melancholia and Certified Copy are Top10 material (or didn't watch them)
• 64/95 don't believe that Uncle Boonmee is Top10 material (or didn't watch it)
• 69/95 don't believe that Mysteries of Lisbon and Margaret are Top10 material (or didn't watch them)
• 70/95 don't believe that Drive is Top10 material (or didn't watch it)
• 71/95 don't believe that Take Shelter is Top10 material (or didn't watch it)
• 74/95 don't believe that Meek's Cutoff is Top10 material (or didn't watch it), yet they all end up in the final "Top10"

Films don't need to qualify to enter the "competition" (contrary to Cannes), EVERY film distributed in the USA is eligible (which is about 560), left to the voters's discretion (though if reviewers were to rank a predetermined set of 10 titles... the result would be just as ridiculous). There are not 10 certified judges, but 95 random people who happen to get paid for their whimsical opinions in the press (including the infamous Dan Kois! lol). Voters didn't even see ALL nominated titles that others are ranking as the best of the year. (See Presumptuous Best Film in the World)

#1 The Tree of Life : 48 mentions / 307 points

Average score (mean) [48 ballots, including 5 unranked ballots] : 6.4pts out of 10 | Standard Deviation : 2.6

Average score (mean) [95 ballots, including the 47 ballots ignoring that film] : 3.2pts out of 10 | Standard Deviation  : 3.7

Which means that the top ranking contestant of the year was only scored by 48 out of the 95 judges; therefore half of the judges didn't even deem it worthy of a 10th place on their top10. Which is ludicrous if we're considering the election of the cream of the crop of a given year.

The maximum score would be 950 for a film ranking 1st on every ballot. The winner gets less than a third of the best possible score! The 10th film (Take Shelter) gets less than a 1/7th of the perfect score. That's how wide the discrepancy runs within just 10 ranks. Basically it means that there is no consensus at all (not even a 51% majority!!!) on which film (or which 10 top films) should be elevated above the rest. Because reviewers don't know what they are judging, and only defend their arbitrary, whimsical, random, uneducated taste. This is not judging. This is not evaluating. This has nothing to do with a "consensual" poll.

The standard deviation is huge! In figure skating it was 1 or 2% of the total mark, here it is between 40 and 115% of the total mark!!! Meaning that movie reviewers can't agree on the estimation of the one "best film of the year". To me, it spells total absence of a common value standard, therefore invalidates the very purpose of tabulating a CONSENSUAL poll in the first place... If voters don't use a common standard to pick contenders, adding up the votes will NEVER produce a significant result !!! Just deal with it, embrace your subjectivity, and stick to publishing individual ballots then.
If half the voters pick their favourite apple and the other half picks their favourite orange... the winner will be either the popular apple or the popular orange, but either way  half the voters will count for nothing in the final result. This is not a consensus. It looks more like a polarized presidential election than a convergent critical evaluation.

The cynics will say that rating figure skating is easier, that cinema is an art and not a sport, thus even more sensible to "subjective evaluation". Although Olympics judging is harder to appreciate than to look at the finish line screen shot in horse racing, precisely because all contestants are very close in technical skills (figure skating qualifications have very high standards contrary to populist Movie competitions). 

To be honest, a Top10 (scoring from 1pt for 10th place to 10pts for 1st place) is not equivalent to the figure skating system, which starts at zero for failure. A 10th spot on a Movie Top10 is not failure, but it could get the film ranked as low as 154th on the final list; which is the lowest in the top third of ALL FILMS OF THE YEAR (basically one guy thought that film was Top10 material and it ends up barely better than 66% of all the 560-some films of 2011). We're not really dealing with the cream of the crop here, at least not according to the evaluation standards of this panel... Anyway, the difference with figure skating is that the final score fluctuates between 132/950 (10th rank) and 307/950 (1st rank); instead of between 5.6/6.0 and 5.9/6.0 for skaters (for a single skater in the example above, but is representative of the range of marks in the final stage of the competition).

J. Hoberman (who didn't vote for The Tree of Life) sees this poor result as a validation of his own taste. Although all the other films (much less controversial) received an even weaker consensus! Comforted by the fact he didn't want Malick to win, the article he wrote to comment the result of a poll his newspaper organized is an apologetic message to his readers for such a "high-brow" film topping their poll... Or pander to his broadest readership should I say. 

My point is that competent sport judges roughly agree on which contestant is great and which one isn't podium-worthy. While in film culture, people who posture as "judges certified to grant year's-best ranking" may find the same film either a masterpiece or a total failure. This is not what should happen when evaluating art. Respected art critics agree more or less on the best artwork, and nitpick with as much subtlety as figure skating judges (minimal standard deviation). They might argue about the respective ranking within a top10, which top10 material to rank above another top10 material.

I don't think anyone should agree 100% on which single film is THE best of the year, or THE best ever... because picking only one over other comparably worthy contenders is too difficult (be it The Tree of Life or Citizen Kane...). We don't ask critics such an exactitude. But when limited to the few dozens praise-worthy films distributed in a single year, electing the 10 best ones must be roughly consensual around 15 or 20 contenders at least (not 160 possible candidates depending on the voter's point of view). Is cinema evaluation just as random as picking 10 titles from a hat? It would seem so when we look at these results...

Regularly we can read editorials saying that there aren't ENOUGH "good movies" each year to make a satisfying line up in Cannes or any other major festival... yet at the end of the year there isn't even 50% of the voters to agree on which ones are these few award-worthy titles! WTF?

And I'm not even factoring in the lackluster line up of the American Distribution schedule, or the titles elected in this final top10 (that are not necessarily my own idea of a "Best of the Year")... 

Related :

• Parsing the data: Passiondex (J. Hoberman, The Village Voice-LA Weekly; 22 Dec 2011) 
• Double Standards (Film Comment) 4 / Critical Fallacy #14 : Equivalence / Short-sightedness 

Festival Télérama 2012

This exceptional "festival" organised every year (15th edition) by French cultural newspaper Télérama, brings back on COMMERCIAL screens (that participate to the event, it is more than 1 event in one museum where films get only screened once by an art-friendly institution and only in NYC for example...) for a week the "best films" of the previous year. The choices are Télérama's taste, subjective and idiosyncratic, but they are amongst the most important films. Naturally slightly biased in favour of French films (a third of 15 selected) because the event is a reflection of the French (artfilm) zeitgeist, but as you see it is no way overwhelming (1 is a Finnish co-prod, another is belgium), it roughly corresponds to the proportion of French-language films on the admission market in France. The rest being all foreign (and not ONLY from Hollywood!).

So for most of these films this is a theatrical re-run (only a couple are still running at the moment because their release was in the past few months). And look at how many screens they get! It's more than on the USA market, on first run, when the novelty appeal is at the maximum... There are still arthouse exhibitors wanting to screen artfilms on second-run! There are still spectators who want to watch these (second-hand) films, months after the marketing campaign of the première!

Look how many screens Kaurismaki's deadpan-grim-comedy gets... it reaches the "blockbuster" level of distribution, which is almost equivalent to 3000 screens on the USA market, where it only came out on 23 screens. One important factor is that the film is originally shot in French language, with French actors... but it's very much a Kaurismaki style, meaning an acquired taste and a very limited "niche" for art film lovers. Well, in France, it still sells as well as a commercial event movie!

If A Separation had the same distribution in the USA it would open on over 1200 screens! Can you imagine the shock? This is what Americans call a "Wide Release", meaning reaching out nationwide, beyond just NYC, LA and Chicago... there is no home advantage for an Iranian film, it is considered a foreign film on both markets. I don't know how many screens it was released on in Iran, but it was some kind of a "blockbuster" at home (even if it is somehow critical of the government!) How do you explain that the totalitarian Iranian government is LESS discriminatory against this pamphlet than the American market is where it is totally harmless to the dominant ideologies? You can see on IMDb that many countries smaller than the USA opened it on more screens!

