[Frameworks] Avant-garde film, Facebook, and the nature of attention

[Jonathan Walley]

Dear Monica (and anyone else who is frustrated with this discussion  
thread),

I hope you'll stick with this list. I'm glad that you've learned a lot  
already, in the short time you've been a Frameworker. I've been on the  
list almost since its inception, and have learned a lot too. But  
please realize that Frameworks is not just about the "nuts and bolts"  
of filmmaking. Certainly that is an important facet of the list, and  
though I am a scholar rather than a maker, I've appreciated all the  
discussions of craft, technique, technology, and so forth - my own  
work has greatly benefited from such exchanges.

But Frameworks is equally about the ideas, concerns, history, theory,  
challenges, vexations, etc., of experimental film culture, which  
involves much more than the practicalities of filmmaking, or film  
aesthetics. As Pip points out, this list has over 1000 members  
internationally, including film and video makers, scholars and  
critics, curators, gallerists, film programmers, students and  
teachers, aficionados, and so on. The membership is a microcosm of the  
experimental film world, and the great variety of discussion topics on  
this list constitute a kind of "pulse" of that world. This particular  
discussion raises all sort of important ideas and questions: about the  
relationship of independent, experimental filmmaking to other forms of  
media; about the political and social ramifications of the choices we  
make about communication, media, and the circulation of ideas and  
works; about changing patterns in audiences for this kind of  
filmmaking, etc. I would suggest that these are just as important to  
someone who makes films as information about cameras, editing  
software, and film processing.

And, as others have pointed out, you can always use that "delete" key.  
But before you do, I hope you'll consider that this type of  
discussion, though it irritates you, might be important to you.  
Indeed, the very fact that it troubles you might be telling you  
something.

Best wishes,
Jonathan

Jonathan Walley
Assistant Professor of Cinema
Denison University
walleyj at denison.edu