is cinema dead?
Peter Grassi
Aside from a few truly great independents working today, Hartly, Egoyan,
Yost and a few select others, it seems not too many film artists are
interested in advancing the form in any respect or have made any effort
to do so. We don't have a piece as important to filmaking today as
Keaton's "The General" or Griffith's "Intolerance" was to audiences and
filmakers in the silent era. Experimental filmaking is alive and well
yet the discoveries have not been assimilated to the form, nothings
changed. "El Mariachi" isn't the "Breathless" for this generation, and
technically, is far inferior effort. The so-called
independent filmaking revival lacks the vigor and inventiveness that the
French New Wave gave the filmaking world thirty years ago. Where are the
visonaries, the innovators today? I'm disapointed more than anything.
I'm tired of the Sundance et. all hype which do nothing more than pose as
meal tickes to hollywood. It's disgusting. I know avante garde
filmaking didn't die with Cocteau and Vigo, by why are those voices so
damn silent today? We desperately need interesting, fresh work or the
legacy of Griffith, Keaton and Welles is surely to die off. Why is such
mediocrity being applauded today?
Pete
dj
Yes, probably. It is no longer new.
dj
David Brinkworth
to...@netcom.com (Peter Grassi) wrote:
>Aside from a few truly great independents working today, Hartly, Egoyan,
>Yost and a few select others, it seems not too many film artists are
>interested in advancing the form in any respect or have made any effort
>to do so.
(snip)
> I'm disapointed more than anything.
>I'm tired of the Sundance et. all hype which do nothing more than pose as
>meal tickes to hollywood. It's disgusting. I know avante garde
>filmaking didn't die with Cocteau and Vigo, by why are those voices so
>damn silent today? We desperately need interesting, fresh work or the
>legacy of Griffith, Keaton and Welles is surely to die off. Why is such
>mediocrity being applauded today?
>
>Pete
>
>
>to...@netcom.com
>
I think Cinema now is not so much dead, as going through one of the
sterile periods that art forms seem to go through from time to time.
It is certainly true that commercial filmmaking has now become almost
totally dominant (just read half the posts in this "independent"
newsgroup.) This level of commercialism can only lead to banality and
sterility. "Why are those voices so damn silent today?" They are
silent because it costs money to make a film, and if the people only
want to pay money ro go to circuses that's what get's made.
But still, in the dark ages between the early '30s when surrealism,
soviet cinema, the comics like Keaton, etc where all silenced by the
coming of talkies and what Noel Burch called "the timid rebirth of the
art of film" (in the fifties) the lamp was kept alive somehow.
The films of Jon Jost and Su Friederich (to pick 2 fine contemporary
filmmakers more or less at random) show that some minds are truly
independent. Assuming (big if) their films survive, those who care
about the cinema in the future will surely understand that a time that
produced "All the Vermeers in New York" and "Sink or Swim" had some
true artists in among those jostling to make a Hollywooden picture.
Cheer
David Brinkworth
davb...@iinet.net.au