There are 7 times more screens on the USA market than in France. So the middle column indicates the equivalent of screens for a larger market like the USA. Not only for these few films listed here, but for most artfilms, the distribution in the USA isn't equivalent to what is happening in France, but also INFERIOR to the raw numbers a market 7 times smaller like France! The 40000 American screens cannot show as many art films as the 5000 French screens... go figure. Even if you suck at math, if you can't read graphs... this is a situation pretty easy to grasp for anybody. It becomes obvious that the concept of an "arthouse" niche has a very different meaning in the USA.

The only titles that have a better USA distribution are 2 American films, Drive and Black Swan. Remember this event is only a RE-RUN of films that already had their full commercial first-run (see comment below)

Titles	re-run commercial screens (France; Jan 2012)	x 7 (FR-USA screen ratio)	commercial first-run screens (USA 2011)
Le Havre (FR-Finland)	414 [B]	2898	23 [I]
Les Neiges du Kilimandjaro (FR)	234 [M]	1638	not released
A Separation (Iran)	176  [M]	1232	31 [I]
La guerre est déclarée (FR)	148  [M]	1036	not released
L'Exercice de l'Etat (FR)	145  [M]	1015	not released
Drive (USA)	136 [M]	952	2904 [B]
Habemus Papam (Italy)	134  [M]	938	not released
Incendies (Canada)	117  [M]	819	90 [N]
Il était une fois en Anatolie (Turkey)	107  [M]	749	1 [I]
La Piel que Habito (Spain)	105  [M]	735	116 [N]
Black Swan (USA)	100  [M]	700	2407 [B]
Tomboy (FR)	90 [N]	630	9 [I]
Le Gamin au vélo (Belgium)	80  [N]	560	not released
Les bien-aimés (FR)	41  [N]	287	not released
Essential Killing (USA)	20 [N]	140	not released

[B] = Blockbuster distribution ;  [M] = Mainstream distribution ;   [N]  = Niche distribution ; [I] = Near Invisible

The middle column (FR-USA screen ratio) is the number of screens the film should get IF the USA market was the equivalent to 7 times France, which is the ratio between available screens on each market. It gives an indication to convert the numbers in a scale more familiar to USA box office numbers.

The French films (or French language films) benefit from hometurf advantage, so it's unfair to compare them directly to a distribution inside English-language territory. Most of them aren't even distributed anyway. We know what range of distribution they will get though...

However the American films get almost the same treatment on the French market, inside a French-language territory, than at home.

Drive was released on 363 screens max during its first-run in France, which is the equivalent to 2541 screens on the USA market.

Black Swan was released on 472 screens max during its first-run in France, which is the equivalent to 3304 screens on the USA market.

Notwithstanding the fact that half of the most important films of 2011 (according to Télérama) haven't been released in the USA, the few that did get picked up by American distributors are not given the mainstream distribution that they get in France, and for some, not even a Niche distribution... just a pity screening, out of spite.

For reference, Intouchables, the latest French-made blockbuster, reached 898 screens nationwide (which corresponds to 6286 screens for the USA market, twice the blockbuster level), with over 18 million spectators so far. And the new local blockbuster sensation "La vérité si je mens 3" was released this week on 1027 (which is the level of an American blockbuster like an Harry Potter carpet-bombing distribution in France, the maximum number of screens we see given to a single film on the French market)


Related :

• France supports the big screen
• Skimpy Specialty Distributors / Second Class Film Distribution
• October 2011 releases USA

Shit Movie Reviewers say

Top10 Epic Fails of 2011 for the Film Press :

1. "One thing I truly believe is that real critics and real cinephiles should have absolutely no track with common sense" (Adrian Martin Ph.D) PURE BULLSHIT (BRAINWASHING)
2. "We should give the audience the tools to quit their jobs so they can devote their life to cinema" (Chris Fujiwara) PURE BULLSHIT (DELUSION)
3. "Meek's Cutoff is a waste of everyone's time, effort and money" (Neil Young) CENSORSHIP OF ARTISTIC EXPRESSION (DICTATORSHIP)
4. "As I get older, I find I'm suffering from a kind of culture fatigue and have less interest in eating my cultural vegetables, no matter how good they may be for me..." (Dan Kois) ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM (COMPLACENCY)
5. "The [Cannes] festival is something of France's answer to the Oscars (more so than the Césars, its annual film awards) and a modest bulwark against Hollywood hegemony." (Manohla Dargis) MISCHARACTERISATION (DELUSION)
6. "Being a contrarian can be staying in your own personal comfort zone, of your taste, and your likes and dislikes. And I think that's indeed a danger. It can be something that is very self-indulgent." (Cristina Nord) INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY (BRAINWASHING) 
7. "There is always someone worse off than you. Watching starving peasants, or people in terrible dire straits, you leave the cinema and you think ' Well maybe things aren't so bad' In a way that's confirming you in your comfort zone" (Neil Young) SOPHISTRY (BRAINWASHING) 
8. "[..] Il n'en va pas de même dans la critique. Celle-ci a une longue histoire de « copinages »" (Independencia) INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY (BRAINWASHING) 
9. "Therefore, 'film school' -and the attitudes and stigmas commonly associated with it- does not necessarily require a new kind of analysis, for no new kind of analysis can exist for a sensibility that has been heretofore hardly been analysed." (Ricky d'Ambrose) GRANDILOQUENCE (MANNERISM) 
10. "That's right, when all else fails, denouncing this or that film festival for failing to measure up in some way or other works everytime. All you have to do is invent some expectation or obligation that said festival level failed to meet, add water, and voilà! And let's face it, everybody likes a good fight as long as they're not the punching bag. You think I'm joking, I'm not joking." (Gavin Smith) PETTINESS (COMPLACENCY) 

This is not reasonable nor responsible to declare such things in public, this is undermining an already moribund film culture.

After 60 years of Film Criticism history, what people write today must be at least as smart as what has been learnt and written in the past, or not written at all. 

Movie reviewers need to take themselves less seriously... 

and take Cinema more seriously.

If the journalists in your favourite newspaper, your favourite reviewer, your film teacher, a book written by a film scholar start to sound like the above bullshit without an hint of sarcasm, shame or remorse... then run away, run as far as you can! And learn to think by yourself, teach yourself to detect self-serving egos talking out of their asses for the sole purpose to occupy the public conversation even though they have nothing to say.

N.B. see links for the context of these quotes! 

Theatrical Ad (ironic)

Movies shan't ruin your personal fun again ! Because the customer is always right. (sarcasm intended)

Related :

• American Fatalism 3 (Ebert) 
• Lazyass Moviegoers (ironic) / Deficiant Subjectivity 
• Dan Kois syndrome 1-2-3
• Overlong Entertainment 
• "Boring" is not a critical argument / Long and boring art movies (Guardian)
• Boredom (Charney) / On being bored (Phillips)
• “La Peur de l'Ennui” (anonymous Cahiers reader)
• “L'Ennui / La Noia / Boredom” (Alberto Moravia, 1960)
• “A Philosophy of Boredom” (Lars Svendsen, 1999)
• “Time-Stilled Space-Slowed: How Boredom Matters” (Ben Anderson, 2004)
• “Boredom” (Jahsonic)

American Fatalism 3 (Ebert)

"6. Lack of choice. Box-office tracking shows that the bright spot in 2011 was the performance of indie, foreign or documentary films. On many weekends, one or more of those titles captures first-place in per-screen average receipts. Yet most moviegoers outside large urban centers can't find those titles in their local gigantiplex. Instead, all the shopping center compounds seem to be showing the same few overhyped disappointments. Those films open with big ad campaigns, play a couple of weeks, and disappear."

Source: I'll tell you why movie revenue is dropping... (Roger Ebert; 28 Dec 2011)

He starts on a good note : the box office results are over-hyped (positively and negatively) to add drama to the industry and stir attention away from REAL issues. But then, his assessment of the situation turns to an individualistic distress about the audience lacking pampering treatment... as if THIS was the number 1 problem explaining the disastrous diversity awareness crisis on American screens.

