Word is quickly spreading that the man whom many regard as the world’s greatest living animator–Yuri Norstein–is making a brief US tour, with visits to Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City and Olympia. My 23-month-old daughter routinely requests viewings of Hedgehog in the Fog, but I’ve been an admirer of Norstein’s work for years (and wrote about Clare Kitson’s biography in 2005).
Norstein is renowned for his attachment to his Russian homeland and his refusal to work abroad, so I was shocked several days ago to stumble upon the announcement of his visit to the University of Southern California this week–initiated by two grad students, Elyse Kelly and Konstantin Brazhnik–which will culminate in a public screening of the filmmaker’s major works tomorrow. (The event’s RSVP system is already overbooked, but a standby line will form for anyone feeling especially lucky.) Fortunately, the event includes a website with video uploads, and it promises live feeds.
The first video on the site is about fifteen minutes of a seminar Norstein gave last night that I was graciously invited to attend. Soft-spoken but passionate (often interrupting his translator) he cited his inspirations and discussed his craft, beginning with clips from Jean Vigo’s beautiful 1934 L’Atalante (which, Norstein noted, was shot by Boris Kaufman, the brother of Dziga Vertov).
Norstein seemed especially taken by three shots: the riverside encounter with a one-man band (which he compared to Fellini); the apprehension of a thief (with its almost stroboscopic tracking shot alongside a fence); and, interestingly, the controversial shot of the male protagonist caressing a block of ice (that’s missing in newer restorations of the film). All three shots allude to the everyday eccentricity, technical virtuosity, and metaphysical touches that suffuse Norstein’s own work. He championed L’Atalante’s ability to “present a whole world” in its simple, archetypal story, and later suggested that a film should only be made if the filmmaker has properly imagined it, and can conceive it in the simplest terms, like a proverb.
Norstein also shared his love of painting, describing how he recently spent eight hours at the Art Institute of Chicago viewing such favorites as Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles. He said he likes to take a magnifying glass with him to art museums to study the brushstrokes: “It’s not just a great painting but a concentration of the artist’s life, layer by layer.”
“My biggest wonder in life,” he said, “was my childhood in the outskirts of Moscow,” and he described the two story communal flats he lived in as a child that are vital to the setting of Tales of Tales. “Simple things made impressions,” he recalled. Old walls would break down and the young Norstein would marvel at their construction, the rusty nails marking the passage of time; he would spend hours searching for patterns in molds and stains in the woodwork, and was delighted when–years later–he read Leonardo da Vinci promoting the same activity. One can easily see in Norstein’s films his attention to natural decay and detail, the old houses and dank woods providing a powerful sense of atmosphere and place.
The highlight of the evening, however, was seeing the roughly twenty minutes of footage Norstein has completed so far on his first feature, an adaptation of Gogol’s The Overcoat that has taken him nearly thirty years to produce. (Funding comes and goes, and production is sometimes interrupted by commercial projects or travels.) About half of the footage was recently included in a Japanese documentary that can be viewed below, but rest assured that even the DVD we screened last night revealed enormous amounts of subtleties lost in YouTube’s low-resolution.
The Overcoat at present is a supremely subtle representation of an impoverished St. Petersburg clerk as he comes home, undresses for the evening, and begins the process of transcription; Norstein uses hundreds of cutout elements to simulate the facial shifts, contortions, and evolving expressions that continually play out while the clerk is lost in a world of meticulous perfection. It’s an almost bewildering study of the human face–not slavishly realistic but obsessively attuned to each and every physical fluctuation–that is wholly remarkable. It’s easy to see why this has been a thirty-year project and counting: such evolving minutia of movement has turned the face into an animated study that borders on scientific illustration. Norstein told us that in addition to a huge amount of photographic references, his animation for the film is influenced by eastern (Chinese) as well as western (Duret) anatomical studies, medicinal books, patients at a psychiatric clinic, and Charlie Chaplin and the art of pantomime in general. He decided early on to resist the temptation to film actors and mechanically reproduce their images, because “this way is submissive,” noting that it would include a lot of unnecessary visual information as well.
