[Frameworks] canyon in the news (bad news dept)

[David Tetzlaff]

With 20-20 hindsight, we can see that the writing has been on the wall for the end of the co-op system as a sustainable form of distribution since May 10, 1975: the release date of the first practical home VCR. 

Co-op distribution attempts to replicate in the fine-art world the business model of commercial entertainment. That is, the idea is to rent prints, and cover the cost of the exhibition by charging admission. (To simplify the argument, we could consider rentals for classroom use to be following this model as the rental fee could be considered to come from the tuition paid by the students taking the class.) This worked when there was no other way to view moving pictures other than projecting prints, but the economic foundation changed inexorably once there another way of reproducing, distributing and watching moving pictures became available: one that was not only far less expensive but via which 'unauthorized' copies could easily be made. 

Of course, this other means of sharing moving pictures (the VCR and CRT monitor) was originally vastly inferior technically, but the economic viability of a business model depends on the desires of the customers, not just the wishes of the producers. And way too much of the audience simply did not care about the technical issues (or the aesthetic principles that might attend them). So, a certain percentage of the audience who had been willing to pay to go to an experimental film screening decided to spend their time and budget on other things - renting a VHS of a foreign art film or whatever.

As time goes on, the video options increase in both utility and availability of content, the technical quality improves, and so on, so the paying audience for experimental exhibitions continues to shrink. 

Eventually, the co-ops become highly dependent on the patronage of academia, which works for awhile since Cinema Studies was a growth industry at the time, and major universities could fund the desires of their new prize Film Professors. But then Prop 13 passed in California, the Reagan administration slashed education funding, and all but the most elite schools began facing harsh budget reversions. Furthermore, schools had been able to screen film prints in Cinema Studies classes in large part because 16mm was the default medium for educational media, and was thus well supported by college AV departments and the infrastructures (institutional AV dealers and repair services) upon which those departments relied.

All of that changed rather quickly as video completely took over educational media. For over a decade now, most colleges not only no longer have working 16mm projectors, and no budget line to repair whatever's still stuck in a closet somewhere, but have no one in their network of vendors who can fix them. So if young faculty people in the 21st century want to screen prints, the WHOLE thing falls on them. They have to find the projector, keep it running, do the rental paperwork, cut something else from the operating budget to free up funds for the rentals, come in and project the prints themselves -- and by the way you better know how to fix a bad tape splice if you get prints from FMC, MOMA or even Canyon. And of course, none of this endears you to the dean or advances your tenure file. Your students are POed about the required screenings since every other professor requiring them to watch something has it on reserve in the library where they can access it at their leisure, and where the ambitious students can actually STUDY the thing in some detail as they write their papers. The library will buy any DVD under $200 if you're going to use it in class, because it builds the collection that can be used by the whole college. Good intentions to aesthetic celluloid rectitude only go so far as your head gets beat continuously against a variety of walls. Some people still manage to muddle through, but others fall away. So the college rentals decline too.

Now, I would say this trajectory was clearly visible by 1985, and glaringly obvious by 1990. Yet, in a world where the general rule of survival is 'adapt or die,' the institutions of experimental film largely kept to business-as-usual, and now find themselves utter anachronisms whose continued operation depends almost entirely on 'the kindness of strangers.' (Not to mention that the print-rental system never provided much income to experimental filmmakers.)

And if you think things might get 'better,' I think you're kidding yourself. Because this is all about forces that are much larger than our little experimental film scene and have been rolling down the hills of history for well over 35 years. (Of course film prints wear out, fewer and fewer print stocks are available, labs are closing down...) 

So, what is too be done? 

It's time to think outside the box, go back to square one, ask ourself what REALLY matters here, and figure out how best to achieve those ends in the real world of America 2012...