He reports and supports the decades-old complaints among American audiences seeking excuse for not watching movies on the big screen : 

1. event-spectacle : see Long Tail consumers
2. tickets too expensive : is money the problem that the USA has and other countries in the world don't have to explain audience laziness??? The percentage of household expenditure for a theatre admission is 12 times lower than in the 40ies, which was the all-time largest cinema audience in USA history! (see:  Cinema admission pricing in the USA (1929-2002))
3. noisy auditorium : the concept of a quiet audience is a very recent invention in cinema history. People used to talk during Silent Film projections. Even with the Talkies, theatres used to be non-stop screenings back-to-back all day long, people coming in and out at any point of the film's duration. If these disturbances didn't prevent the 40ies to be the LARGEST audience of history, then today's audience sure can handle it without recoiling at home.
4. concession stand : as if anybody FORCED you to BUY food when you go consume cultural goods. Can't you just wait 2 hours before stuffing your face again? Do you buy popcorn at the library, at the opera, at an art exhibition too? That's proof you treat Cinema as leisure (consumer-oriented) instead of culture (artist-oriented).

So that's what stops American audiences from supporting "big screen exhibition"? Petty little selfish complaints... The resolve to access film culture isn't very strong if that's enough to make you give up. Stop crying like a baby and grapple the bull by the horns, it's up to you to stand your ground and reconquer the serenity of a public space destined to cultural education! 

Do you think that un-subtitled foreign films stopped the original cinephiles at Langlois' Cinémathèque? Wooden seats, sitting on the floor, standing up at the back... Poor sound quality, truncated silent film reels... Having to watch alternative films projected in the staircase of the Cinémathèque... Having to wait 2h for a midnight supplementary projection because the previous one was sold-out... and, OMG, no fucking concession stand!!!

If you want your country to own a film culture it deserves, you need to WORK HARD for it, to get out and FIGHT for it. Earn it. Win it back. If the French can do it, there is no reason why the American cinephiles or cinephiles from any country couldn't do it as well. The wealthy American market should be a safe haven for non-commercial artists, precisely because Hollywood already makes much more profits than any other market on Earth. France cannot afford to support foreign cinema at the expenses of French cinema, yet we do it, we pay for it. It wouldn't cost anything to the Hollywood multi-billion industry... and they don't even bother supporting World Cinema! What a shame! You've profited from world audiences for over a century now... don't you think it's time to GIVE BACK a little?

Writing about films that are invisible is a luxury you can indulge in a protected market like France, because films get distributed COMMERCIALLY there. Didn't you notice that for decades, whatever the navel-gazing choir-preaching press-niche published wasn't enough to open up Hollywood's stronghold on commercial screens? 

Writting is not enough if your local commercial market actively SUPPRESSES indie screenings, foreign blockbusters, critically-acclaimed foreign cinema, because the studios are scared shitless about losing 5% of their box office revenues to non-commercial films with low competitive value. This is scary indeed!!!

Nobody cares about your popcorn diet... GET THE BEST ARTISTS OF CONTEMPORARY WORLD CINEMA SCREENED IN AMERICAN THEATRES! NOW!!! And whine about your own selfish comfort in the theatre later... when cinema is no longer in danger of extinction. Get your priorities straight!

Related:

• France supports the big screen / La cinéphilie originelle expliquée aux néos
• Cinema admission pricing in the USA (1929-2002)
• Skimpy Specialty Distributors / Second Class Film Distribution
• American Fatalism (1-2)
• Voluntary Engineered Apathy
• Project: Validating Indulgent Movie Fandom 1-2-3
• Deficient Subjectivity

Skimpy specialty distributors

"[..] The notion that distribution is a hard-headed enterprise is correct. But the assertion that this leads to real competition is ludicrous - it ensures market domination by US producers. For all the blathering to the effect that US audiences have no interest in foreign film, in addition to university screenings across the thousands of US colleges, there is a vast array of small companies striving to meet the needs of this supposedly non-existent demand.
Decisions about the number of prints are also important during the final promotional effort for exhibition. combined with the advertising budget, prints often raise marketing costs to 50% of a feature film's total value. From a marketing perspective, the investment is justified, because more prints mean more opportunities for poster displays and for the film's title to occupy available marquee space, much like a billboard announcing a new product. Release strategies, therefore, usually include considerations of an optimal volume of prints as part of a single marketing event with advertising ad other promotions. Major distributors usually opt for wide US release, with 1,000 or 2,000 prints distributed and advertised on a nationwide basis, including '100 theatres in Los Angeles and 80 theatres in New York'. Wide releases have come to 'represent about 3/4 of total box office revenue'. In contrast, speciality distributors use a method called platforming, in which they release prints in 3 to 5 key theatres in Los Angeles and New York to build awareness through the local press and then 'platform' their films to other cities. Limited releases are those that do not appear beyond 2 or 3 major cities."

Global Hollywood 2 (Toby Miller, Nitin Govil, John McMurria, Richard Maxwell, Ting Wang; 2005; BFI)

Related:

• High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood (Justin Wyatt; 1994)
• Movie Marketing: Opening the Picture and Giving it Legs (T. Lukk; 1997)
• "Old-World Moviegoing: Theatrical Distribution of European films in the United States" in Film Journal International (Elisabetta Brunella; March 2001)
• October 2011 releases USA 
• Dissecting American Distribution / GQ vs Hollywood (Harris) / Second Class Film Distribution
• USA quarantine year's best films
• Slow release / Weak's Cutoff : No Cinephilia
• Long Tail Consumers

USA quarantine year's best films

This is what some 120 American movie reviewers believe ARE the best films of 2011 (or more exactly the ones that American distributors agreed to buy last year, which is a different matter altogether). This is not a selection imposed to them by the European elite, they chose these willingly and ended up with this consensus. Even if American critics love to remind that there is hardly 15 or 30 great films made every year, that would deserve to be shown in festivals... they still want to show they can name 50 films when year's end come.

Apparently the American distributors don't agree with the movie reviewers. If these are the BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR, distributors do not think they deserve a better exposition than a couple of screens to meet/build an audience.

We're not looking at the full list of obscure, elite foreign films, indies and artfilms shown in American festivals... These are the 50 very BEST ones, amongst those deemed "commercial" enough to be released by American distributors and exhibitors. Why even the very best doesn't get a special treatment?

There are 7 or 8 blockbusters (Contagion, The Rise of the Planet of the Apes are Best of the Year material? really???) because they wanna show they are close to the taste of the masses. American criticism is popular criticism. And, of course, all these titles with a "blockbuster release" are ALL Hollywood movies! The foreign title with widest distribution is French : The Artist (no subtitles issue, and a story ABOUT Hollywood!) on 472 screens. 

Although, these populist flicks are not quite at the top of the poll. The highest one barely makes the top10 and is targeted at KIDS! Obviously the American consensus is a lot more elitist than what they declare all the time in the media. 40 out of the 50 best films received a distribution inferior to 500 screens in a country of 40000 screens and 311 million population! 30 out of 50 best films got less than 100 screens !! 17 got 10 screens or less !!! 

30 films of the TOP50 are QUARANTINED on less than 100 screens nationwide each !!!

Even in France (with 7 times less available screens), 100 screens is a weak distribution for a successful art film (see below, The Tree of Life got 350 screens, and A Separation over 250!). So the vast American market should be able to attribute MORE screens than France to comparably successful art films!

From the top10 (You haven't seen 10 films better made than the ultra-academic A Dangerous Method???) : half of the 10 BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR had less than 20 screens !!! WTF are the American exhibitors doing??? Where are the art-film friendly art houses in the USA? There might be 20 or 50 art houses throughout the entire US of A willing to screen "niche" films with low audience potential, for the sake of the art of cinema, for the sake of world culture, for the sake of THE BEST 2011 FILMS IN THE WORLD... is that all? Is this a joke?