“Adapting a known text must involve discovery,” he said, claiming that the most important thing to him is to show the things not written by Gogol that are nevertheless true to the text–a reading between the lines. And one can sense that Norstein’s film is an ongoing project of discovery for him, evolving a life of its own and taking the filmmaker places he has yet to explore or conceive. After the lecture, the sixty-six-year-old filmmaker told me he had a lot of material in place to complete the picture, but part of me wonders if he really intends to finish it, or if he sees it as an opportunity to indefinitely explore the riches of his subject while living a meager life funded by lectures, appearances, occasional commercial work, and print and book sales.
His new website offers several Russian books, Hedgehog in the Fog and Fox and Hare (based on his films), and two lavishly-illustrated studies entitled Snow on Grass; the first volume summarizes his career and the second, his creative process and references for The Overcoat. Norstein flipped through his own copy of these volumes–currently only printed in Russian although he has submitted them to a publisher in London in the hopes of making an English edition–to answer a question I posed, and they were clearly labors of love filled with hundreds of storyboards, sketches, collages, film stills, and frame-by-frame studies. If The Overcoat is an ongoing voyage for him, these books are a testament to the journey.
“I had some trepidation about coming to Pasadena,” explained Christian McKay in last Sunday’s Q&A at the Laemmle Playhouse following Me and Orson Welles, in which he brilliantly portrays the famed cineaste. He noted The Magnificent Ambersons was test screened at the historic Pasadena Playhouse across the street, where 50 percent of the audience loved it (”I’ve seen the response cards”) and the other fifty percent hated it, thus prompting RKO to butcher one of the most elegant films in American history. McKay seemed to impress everyone at the Q&A, however, as much for his Welles knowledge as his cordiality and natural theatricality (spontaneously reciting Welles’ monologue about Chartres Cathedral from F for Fake).
McKay first played Welles on stage in 2004, and has since immersed himself researching the artist’s life and work; his uncanny performance–less an impersonation than a fully articulate rendering of Welles’ aura, by turns cajoling and domineering–is one of the highlights of Richard Linklater’s passionate new film. (At the Q&A, McKay also provided an eloquent defense of Welles’ late career and rightly championed 1965’s Chimes at Midnight as perhaps Welles’ greatest achievement, adding that he and Linklater have fantasized about dramatizing the filmmaker’s late period in another twenty-odd years.)
A lot of friends and colleagues saw Me and Orson Welles in Toronto in 2008, where the well-received film promptly dropped off the radar. A fascinating article in the Los Angeles Times a few months ago explains the details behind its complicated and unusual distribution plan.
Based on Robert Kaplow’s 2003 novel, the film stars Zac Efron as a teenage idealist who lands a minor role in Welles’ 1937 stage production of Julius Ceasar, which James Naremore describes in The Magic World of Orson Welles as “one of the most celebrated American presentations of Shakespeare in this century.” It’s a breezy but deeply felt coming of age story that thrusts the viewer into the manic, creative, but cutthroat milieu of New Deal theatrical experimentation.
The movie feels spontaneous and effortless but it’s propelled by exacting camera movements and an energetic momentum. Over the past few years, Linklater has proved himself a master of casually intense cinema (Waking Life, Tape, Before Sunset, A Scanner Darkly), but here he exhibits a visual precision and almost musical sense of pace. (The film’s juxtaposition of grand spaces with intimate, emotional interludes feels like a musical staged without the singing–although one particular tune serves a dramatic focal point.)
At McKay’s Q&A, he talked about the differences between theatrical and screen acting, and Linklater’s sensitivity to volume and expression, and the film’s entire cast interacts with an impressive homogeneity despite the prevalence of iconic characters and the potential for hammy performances. (Eddie Marsen’s John Houseman and James Tupper’s Joseph Cotten are particularly subtle and compelling.) This isn’t the kind of cutesy period piece that offers a historical wink and nod to its audience every two seconds, but a genuine narrative about trusting one’s own passions and the modest friendship of others over the machinations and serendipity of glamor. It’s acutely aware of the difference between icons and inspiration, and benefits enormously from its own resistance to caricature or eulogy.
I’ve championed AFI FEST the previous two years since Artistic Director Rose Kuo came on board and pushed the festival into becoming Los Angeles’ best survey of world cinema. And I’ve been even more excited this year due to the programming involvement of Robert Koehler, a bona fide cinephile, critic, and festival hound (and occasional contributor to this site).
