[Frameworks] weird!

[Mirko Heinemann]

I think the complete discussion is weird.

Mirko

2010/6/6 Fred Camper <f at fredcamper.com>:
> Quoting Adam Hyman <amleon13 at earthlink.net>:
>
>> My guess is that it is easy to send to the whole list; it requires conscious
>> effort to send to only one person (saving that person¹s email, etc), so I¹m
>> thinking he intended it just for you, and you should have checked with him
>> before forwarding to the whole list.
>>
>> That said, it is a useful contribution from Fred....
>
> Thanks, Adam.
>
> I did intend the post Jason forwarded for the whole list, but by the
> time I realized I had sent it only to Jason, I was thinking I would
> not post it, or would post something different. And Adam is right that
> on lists such as these, etiquette is that one never forwards anything
> to the list on one's own, just as one should not reveal private
> discussions ("four people have written me off list in support," that
> sort of thing).
>
> I *do* think there are excellent and original younger makers who are
> not on the Film Comment list, and as I'm writing about the upcoming
> Onion City festival soon, in which I will likely mention more than one
> of them, I'll post a link to that piece when it appears.
>
> It is a very old story in the arts that it often takes a while for
> excellent work to get widely acknowledged. Thus it is usually the case
> that older work is more widely known.
>
> I stand by my position that one should make aesthetic arguments for
> the work one cares about, not political ones, and that aesthetic
> arguments almost always seem absent from discussions such as this one.
> "Inclusiveness" for the sake of "inclusiveness" could be valued if
> what one wants is "inclusiveness," but it also could be that the very
> best Tasmanian avant-garde film is derivative of Brakhage in an
> uninteresting way, while one of Brakhage's best students is now making
> genuinely original work that owes little debt to his teacher. Not
> being a sociologist, for me "inclusiveness" is of limited interest in
> itself; what *can* be interesting is the way different aesthetics
> *sometimes* emerge from very different makers.
>
> There's also an interesting observation of Sitney's from years ago:
> that while his and my generation had a number of advocates for
> avant-garde film among writers, the younger generation(s) seem to have
> fewer such advocates. This may not be exactly what Sitney said, but
> the view as I've stated it is one I believe to be true. This isn't to
> say that only a critic can make a reputation. Sometimes the advocacy
> of other filmmakers has been the main beginning thrust. This is
> something for the unrecognized to consider.
>
> Some other things for the unrecognized to consider: How well do you
> know the work of those "older" filmmakers who you are griping about?
> There's a long tradition in the arts of great artists having really
> studied and learned the work of "masters," before going on and doing
> something different. Brakhage once told me that once he realized, at
> 18, that what he most wanted to do was make films, the first thing he
> did was read every piece of writing by Eisenstein that he could find.
> This does not sound like something most young filmmakers I have
> encountered would have done! He later bought a print of "Potemkin,"
> and looked at it again and again. And in the films of his first
> decade, one can absolutely see the influence of Eisensteinian montage,
> along with many other influences from cinema, poetry, and music. And
> by the time of "The Riddle of Lumen," 20 years after he began, little
> trace of Eisensteinian montage remains. Markopoulos, Anger, Gehr,
> Jacobs, Sonbert, and so many others, had a deep knowledge of and deep
> admiration for many areas of film history.
>
> Ask yourself, not, should my films be recognized because I'm a younger
> filmmaker who is not yet recognized, but rather, am I making genuinely
> original cinema of high quality, work that offers the viewers new and
> complex experiences in time? Sorry to say, not every film that gets
> made, even if it was worked on hard, is deserving of most viewers'
> time. Making superb work, pushing beyond what has been done before,
> that is the real struggle.
>
> Fred Camper
> Chicago
>
>
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