The Tree of Life : the one "BEST FILM" elected this year by AMERICAN critics is an AMERICAN film, in ENGLISH, with HOLLYWOOD stars and only gets 237 screens (see Weak's Cutoff: No Cinephilia for detail). Considering the absence of cinephilia in the USA, this kind of score is reaching for the stars for an "art film", an "indie". Don't say the reason is that Americans watch movies at home now... or multiplexes would have shut down by now, and they still release The Rise of the Planet of the Apes on over 3600 screens nationwide! The problem is not a dramatic drop of movie-going population, or the lack of infrastructure  (there are 10 times more screens available per title released each year than in any European country). It's just that the American moviegoer does not watch art films at all. And the few art film lovers that do exist in the USA are quitters, they are the ones who stay at home, and download foreign films illegally (when they don't buy DVDs).

Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives, "SECOND BEST FILM OF THE YEAR", is projected in 5 lucky theatres! How many Americans can watch it on the big screen with only 5 art houses opened? Seriously?

A Separation, "FOURTH BEST FILM OF THE YEAR", which was a popular success in France (with over a million spectators so far), was shown on 3 screens... (UK's and France's populations are 5 times smaller) Come on! This film is a MAINSTREAM NARRATIVE movie with a wide audience appeal, how come is it considered more obscure in the USA than Uncle Boonmee????????????????? Wow, it was really worth it to wait 1 year since its Golden Bear at Berlinale 2011, to find the right spot on the releases calendar and get 3 measly screens at the end of the year when the year-end polls and Oscar nominations are already closed... (sarcasm intended) American distributors are fucking useless. 

Don't ever tell me again there is a cinephile niche in the USA. You have no clue what cinema at its best looks like when you see it. Making money is one thing. If 90% of the screens were monopolized by the major studios to milk the cash cow, we'd think that the USA is a profit-driven industry, that still has 10% for an art film circuit. That's not the case (see: October 2011 releases USA).
There isn't even 1% within the plethoric American movie market to show the BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR. They can't "spare" 200-500 screens (which would still be less than what a Hollywood flop gets) for each of the 10 best films of the year. So we can't even say that there is a "minority" of cinephiles within the American movie goers... they are statistically (and commercially) INEXISTANT. You're not supporting World Cinema, you're not pulling your weight in the global balance. Not even the least benevolent effort at home (and help artists make some money on the American domestic market) to show a modicum of "counterweight" to the global hegemony Hollywood imposes on the world... American cinephiles don't even feel sorry for the Hollywood hegemony crushing local markets abroad. They don't even make the effort to support the big screen out of pity, if not for their own pleasure of watching FILM ART as it was intended.

Meanwhile the American media is totally oblivious to this appalling situation, fatalistically believing that France is an exception, that it is humanly, logistically, commercially, physically impossible to do any better for art films than 5 fucking screens nationwide... Yeah right. Nobody expects the USA to do as well as France (OMG they don't have ENOUGH billion dollars to fund such a miraculous enterprise...), but at least do "good" in the American market context. I'm sorry but this chart up there is not good by any standards (commercial or philanthropic), it is a FAILURE of an hypothetical art film circuit (if there ever was one), plain and simple. 

And smart-ass movie reviewers prefer to take cheap shots at Major Film Festivals than to deal with their domestic market and get some effective work done, culturally and commercially, for a viable art film circuit. Can't they figure out by themselves that there might be some serious (possible) improvements to be done??? 

There was an attempt of audience-self-empowerment (or Twitter-empowerment) for the neglected indie American film Margaret last year. That's a start. An American-made film. And the excuse to rebel against Hollywood decisions to limit screenings, was motivated by the access for this film to the "Oscars nomination" process... Was it a coincidence? I would hope that they are capable to protest for GREATER films too, foreign films that are ranked higher on the list these very reviewers produced. If Margaret deserves an outrage, maybe Uncle Boonmee, A Separation, Mysteries of Lisbon, Poetry, Film Socialisme, Le Havre, The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu, Le Quattro volte... would deserve a more respectful distribution, right? Why nobody speaks up? Why nobody demands a decent number of screens for these masterpieces even if they don't run for the Oscars? I wonder what they believe is the responsibility of a film critic...


Related :

• To America everything foreign is SLOW / Foreign film-friendly audiences
• Slow release / Where the Sun doesn't shine / Free market for La Libertad
• Tickets sold by nationality (EU vs USA)
• Second class film distribution
• Dan Kois syndroma 1-2
• Without Festivals / Sans Cannes 
• Skimpy Speciality Distributors 

USA to outlaw cultural sharing (SOPA)

What does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? At the TED offices, Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto -- a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume.

* * *

19 January 2012 : FBI shuts down megaupload / Anonymous retaliates / Megaupload song



Related:

• HADOPI (France) [PDF]
• DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act 1998) [PDF]
• MPAA not interested in democratized culture 
• Why it's important to reject SOPA, the MPAA and Piracy (Film School Rejects) 
• Copying is not theft (Nina Paley) 
• Copyright Forever Less One Day (CGP Grey)
• How YouTube thinks about copyright (Margret Stewart) 

La Cinéphilie originelle expliquée aux néos

Histoire de la cinéphilie 

(La Fabrique de l'Histoire; France Culture; 16 jan 2012) partie 1 - 2 - 3 - 4

1. Grand témoin Philippe Cassard

16-01-2012 [MP3] 54'

Pour débuter cette semaine, nous recevons le pianiste classique Philippe Cassard, interprète de Debussy et de Schubert, qui vient de publier chez Capricci un dialogue avec Marc Chevrie et Jean Narboni.
Ils y discutent du rapport de la musique et du cinéma: la place de la composition, le jeu entre musique et bande son, les correspondances secrètes entre un film et une oeuvre musicale éloignée...
Nous commençons cet entretien en écoutant le début de la "Soif du mal" d'Orson Welles. Philippe Cassard analyse le rapport des voix et de la musique d'Henry Mancini. Il nous explique comment il est devenu cinéphile et en quoi les films qu'il a pu voir nourrissent la préparation de ses propres enregistrements et concerts.

2. Trois fois par jour, rendez-vous au 29
Un documentaire d’Anaïs Kien, réalisé par Séverine Cassar
Avec : Bernard Eisenschitz, Michel Mourlet, Marc Augé, Albert Fert, Costa Gavras, Carole Desbarats, Serge Toubiana, Jean Narboni, Luc Moullet et Michel Ciment.

17-01-2012 [MP3] 54'

Partons de là, sur les marches de cet escalier de pierre, on y patiente, serrant ses pièces de monnaies au creux de la main, on y discute, on y trépigne, on y espère, où l’on anticipe. La salle de projection de la cinémathèque sise au 29 de la rue d’Ulm a vu passé les cinéphiles parisiens, ceux des ciné-clubs, ceux de la Sorbonne voisine, ceux des lycées du quartier latin et ceux de l’école normale supérieure.
Henri Langlois projette sa collection au gré de ses humeurs dans cette salle Jules Ferry à partir de 1955 et ouvre ainsi un lieu de vie aux jeunes gens qui y découvrent le patrimoine cinématographique mondial bien avant l’ère du cinéma à la demande. Les films sont alors des trésors qu’on accoure voir de peur de les rater définitivement au moment où la Nouvelle Vague bouleverse les codes cinématographiques. Après la génération des Rivette, Rohmer et Truffaut, ils sont nombreux a avoir formé leur œil sur les sièges en bois de cette salle mythique. Voyage dans un lieu de mémoire de la cinéphilie, dans l’antre de la salle Jules Ferry avec Carole Desbarats, responsable de la diffusion des savoirs à l’école normale supérieure et l’équipe de la Cinémathèque de Serge Toubiana, venue repérer les lieux.

Henri Langlois parle de la profonde solitude des cinémathèques :

" Les cinémathèques n'ont pas seulement à lutter contre le temps qui, chaque jour, rend plus difficile la recherche et la sauvegarde de cinquante ans de cinéma, contre les ravageurs pilleurs d'épave, contre la méfiance d'une industrie qui craint, à juste titre, la dépossession de ses droits, contre les intérêts de cette machine qui veut que le cinéma ne produise qu'en se dévorant lui-même. (...) L'heure est grave, jamais le danger de destruction des films n'a été plus grand. Aidez-nous. Apportez-nous la force, l'appui de l'indignation publique. Comprenez qu'on n'a pas le droit d'abandonner aux usines de produits chimiques l'art le plus significatif, le plus essentiel, le plus constructif de notre temps. Joignez-vous à nous pour arrêter ce crime contre la civilisation qu'est la destruction des négatifs des anciens films."