So I’m especially pleased to announce today that I’ve been hired as the editor of the festival’s Daily News, a position that will begin in October and last through the festival itself, October 30 to November 7, 2009. (The Daily News site isn’t currently being updated, but will fire up shortly.)
AFI FEST released its first twelve titles today, and reiterated its progressive new policy of free tickets to every screening (in advance at AFI.com, at the Mann Chinese Theatre on October 26, or on the day of scheduled screenings via rush lines). You can also reserve seating by becoming a patron by purchasing a pass at AFI.com.
The first twelve titles:
THE BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL, NEW ORLEANS (USA)
Director: Werner Herzog
Set in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Nicolas Cage plays a rogue detective who is as devoted to his job as he is to scoring drugs — while playing fast and loose with the law. With the prostitute he loves, the couple descends into a world marked by desire, compulsion and conscience. The film also stars Eva Mendes and Val Kilmer.
BELLAMY (France)
Director: Claude Chabrol
A famous French detective (played by Gerard Depardieu) on vacation in Languedoc investigates a mystery man who approaches him claiming to have killed someone. The film also stars Clovis Cornillac and Jacques Gamblin.
EVERYONE ELSE (Germany)
Director: Maren Ade
Drama follows the volatile relationship resulting from the psychological and emotional ties between two young lovers.
THE LAST STATION (UK/Germany)
Director: Michael Hoffman
A historical drama that illustrates Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s struggle to balance fame and wealth with his commitment to a life devoid of material things. The film stars Helen Mirren, James McAvoy, Christopher Plummer and Paul Giamatti.
LOOKING FOR ERIC (UK)
Director: Ken Loach
Eric, a football fanatic postman whose life is descending into crisis, receives some life-coaching from a poster of the famously philosophical footballer, Eric Cantona.
MOTHER (Madeo) (South Korea)
Director: Bong Joon-ho
This thriller follows the investigation of a murder by a mother desperate to find the killer who framed her son for the crime.
POLICE, ADJECTIVE (Romania)
Director: Corneliu Porumboiu
This drama follows the impact on a young policeman’s life after he refuses to arrest another man for offering drugs to his friends.
PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE (USA)
Director: Lee Daniels
In Harlem, an overweight and illiterate teen pregnant with her second child and abused by her domineering mother is invited to enroll in an alternative school with the dream to move her life in a new direction. The film stars Mo’Nique, Paula Patton, Mariah Carey, Sherri Shepherd, Lenny Kravitz, and introducing Gabourey Sidibe.
A PROPHET (France/Italy)
Director: Jacques Audiard
A young Arab man is sent to a French prison where he becomes a mafia kingpin.
RED RIDING (UK)
Directors: Julian Jarrold, James Marsh, Anand Tucker
Three inter-connected films set in the years 1974, 1980 and 1983 trace the crime and corruption in West Yorkshire, England. The films star Mark Addy, Sean Bean, Paddy Considine, Andrew Garfield and Rebecca Hall.
TRASH HUMPERS (USA)
Director: Harmony Korine
A cinema verite look at a fringe cult-freak collective with a penchant for anti-social behavior and activities.
VINCERE (Italy/France)
Director: Marco Bellocchio
This drama tells the story of Mussolini’s secret lover, Ida Dalser and their son, Albino.
The Wall Street Journal published an article this weekend–“LACMA and the Cinéastes”–that provides a good account of the efforts of my colleagues and I during our previous five-week campaign to convince the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to reverse its decision to end its 41-year-old film program this October. At the moment, films have been announced for November, the program has been guaranteed to continue at least until next summer, and LACMA has promised to seek out large donors (with the help of Martin Scorsese and others) to fund the program on a long term basis. The museum also says it will upgrade the program from an underfunded public outreach to a genuine curatorial department.
While the program’s long term future is still hazy, the initial objectives we laid out for our Save Film at LACMA campaign have been met, and I can’t imagine the museum will step forward next year and announce that it just couldn’t find the funds after all–numerous public figures, journalists, and media have promised to hold the museum accountable to its pledge to seek donors; the public drubbing that would occur if it doesn’t would make the current outcry seem relatively minor.