Texte d'Henri Langlois, pour le 20 ème anniversaire de la Cinémathèque

3. Emission d'archives : Festival du film maudit, Biarritz 1949
Avec : Frédéric Gimello-Mesplomb, maître de conférences à l’Université de Lorraine. Objectif 49 et le « Festival du Film Maudit » de Biarritz, Cinéphilie savante et production des normes culturelles du cinéma aux sources de la politique de soutien de l’Etat, à paraître en 2012.

18-01-2012 [MP3] 54' 

Pour ce troisième volet de notre série sur la cinéphilie, nous nous arrêtons sur un moment particulier, celui du festival du film maudit qui s'est tenu à Biarritz pendant l'été 1949.
Après-guerre, des centaines de ciné-clubs renaissent dans une France qui fréquente en masse les salles ( jusqu'à plus de 423 millions de spectateurs en 1947). certains sont liés au Parti Communiste, d'autres aux milieux catholiques ou protestants.
En 1948, des critiques comme André Bazin ou des cinéastes comme Robert Bresson s'associent pour créer un nouveau ciné-club, Objectif 49, dont le but affiché est de défendre un cinéma contemporain ignoré ou mal distribué.
A la sortie des projections, les cinéphiles se regroupent pour des discussions enflammées au café le Madrigal, sur les Champs-Elysées.
C'est là que naît l'idée d'un festival. Les membres d'Objectif 49 se réunissent pour le préparer à la "revue du cinéma" hébergée chez Gallimard, rue Sébastien Bottin.
Le trio affiché par l'organisation est composé de Roger Leenhardt, Robert Bresson, Jean Cocteau. On trouve également autour d'eux Jacques Doniol-Valcroze ainsi que Claude Mauriac.
Le Festival obtiendra un soutien de la municipalité de Biarritz, malgré des réticences du conseil municipal sur le genre de films proposés.
Il accueillera à la fois des cinéphiles, des germanopratins et des mondains, en limitant le nombre de critiques.
Le Festival de Biarritz couronnera aussi pour la première fois Jean Rouch, qui n'est pas encore cinéaste, et deviendra un moment mythique réinventé par les tenants de la Nouvelle Vague.

4. Débat historiographique : Le rapport aux images dans l’entre deux-guerres
Avec : Dimitri Vezyroglou, maître de conférences en histoire du cinéma à l'université Paris 1; Christophe Gauthier, conservateur de la Cinémathèque de Toulouse; Renaud Chaplain, chargé d'enseignement à l’Université catholique de Lyon; Martin Barnier, professeur des universités en Études cinématographiques à l’Université Lumière Lyon 2

19-01-2012 [MP3] 54' 

Voir aussi :

• Histoire de la cinémathèque française (2006; Laurent Mannoni)
• Le cinéma en France à la veille du parlant : un essai d'histoire culturelle (Dimitri Vezyroglou; CNRS; 2011)
• Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, n° 51-4 Pour une histoire cinématographique de la France (Christophe Gauthier, Pascal Ory, Dimitri Vezyroglou; 2004) 
• La passion du cinéma : cinéphiles, ciné-clubs et salles spécialisées à Paris de 1920 à 1929 (Christophe Gauthier; 1999)
• Deux Temps, trois mouvements, un pianiste au cinéma (Philippe Cassard, Jean Narboni, Marc Chevrie; 2012)
• Le fantôme d'Henri Langlois (2004/Jacques Richard/France) 210'
• Deux de la vague (2010/Emmanuel Laurent/France) 91'
• Criticism/Creation at Cahiers 
• Cinéphilie + Frenchness
• Project: Validating Indulgent Movie Fandom / Weak's Cutoff: No Cinephilia 
• Auteurist v. Cinephile (Dan Sallitt) 
• Impérialisme hollywoodien 

Cinema admission pricing in USA (1929-2002)

Source: Uniform prices for differentiated goods: The case of the movie-theater industry (Barak Y. Orbach, Liran Einav; 2007; International Review of Law and Economics [PDF]

UNIFORM PRICES FOR DIFFERENTIATED GOODS: THE CASE OF THE MOVIE-THEATER INDUSTRY (Liran Einav, Barak Y. Orbach; Discussion Paper No. 337; 10/2001; Harvard) [PDF]

The Exhibition side gets the largest share (45%) of the ticket money, but they only bank locally, on however many spectators come to their cinema house ($3.4 multiplied by the auditorium capacity, multiplied by the number of shows per day, multiplied by the days it will be running) and they have many expenses/bills (real estate, upkeep, services, clerks, heating/air-conditioning, electricity...). Though they do make at least as much profit from concession stands and commercial space.

Meanwhile the Production side (in red) is split between various departments, but they bank globally on ALL spectators EVERYWHERE the movie has been screened. 

Also, the advertising gets the largest share (21%) but they have a huge investment to pay back, just like the Set production (in today's practices, the advertising budget for blockbuster movies goes between a third and a half of the total movie budget). And they have to split the benefits between a large team of employees. The Distribution's share is smaller (only 11%) but the cost of printing (or DCP Digital Cienma Package nowadays) and shipping is smaller (they also RENT the rights to project a film to exhibitors). 

The actors get only 6% but their investment is null and they bank it ALL for themselves.

Related: 

• World Cinema Stats - index
• Skimpy speciality distributors 
• USA attendance history (1947-2010)
• Hollywood 2009 Admissions/ticket price

For Your Consideration (Dujardin)

"Dujardin Forever", conférence de Carole Desbarats
30 juin 2011 (forumdesimages) 1h18'

Quel que soit le rôle qu’il endosse, lorsqu’il est connu du public et qu’il arrive sur l’écran, un acteur est traversé par les personnages qu’il a incarnés auparavant. Cela diffuse discrètement, et puis, si l’interprétation est forte, disparaît au profit du nouveau personnage pour parfois faire retour au détour d’un geste, d’une inflexion de voix. Que reste-t-il de Brice dans OSS et du rôle de benêt dans un personnage qui ne l’est pas, par exemple celui que Dujardin incarne dans Les Petits Mouchoirs ? Cette élégance très américaine dans le port du corps, le lancer de jambe dans la démarche qui nous évoque celui de Gary Cooper, les polos de Cary Grant, les mimiques burlesques de Brice… mais, plus profondément, qu’est-ce qu’un acteur apporte de lui qui travaille la matière même du film ?

Conférence de Carole Desbarats, directrice de la communication et de la diffusion des savoirs à l’École normale supérieure (ENS)

Related:

• France exports (UniFrance) 
• Festival Pundits (Spoiled Brats) 

Crise de l'image-action (Thoret)

Cours de cinéma par Jean-Baptiste Thoret : Gilles Deleuze, "crise de l'image action"
9 Oct 2009 (forumdesimages) 1h20'

présenté par Jean-Baptiste Thoret. Spécialiste du Nouvel Hollywood et du cinéma de genre, Jean-Baptiste Thoret est critique à Charlie Hebdo et chroniqueur à France Culture.
Gilles Deleuze clôt “L’Image-Mouvement” par un chapitre, “La crise de l’image-action”, dans lequel, à partir des films d’Hitchcock (Fenêtre sur cour), il identifie la fin de cette grande forme propre au cinéma hollywoodien, qui se manifeste d’abord par la perte du “lien sensorimoteur”. Quelles furent les conséquences esthétiques et formelles de cette crise ? Aujourd’hui, après la redécouverte du cinéma américain des années 70, ce concept est-il toujours valide ?

Related :

• La trilogie Jason Bourne (Burdeau)
• Complaisance pour films "mineurs" (Deleuze, Guattari, Cahiers)
• À quoi pense le cinéma américain lorsqu’il rêve de Jean Baudrillard ? (Thoret)
• Chaos Cinema (Matthias Stork) 1-2-3
• The Baroque, Spiraling: Michael Bay and the Dromospheric Cinema (Uncas Blythe; Mubi notebook; Oct 2011)
• Fast Cuts, Slow Views (Herskowitz)

Small-nations cinema (Hjort)

- Cultural Diversity Awareness - 

"In sum, for me, the emphasis on small nationhood is about:

• understanding the challenges that small-nation filmmakers face
• highlighting the extent to which a large number of these challenges are shared challenges
• encouraging filmmakers to look for the opportunities that may be implicit in the constraints they encounter
• encouraging small-nation filmmakers to look to each other for support, rather than to large nations
• encouraging solidarity across borders and through various lasting partnerships
• facilitating knowledge transfer across borders and especially the transfer of models that provide solutions to shared problems
• looking to small cinemas for approaches that warrant adoption even in the context of large cinemas, and this on social, political, and ethical (including environmental) grounds.

[..] The more capacious conception of the film scholar’s role, tasks, and contributions which is afforded by an engagement with small cinemas, is, I think, ultimately quite helpful. This is especially the case for those of us who work in university systems where the value of fields of study cannot be taken for granted but must be argued for, and defended, in terms of knowledge transfer, relevance to society, and so on. It can be hard to make the case for thematic commentaries on films. It is much easier to make the case for analyses of small-nation cinemas which aim to show that there are environmental gains (among many other things) to be won from a wider dissemination and adoption of small-nation practices."

Small Cinemas: How They Thrive and Why They Matter, 2010 (Mette Hjort; Mediascape; Winter 2011) [PDF]

Bibliography:

• The Cinema of Small Nations (co-edited by  Mette Hjort & Duncan Petrie; 2007)
• Small Nation, Global Cinema (Mette Hjort; 2005)
• Cinema at the Periphery, #4 (edited by Dina Iordanova, David Martin-Jones, Belén Vidal; 2010)
• conference “European Landscapes: Small Cinemas at the Time of Transition”, organized by Janina Falkowska; University of Western Ontario; June 2010
• World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives (Eds. Natasa Durovicova, Kathleen Newman; 2010)

Related: 

• Cultural Diversity Awareness (series)
• Variety, Balance, Disparity (Stirling)
• Le cinema comme géographie: quels nouveaux mondes? 
• Cinema quotas 
• Artificial barriers against the circulation of World cinema 
• Presumptuous Best Film in the World
• Iranian dissidence in real life peril
• Pratique du cinéma dans le monde (France Culture) 
• BO 2009 - world cinema stats (16)
• Cambodge : culture exterminée 

20 ans de Trafic

Trafic, 20 ans, 20 films (centrepompidou) 

Trafic, 20 ans 20 films
Centre Georges Pompidou, 11-30 Jan 2012 [catalogue PDF]

• 11 Janvier 2012 : Saltimbank, 2002, Jean-Claude Biette + "Sierra de Teruel, 1939" de Victor Erice  [intro video]
  En présence de Víctor Erice (sous réserve), Raymond Bellour, Jean-Christophe Bouvet, Pierre Léon, Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens, Sylvie Pierre et Patrice Rollet
• 12 Janvier 2012 : A.I. Intelligence artificielle, 2001, Steven Spielberg
  présenté par Jonathan Rosenbaum  [intro video] 
• 13 Janvier 2012 : Le Bassin de J.W., 1997, João César Monteiro
  présenté par Marcos Uzal  [intro video] 
• 14 Janvier 2012 : Serge Daney présente "Trafic" au Jeu de Paume, Captation de conférence, 5 mai 1992 (vidéo 29'35")
  présentée par Raymond Bellour, Sylvie Pierre et Patrice Rollet 
• 14 Janvier 2012 : La Belle journée, 2010, Ginette lavigne
  présenté par Jean-Louis Comolli  [intro video] 
• 14 Janvier 2012 : Café Lumière, 2003, Hou Hsiao-hsien
  présenté par Frédéric Sabouraud  [intro video] 
• 15 Janvier 2012 : Craneway event, 2009, Tacita Dean
  présenté par Hervé Gauville  [intro video] 
• 15 Janvier 2012 : Crash, 1996, David Cronenberg
  présenté par Mark Rappaport  [intro video] 
• 16 Janvier 2012 : Encontros, 2006, Pierre-Marie Goulet
  présenté par Bernard Eisenschitz  [intro video] 
• 19 Janvier 2012 : Film socialisme, 2010, Jean-Luc Godard
  présenté par Jean Narboni  [intro video] 
• 20 Janvier 2012 : L'Homme sans passé, 2002, Aki Kaurismäki
  présenté par Leslie Kaplan  [intro video] 
• 21 Janvier 2012 : Inland, 2008, Tariq Teguia
  présenté par Jacques Rancière   [intro video] 
• 21 Janvier 2012 : Loin, 2001, André Téchiné
  présenté par Jacques Bontemps  [intro video] 
• 22 Janvier 2012 : Mystères de Lisbonne, 2010, Raoul Ruiz
  présenté par Jean Louis Schefer  [intro video] 
• 22 Janvier 2012 : Palombella rossa, 1989, Nanni Moretti
  présenté par Fabrice Revault  [intro video] 
• 23 Janvier 2012 : Le Rêve de Cassandre, 2007, Woody Allen
  présenté par Marie Anne Guerin  [intro video] 
• 26 Janvier 2012 : Saraband, 2003, Ingmar Bergman
  présenté par Raymond Bellour [intro video] 
• 28 Janvier 2012 : Soy Cuba, 1964, Mikhail Kalatozov + Soy Cuba, le mammouth sibérien, 2005, Vicente Ferraz [intro video]
  présenté par Sylvie Pierre
• 28 Janvier 2012 : 36 vues du pic Saint-Loup, 2008, Jacques Rivette
  présenté par Pierre Léon
• 29 Janvier 2012 : Val Abraham, 1993, Manoel de Oliveira
  présenté par Youssef Ishaghpour  [intro video] 
• 29 Janvier 2012 : Wolff von Amerongen a-t-il commis une faillite frauduleuse ?, 2004, Gerhard Benedikt Friedl [intro video]  + Knittelfeld
  présentés par Christa Blümlinger
• 30 Janvier 2012 : Zefiro Torna or Scenes of the Life of George Maciunas, 1992, Jonas Mekas
  présentés par Patrice Rollet

Serge Daney présente "Trafic" au Jeu de Paume 5 mai 1992 (pour la conférence, partielle)
et 14 jan 2012 (pour l'intro) (centrepompidou) 29'36"

L’idée de Trafic est venue de la prise de conscience que le paysage intellectuel dans lequel se trouvait le cinéma avait beaucoup changé. Changé au point que les façons traditionnelles d’écrire sur le cinéma ne « mordaient » plus guère sur la réalité de la consommation cinéphilique littéraire classique.
Par revue, nous entendons un lieu où l’on prendrait le temps de « revoir » et où on ne confondrait pas ce temps de la réflexion avec celui, emballé et souvent artificiel, d’une « actualité » qui est davantage celle des médias que celle du cinéma lui-même. « Il n’y a pas le feu ! » pourrait être notre mot d’ordre. Il faut revenir à une temporalité plus simple, plus sûre et plus ludique.
Chacun sent bien que le cinéma est pris depuis longtemps dans une évolution en forme de virage interminable. Cette histoire du « cinéma moderne » dont beaucoup d’entre nous ont subi le choc est néanmoins derrière nous et il nous appartient au moins de décrire ce qui vient, fût-ce l’effacement relatif du cinéma.