In addition to the continuation of the LACMA program itself, I’m particularly pleased with the way the story has highlighted issues surrounding repertory and specialty cinema in Los Angeles in general; from the many venues that screen films to their potential vulnerability, to the role of the mainstream media in reporting the activities of the parallel universe of cinephilia thriving in our company town. I’ve often complained about the ailing community and lack of cohesion of Los Angeles, and social media may well provide a cure.
There is one aspect of the campaign (and resulting media coverage) that I haven’t seen highlighted very much, and that’s the basic spirit of the protest, the passionate voice of the thousands of working class Angelenos and international supporters who joined our Facebook group and signed our petition (often providing deeply felt memories). This may be a town of multimillionaire executives, but it’s also a town of technicians, artisans, and laborers who care deeply about the history of their craft. In a time when federal bailouts and corporate layoffs have promoted a kind of socialism for the rich, there has been an intensity to the Save Film at LACMA campaign that testifies to the widespread frustration with lavishly paid but remote CEOs around the country and their careless evisceration of personnel and services in order to maximize profits.
LACMA’s much beloved but modest film program, with its two friendly employees and spacious but aging Bing theater, epitomized the kind of high value/low cost labors of love that are increasingly being pushed to the edges of a financially desperate culture looking for larger than life solutions. Many felt this was their golden opportunity to rise up and make a difference for this one cherished program currently facing the corporate chopping block. (A related point, given equally little play: CEO Michael Govan may have his roots in the Guggenheim and Dia:Beacon, but we’re talking about the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; 30% of its budget comes from taxpayers who want their museum to continue to offer repertory and world cinema they can’t see anywhere else.)
In fact, it’s the spirit of making a difference that makes it difficult to get very excited about LACMA’s most recent idea, a Film Club that asks museum members ($90/year minimum) to donate $50 extra for priority ticketing/seating benefits and an e-newsletter. I commend those who want to join the Club, but given that the museum has made it crystal clear that the future of the program lies solely in the hands of large donors, I’m not sure how a few extra thousand dollars will help.
I wish the Film Club was designed to produce something concrete on behalf of its members that would enrich the program and increase awareness, something like a high-quality brochure that could be made available to the public at large. Once upon a time, LACMA printed such things as film calendars and programs, like the one pictured below that coincided with Ian Birnie’s nearly complete, four-month long Fritz Lang retrospective in 2001 (photos courtesy of Andy Rector). Is this too much to ask for again?
I’m very proud to announce the September publication of Bert Cardullo’s Committed Cinema: The Films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne; Essays and Interviews, which includes two pieces that I wrote. You can pre-order and preview the book at Amazon or at Cambridge Scholars Publishing, who describe it as “the first book in English to treat the work of the Dardennes, [which] features the best essays and interviews (supplemented by a chronology, a filmography, film credits, and a bibliography) published to date on the two brothers’ memorable films.”
Cardullo is a longtime critic and scholar currently teaching in Izmar, Turkey; I’ve been particularly indebted to the excellent translations found in his 1997 Bazin at Work, which offers a lot of Bazin’s writing that was previously unavailable in English.
The CSP site offers a PDF of the Table of Contents, Cardullo’s Preface, and the first two essays by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Mike Bartlett (the other essayists are myself, Emilie Bickerton, Robin Wood, Cardullo, and David Walsh). I’m looking forward to reading the full collection.
The campaign to restore classic and international cinema programming at LACMA continues. Some readers may have heard about the $150,000 donation accepted last week in the wake of our Save Film at LACMA protest. But as reported in yesterday’s New York Times, big questions remain regarding the content of the program. Will it be a continuation of the much beloved series of the past 41 years, or will it entail a new vision described in ambiguous terms by LACMA’s CEO Michael Govan? The Times reports:
. . . Mr. Govan acknowledged that his choice of words ‘was maybe a little unfortunate’ but said his intentions have been ‘misconstrued in the fever’ about the program’s future.
‘I in no way meant that filmmakers are not artists,’ he said, or to imply that movies with conventional narratives would be replaced by ‘weird, esoteric films’ without plots, made by people who are primarily painters or sculptors.
‘I don’t want to retract what I said, but I realize it was poorly phrased,’ Mr. Govan said. But, he added, ‘We can’t just deal with the classic history of film, which is now slightly codified.’”
I’m not sure what he means, but I hope to get some clarification as to what kind of program the donation will fund in our meeting with Mr. Govan on Tuesday. Stay tuned . . .
The two-week-plus campaign to Save Film at LACMA continues (be sure to read Time art and architecture critic Richard Lacayo’s article from yesterday), but Los Angeles’ fall film scene is beginning to promise highlights:
• “Cigarettes & Alcohol: Eight Films by Hong Sang-soo” (Sept. 11-19)
I’ve seen all of Hong’s films except for The Day a Pig Fell into the Well and his most recent two releases, which haven’t played in Los Angeles. LACMA is showing all three (Pig for free!) plus most of his other works; one of several fine examples of the kind of programming Angelenos will dearly miss if LACMA administration has its way.
• “African American Film Pioneers” (Sept. 11-Oct. 31)
UCLA Film & Television Archive screens films by Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams, and two starring Herb Jeffries.
• “A Tribute to Chick Strand” (Sept. 13)
The Los Angeles Filmforum begins its fall season with a tribute to films by Chick Strand, who tragically passed away in July.
• “Two Classics of Asian Cinema” (Sept. 25, 26)
LACMA’s 13-year veteran Ian Birnie has chosen Ozu’s swan song, An Autumn Afternoon (along with a new, 20th-anniversary print of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A City of Sadness), for what might be his Department’s final stand-alone screening, an exquisite choice for its serene evocation of the themes of loss and letting go.
• REDCAT Film/Video Events (Sept. 29-Dec. 14)
The theater has just announced a typically stellar line-up of fall screenings, including a projection performance by Bruce McClure, experimental animation, J. Hoberman on Flaming Creatures, and films by Ulrike Ottinger, Ken Jacobs, Joost Rekvel, and more.
• “The Classic Films of Alain Resnais” (Oct. 2-17)
A major LACMA series with a major highlight: Je t’aime, je t’aime, unavailable on video or DVD, on October 10.
• “Footsteps and Fog: British Film Noir” (Oct. 17-26)
“Though less well known, and with their own distinct sensibilities and variations, British filmmakers also made some fascinating contributions to the film noir genre.” (Of course, there are those who maintain that film noir is a style rather than a genre.)
• AFI FEST 2009 (Oct. 30-Nov. 7)
The best film festival for world cinema in Los Angeles continues this year, with a gutsy restructuring: complimentary tickets and patron passes for all screenings, and a centralized venue at Mann’s Chinese Theatre (with late screenings at AFM in Santa Monica). I can’t wait for its line-up announcement.
• As a final note, I’d like to highlight the fact that one of my favorite films from last year–Take Out–is getting a DVD release on September 1st by Kino Video.
Hayao Miyazaki made an appearance at AMPAS a couple weeks ago, and participated in a Q&A that included clips from his films. In general, he was soft spoken and not especially forthcoming with his answers (my wife assures me he was playing the part of the distinguished Japanese gentleman), but I found several of his comments illuminating, particularly on the subject of his multifaceted villains.
In most cases, Miyazaki’s films are notable for avoiding Good and Evil stereotypes, emphasizing instead the limited and selfish reasonings behind human conflicts. During the Q&A, he told us his primary reason for doing this was because in their efforts to visualize faces, animators often mimic the expressions of the characters they draw for days on end, and he simply didn’t want to create Evil characters who would plunge him into long periods of grimacing and frowning. I thought this was a funny but insightful position, especially if it inspired more nuanced stories. (For more coverage of Miyazaki’s California tour, check out Michael Guillen’s excellent round-up of links.)
Miyazaki’s latest film, Ponyo, opens in US theaters this week, and even though I found it a disappointment after the ambition and complexity of his most recent works–Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl’s Moving Castle–its release has occasioned VIZ Media’s English translation of the excellent Starting Point: 1979-1996, a compendium of Miyazaki’s writings and conversations. The book’s most notable feature is probably the diversity of sources (essays, lectures, interviews) and topics (history and aesthetics, reviews, memories, confessions) that offer a wide-ranging portrait of the animation master who studied economics and political science and worked his way up the ranks of Japan’s anime industry. Miyazaki is a thoughtful and eloquent writer, as passages like these reveal:
• Advice for beginners: “One of the things about drawing is that, if you put in serious effort, you will become good at it, at least to a certain extent. But that’s all the more reason to study a variety of things that interest you while you have time, before you enter the professional world, in order to develop and solidify such fundamentals as your own viewpoint and way of thinking. If you don’t do this, your life will be treated as just another disposable product.”