Serge Daney : "Trafic, revue de cinéma."; hiver 1991 [PDF]

Ecouter aussi :

• Trafic anniversaire (France Culture; 9-01-2012) webcast [MP3] 30'
  Marie Richeux, Raymond Bellour, Judith Revault d’Allonnes

Lire aussi : 

• 20 ans - 20 films; Trafic, n° 80, hiver 2011
• Serge Daney : "Trafic, revue de cinéma."; hiver 1991 [PDF]
• A l'occasion d'un anniversaire; Raymond Bellour, Sylvie Pierre et Patrice Rollet [PDF]
• Trafic a vingt ans : entretien avec Raymond Bellour et Patrice Rollet (Cahiers du cinéma n°; Janvier 2012) 

La trilogie Jason Bourne (Burdeau)

Conférence sur "La trilogie Jason Bourne"...
9 avril 2011 (forumdesimages) 1h26' 

The Bourne Trilogy est en français la trilogie Dans la peau : "La Mémoire dans la peau" (Doug Liman, 2002), "La Mort dans la peau" (Paul Greengrass, 2004) et "La Vengeance dans la peau" (Paul Greengrass, 2007). Et le thème de cette intervention : comment la surveillance et les machines de l’espionnage s’effacent et s’aiguisent en s’incorporant.

Related :

• The Bourne Analysis (Leon Saunders Calvert; Offscreen; 30 June 2010) 
• Green Zone and the Struggle for Truth in Political Filmmaking (Leon Saunders Calvert; Offscreen; 30 June 2010) 
• Complaisance pour films "mineurs" (Deleuze, Guattari, Cahiers)
• Valse avec Bachir d'Ari Folman (Lautissier)
• Hiroshima mon amour (Thomas) 
• Minority Report (Rouyer) 
• Figure du terrorisme (Assayas, Michaud) 
• Dossier 51 (1978/Deville/FR) 
• À quoi pense le cinéma américain lorsqu’il rêve de Jean Baudrillard ? (Thoret) 
• Euphorie du corps sportif (Tesson) 
• Le goût de la peur (Siety) 

Inception (Kyle Johnson)

Authors@Google: Kyle Johnson 'Inception and Philosophy'
16 Dec 2011 (video) 43'

 Inception and Philosophy : Ideas to die For
(SYLVIA WENMACKERS, BERIT BROGAARD, NATHAN ANDERSEN, MICHAEL RENNETT, JANET TESTERMAN, DANIEL P. MALLOY, MARCUS SCHULZKE, JOSEPH GARVIN, THOMAS KAPPER, RANDALL E. AUXIER, EMILIE DIONNE, HIU M. CHAN, JOSHUA RICHARDSON AND ORA MCWILLIAMS, MATTHEW BROPHY, THORSTEN BOTZ-BORNSTEIN, INDALECIO GARCIA, NICOLAS FLOURY, JASON J. HOWARD, CHRISTOPHE D. RINGER, VALENTIN HUSSON, RANDALL E. AUXIER) [PDF] Nov 2011

Related:

• Inception in Real-Time (the 4 levels of dreams at once) 4'27"
• Inception Music comparison
• Explaining Inception: A FAQ Guide (SmartFaqt)  
• Inception: Film, Dreams and Freud (Offscreen; 31 May 2011)
• David Bordwell : Inception; or, Dream a little dream within a dream with me (6 Aug 2010) - Revisiting Inception (12 Aug 2010)
• The Auteur Cast #014 (18 July 2011) 1h04'
• Everything you wanted to know about Inception (Salon)
• A gamer's view of Inception: Too much tutorial, not enough play / The structure of Inception: Viewing from the inside out (Scanner)
• South Park Season 14 Episode 10 : Insheeption 
• South Park and Philosophy: You know, I learned something today [PDF]
• Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul [PDF]

Quote Whores Fail

Best adjectival reviewing of 2011. 

This really translates what the documentary is about. 

Thanks movie marketing and movie reviewers! 

(cynicism intended)

Doc filmmakers vs. Doc critics (CIFF)

Shamans · Animals

A response to the Film Symposium "Ethics and Documentary Cinema" (31st October 2011) held at the China Independent Film Festival Documentary (Nanjin)
Signed by several documentary filmmakers who participated and also who did not participate in the festival

1. Demand that film critics buy their own DVDs (Xue Jianqiang)
   Reject how film critics have become the definers and arbiters of the morals and ethics of documentary film. Rather than simply passing judgement on documentary ethics, film critics should foster a film critique based on artistic intuition that, rooted in intrinsic film language itself, inquires into ethics.
   Reject a film critical perspective that is remote from common people, one that abuses a concept like “the lower strata of society.” Do you like this concept because you feel that you are in a position of superiority?
   Can an intellectual-style round table discussion have any possible constructive nature?
2. Reject the way intellectuals use conventional concepts and actions to turn fresh and lively documentary experience into something uninteresting. (Cong Feng)
3. If we see cinema as a private garden, is the critic the owner of the garden or only the gardener? (Zhang Chacha)
4. The rigid theorizing of intellectuals turns the flow of discussion into something oppressive and boring. (Gui Shuzhong)
5. For the past few years, it seems that we’ve abandoned discussing film language. It’s more fun discussing the ethics of social differentiation. (Jin Jie)
6. Shoot films like an animal.
   Criticize (films) like an animal.
   Animals of a different species. (Qiu Jiongjiong)
7. Critics cannot dictate history.
   Critics should learn from filmmakers, and not pretend to be their mentors.
   Artists teach themselves in the course of shooting their films; they establish their own ethical principles.(Cong Feng)
8. Making documentary cinema reproduces the feeling of making love. The climaxes can’t be judged by the critics.(Song Chuan)
9. Respect the diversity of and multiple approaches to creative artistic research.
10. We’re not trying to start a revolution. We’re trying to shake people awake (while we get drunk).(Ji Dan)
11. Revolutions are caused by arrogance, nothing more.(Ji Dan)
12. Fortunately documentary filmmakers pay no heed to unreliable theory.(Gui Shuzhong)
13. Theory is inflexible.
    Documentary
    Jealousy
    Excitement
    Are fresh and lively. (Gui Shuzhong)
14. Filmmakers speak through their works
    Viewers ponder what’s on the screen
    Here come the critics, squawking and quacking a language of their own. (Jin Jie, Zhang Chacha)
15. If theorists are the ones who can speak, and critics are the ones who can write, then the real thinkers are precisely those who neither speak nor write. (Bai Budan)
16. When ethics are at issue, law is the criterion. (Feng Yu)
17. Where is the moral introspection of certain critics and scholars? Enough with leaders’ speeches, already. (Cong Feng)
18. Theory is related to reality. Theory also must keep up with the times. If critics stray from the works of art themselves while discussing theory, then their discussion will become like fog in the wind, vapid and uninteresting. (Gui Shuzhong)
19. [missing]
20. Talk too much about theory, and you sound pretentious. Overemphasize theory and you sound authoritarian. Life is not a two-sided coin: you have no right to force it to be either one way or the other. Of course, you can use theory to impress the kids. The motivation for documentary comes from a shame of one’s own ignorance. There’s no place for any talk of an avant garde or of theory. (Hu Xinyu)
21. At present, the critics tend to a kind of literary writing style. Documentary films are treated as literature, as works of art. The critics seem to think they alone have the right to define a rational discursive interpretation of society. But this is in fact an act of cultural despotism, an act that is neither rational with respect to social reality nor with respect to art. Because of this, the rational discourse of the critics is a kind of observation at one remove. (Mao Chenyu)
22. So-called theory is all for self-gratification. Independent film should not be restricted to the society’s lowest classes telling stories about each other. It should be diverse and multiple.
    Uninteresting, boring, useless.
    When you say you’re aligned with the lowest levels of society, you are in fact looking with disdain and contempt at the low from on high.
    Please use the word “intellectual” correctly and carefully. And please don’t use that word at this kind of independent film festival. It is not a term of praise, but rather a pretext to occupy a position high above the ordinary people. Is it really so hard to be modest and put yourself in someone else’s position? (Wang Shu)
23. If possible, watch more movies. If you ever have the opportunity, then try to shoot a film. If you’ve never shot a gun yourself, how can you teach someone else to shoot? (Gui Shuzhong, Cong Feng)
24. Yesterday’s forum took place at the Nanjing University’s News and Media Institute. Is it the job of our professors and scholars to teach students how make false statements sound like true ones? If those who teach students to lie boast that they are intellectuals, can there still be any filmmakers willing to label themselves “intellectuals?” (Beifang Lao =web alias)

Translated by Shelly Kraicer. Co-translator: Isabella Ho. With thanks to Yang Yishu, J.P. Sniadecki, Zhang Xianmin, and Cong Feng (cinemascope; 25 Nov 2011)

* * *

Some comments :

This is very sad actually to see that the new generation of Chinese indie filmmakers could not MEET eye-to-eye with the Chinese film scholars... it's like if an important rendez-vous of History was missed. I don't know which side was the most self-indulgent, which one was wrong... but surely, given the difficult state of cinema in China, being dominated by Hollywood blockbusters on one side, and by State-approved conformity on the other side, there must have been a strategic move to support the independent scene (critically acclaimed around the world), regardless for any shortcomings, in a country where artistic freedom has been repressed for so long! If filmmakers come to your table to discuss their artistic creation, the basic curtsy would be to LISTEN to them, and to walk half-way through to a neutral middle ground. For the sake of cinema!