• “. . . when I talk with American animators, I sense that they tend to interpret objects in a very different way. They tend to want to look at the volume and the three-dimensionality of objects first. But we Japanese tend to think of the lines used to represent the objects.”
• “You may have to draw explosions when creating animation, but you have to draw a lot of other things too. The most important thing of all, it seems to me, is to have an interest in people, in how they live, and in how they interact with things. . . . But if you’re creating an animated work just to get the chance to draw explosions or airplanes, I have to say that your thinking is a bit warped.”
• Notes for The Man Who Planted Trees Japanese laserdisc: “In the cel animation production we are currently working on, we’ve found drawing plants to be very difficult. If we draw just the plants waving in the breeze, it looks formulaic. Plants exist in the weather and light rays that surround them–waving in the wind, shimmering in the sunlight. I am always puzzling over how to draw such things. . . . But Back has taken this problem head on and mastered it. For that alone, I say, ‘Hat’s off!’ His imagery is beautiful.”
• 1991: “I had thought that, thanks to us having lost the war, we Japanese might have finally become a little more skeptical about national claims of ‘righteousness’ and ‘just causes.’ Watching [George H. W.] Bush, I can only think he is possessed by the ghost of John Wayne, telling him that ‘this is the way a real man should act.’ Saddam Hussein’s sense of righteousness is the same.”
• For the Ikiru Japanese laserdisc: “There are many memorable scenes in Ikiru, but to me the essence of the film is composed in this single shot, of a man stamping a mountain of documents. If [this shot] had just been some silly way to ridicule working in a government office or leading a meaningless life, the scene would never have the emotional impact it does. . . . If you consider the scene to be meaningless, you have to consider how much difference there is between a life spent stacking up a mountain of documents and a life spent stacking up film cans.”
• “There is, first of all, the reality that I’ve been powerfully influenced by [Osamu] Tezuka. When I was in elementary and middle school, I loved his manga more than those of anyone else. . . . [However,] I found myself disgusted by the cheap pessimism of works like Ningyo (Mermaid), or Shizuku (The Drop) . . . What had once been imaginative for the creator between 1945 and 1955 had simply become another trick in his toolbox.”
• Project plan in 1986: “My Neighbor Tororo aims to be a happy and heartwarming film, a film that lets the audience go home with pleasant, glad feelings. Lovers will feel each other to be more precious, parents will fondly recall their childhoods, and children will start exploring the thickets behind shrines and climbing trees to try to find totoro. This is the kind of film I want to make.”
Despite his fame as an anime director, I believe Miyazaki’s greatest artistic accomplishment is his seven-volume manga, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which has been compared to such genre epics as Dune and Lord of the Rings. Miyazaki wrote, illustrated, and serialized the manga’s fifty-nine episodes from 1982-1994 (his classic 1984 film adaptation is only based on the first two volumes). Starting Point includes some surprising revelations, such as how much of the manga was improvised: “In the beginning, it was a work that I wasn’t sure I could complete. But since I had decided that I could stop working on it at any point, you could also say that I was able to create the story without worrying about the future. . . . I was always under the pressure of lots of tight deadlines; several times I didn’t realize until much later the true significance of what I had actually written.”
The manga’s darker and more complex tone might be attributed to his attitude in the early ’80s at the height of Japan’s economic success (“In addition to being upset by environmental problems, I was also concerned about where humanity was headed, and especially about the state of Japan; most of all, I suspect, I was angered by the state of my own self”), and his narrative was later informed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Bosnian War.
“I actually feel as though working on Nausicaä may have made it possible for me to create those films,” he says. “Of all these works, Nausicaä weighed the heaviest on my shoulders. Going back to the world of Nausicaa after stopping work on it was so difficult that I found myself not wanting to. . . . I won’t go so far as to say that because I had something as heavy as Nausicaä to work on, I deliberately created lighter works. I do think, however, that if I didn’t have Nausicaä to work on, I probably would have been floundering about, trying to incorporate somewhat more serious elements into the films.”
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that “In the wake of the chorus of disapproval that greeted last week’s announcement that he was red-lighting the 40-year-old weekend film series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, museum Director Michael Govan has some good news: Potential donors have stepped up, interested in helping underwrite the series.”
It is indeed good news, but until we’re assured that the film program is staying in place, Save Film at LACMA will continue collecting signatures on our petition (with nearly 1,350 signatories at the moment) and build our protest on Facebook.
I want to urge regular readers of Film Journey concerned about diminishing repertory and art film venues in general to sign our petition. This is a “local issue” in terms of the venue in question, but it’s a global issue in terms of the exhibition of film. Not only do many scholars and critics depend on LACMA’s programming to publish articles about film (Joseph McBride, for example, has been especially vocal about his debt to LACMA’s programming), but as the largest art museum west of Chicago, LACMA’s final decision on this matter could inspire similar policies at many other museums. (Not to mention that a loss for cinephiles anywhere is a loss for cinephilia everywhere.)
Many non-Angeleno critics have signed the petition (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Dave Kehr, Kent Jones, Dennis Lim, Chris Fujiwara, etc.), and many filmmakers abroad such as Bertrand Tavernier, Monika Treut, and Jean-Pierre Gorin (who teaches and lives in San Diego) have lent us their voices. The petition makes for good, rousing reading. One of my favorites comments comes from Alessio Della Carta in Italy:
“As a former assistant to M. Antonioni, I object to the presumption this museum ‘director’ makes to film being ‘not a draw’ with the museum audience. Antonioni not a draw? How insulting to great filmmakers and aspiring filmmakers everywhere. Particularly those who waited in line to see Michelangelo in one of his last public appearances at LACMA. I am proud to have known a brilliant ‘director’ and Mr. Govan, sadly, is not one.”
“Who knows the wrath of a film community scorned?” writes David Ng for the Los Angeles Times. “The Los Angeles County Museum of Art does. In a little more than a week, the controversy over LACMA’s decision to ax its 40-year-old film program has grown into a full-blown online debate . . . in response to an aggressive Facebook campaign and online petition . . . ”
Last weekend, a LACMA regular commended me for my previous blog entry protesting the cancelation of the museum’s film program, but she added, “What’s the next step? Are there any precedents for this kind of thing within the film community?” A beloved programmer . . . an indifferent institution . . . outraged movie fans: I immediately thought of the famous 1968 demonstrations in Paris in support of Henri Langlois, who was fired by the French government from the Cinémathèque that he co-founded and represented for decades. Cinephiles, filmmakers, and industry people worldwide were outraged by his dismissal, and their protests lasted from February to April until Langlois was eventually reinstated.
Hoping to avoid grandiosity, I would caution against making too strong a comparison between the Cinémathèque and the LACMA protests. L’affaire Langlois clashed with riot police, for one thing, and it also honored a titan of film collection and signaled a growing dissatisfaction with the Gaullist government in general. (Many have cited the Langlois protest as warm-up for the larger student/worker demonstrations the following May.) On the other hand, as a model of what a film community can do when a respected member or program is ousted, the events of ‘68 still cast inspirational reverberations.
The Cinémathèque Support Committee operated directly out of the Cahiers du Cinéma’s publishing office. In the somewhat rambling but nevertheless fascinating 2004 documentary Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque, critic Jean Narboni describes the scene: “That became our command post. Everyone who defended Langlois passed through. The magazine was mobilized around the clock. Phone calls radiated out, telegrams arrived from filmmakers threatening to withdraw their films if Langlois wasn’t reinstated.”
Earlier this week, I was recruited to edit the blog of Save Film at LACMA, and the last few days have been tremendously exciting for reasons Ng states above–a whirlwind of Facebook, Twitter, email, and phone conversations that are bringing a diverse community together. I’ve been active on the Internet since the Usenet days of the early ’90s; I’ve published online reviews for twelve years and blogged for eight. I’ve participated in blogathons, link sharing, and more discussion fora than I can adequately recall. But I’ve always felt that local film culture should never be dismissed, that cinephiles should share, enjoy, and argue about movies with our neighbors. If we can make new technologies work for us, we don’t have to become a virtual community unified in bytes alone, but a community that extends into local venues. Whether or not LACMA reconsiders its decision to dismantle Ian Birnie’s operation and shut down its screening room in October, I’m excited to see where this new momentum leads.