I would usually take the defense of the Film Criticism profession, against the anti-intellectual sentiment that denies critics the right to scrutinize, with complete independence and no pressure, the production of art. Because it is easy to blame critics when they don't like your film, and reject film criticism altogether just because you're in denial about the shortcomings of your own work... That's not how it works. We have to accept and protect the existence of Criticism, no matter what, in times of praise like in times of harsh judgement. This said, critics ought to be held to the highest standards of evaluation as well! Too many reviewers pass judgements they aren't qualified to emit in the first place. This is why individual reviewers should be held accountable for the sustainability of the whole profession. And in this case, even though I'm not very familiar with the Chinese indie scene, I tend to agree with the plaintifs (for the most part). But some details need to be clarified...

1. I agree. But this is a thorny subject.
   Free access to ALL production for critics is the only guarantee for an independent opinion. Charging critics to watch films put them in a position to reconsider whether certain film is WORTH paying BEFORE they even got to see it, thus establishing an a priori rating based on assumptions (not to mention segregating the number of possible reviews a critic can publish based on how many DVDs they can afford). One way to circumvent this issue, is to charge the media company employing the critics (they surely can afford to buy the DVDs).
   The reason I agree, even though it is against the fundamental liberty of criticism, is because the situation has changed with the digital age, especially for the smallest niches of art cinema. There are more people than ever reviewing films in the world, while the gap between the hegemony of blockbusters and the slim niche of artfilms widens. And, considering that the main demographic interested in artfilms today are active cinephiles who happen to be also festival-goers and film reviewers... not charging the critics community amputates a sizeable chunk of expected revenue from their potential audience! This is one reason why the artfilm niche shrunks... most people who would watch these films, have already seen advance screenings, festival screenings or DVD screeners.
2. I've seen a couple of Chinese indie documentaries, and they haven't been as masterful as Wang Bing's West of Track or Jia Zhangke's Dong. They pride themselves in being amateurs and don't care about formalist correctness or political correctness. So it is very hard to compare them to "academic documentaries". But this is where the critic should use fairness and understand where this particular production comes from. Sometimes a new film form emerges from the destruction of certain established standards and conventions (1920's Avant Garde, Surrealism, German Expressionism, Film Noir, Soviet Montage, Cinéma Vérité, Direct Cinema, New American Cinema (1970's NYC experimental scene), New Hollywood...) When they arose they were dismissed for looking "rough", "failed", "imperfect", "unfinished", "amateurish"... but the test of time proved otherwise. So critics need a long term perspective and bet on the future potentials. Maybe they shouldn't be judged on the form, but on the content, the slice of life (and the era) they are witness of, the experience. It's hard to convince the critical establishment that celebrates the photo-realist formalism of the XIXth century to welcome the arrival of a new "unprofessional" style such as Impressionism... but in this case, the establishment was wrong.
3. Good image to keep critics in their place and remind them to be humble in front of ART. Too often critics believe they have a say in deciding what the future of art should look like, while they are merely there to attest the current production, and make sure to not miss anything. The future of the art form itself is for artists to give it a go (and sometimes fail too).
4. Here I cannot support the use of polarizing, anti-intellectual and subjective clashes such as "rigid", "oppressive" and "boring". You already lost the argument there. That's what criticism appears to people being criticized unfavorably... but criticism is judgmental, conceptual, intellectual, theoretician and "arrogant", by definition, because it implies the authority to value the work of someone else. Criticism is not evil, there are only faulty film writers. Demand highest rigor from people who practice criticism, yes. But don't direct your anger and frustration toward the critical institution itself. Film Criticism is there to help artists, not to battle against them.
5. I don't know the background of this controversy around the question of "social ethics" that seems to be the main issue against this group of documentarists. 
6. Probably the language barrier doesn't translate the full innuendo of this analogy. There is animality in the artist indeed. But critics should never think of themselves as equal to the artist in this domain. I get the point that critics are asked to put themselves in the artist's shoes to understand the condition of an "animal-creator", and produce a more organic, tolerant, adaptable, empathetic judgement. Yes, definitely. But the critic doesn't have the privilege, prerogative, excuse to resort to animality. 
7. Exactly. See my comment #2 and 3. 
8. Agreed. Funny way to put it, but that's the spirit, as far as passing moral judgement on how other people make love, or I would rather say how other people choose their significant other. Being in love is an inter-personal affair, with idiosyncratic taste and expectations. Nobody can judge what is somebody else's object of election, desire, life partner. But that doesn't mean the critic is forbidden to judge at all. The critic has no say in WHAT the artist wants to do, but it's the critics job to investigate where the artist is coming from and what (s)he is trying to achieve, and judge the results given the process.
9. Definitely.

Then there are unfair comments against criticism and against the liberty for critics to do their job, which I cannot condone. Call the "critical establishment" incompetent, antiquated, outdated, out of touch with reality, tell them they are missing the point, that they focus on the wrong aspects if you think that the NEW Chinese cinema needs a NEW generation of critics updated to the new paradigm. But don't reject criticism altogether, or the right for a scholar to judge your work. It's not the critical principles that are faulty, but the individual persons who misuse them. It is possible, even for scholars, to be wrong. It happens regularly throughout Art History. In this, I agree with the point #18, 21, 22, 24 of their manifesto.

I feel bad that the current vital scene of Chinese digital cinema cannot walk hand-in-hand with the current generation of critics and scholars... their (respective) loss, but so be it. The art scene may strive in the margin of the establishment, no worries. The Academe will catch up later (hopefully sooner than later), because what matters above all is the artist community producing art TODAY! Every art lover would agree. We are glad that artists in the past stubbornly pursued their researches and experiments all the while being mocked, caricatured, dismissed and repressed by scholars, critics and society of their times, often to the point of never profiting of the value their art reached in today's market, dying poor and neglected. Art survives all hardship, and that's the beauty of the selfless faith of artists in their persistent inspiration. That's why we should admire and respect the dedication of artists.

(23) I understand the frustration of filmmakers being misjudged by "critics" who never tried to make a film in their life, and don't understand the amount of efforts and commitments it involves, while they click a number of stars on their computer to evaluate a film after sitting on their ass for 90 minutes. The fact is there are lazy reviewers out there, who think of their job as a factory job, rating the most films per day as possible to show off to their peers, to publish-or-perish...
However, Cinema cannot be judged only by people who make films... it would be a self-serving, corporatist enclosure patting itself on the back, or rivaling with eachothers for personal interests. The purpose of art criticism is to offer an independent point of view. The point I agree with is that critics are REQUIRED to know about the filmmaking technique, almost as well as a filmmaker, to be able to evaluate and maybe to be more understanding of the efforts put into a given shot before dismissing it.


Related:

• Shamans - Animals : a report from the 8th annual China Independent film Festival (Shelly Kraicer; cinemascope, 25 Nov 2011)
• Tough sell (Chinese indies)
• Penser le documentaire