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

Mon Feb 20 01:36:04 CST 2012

Same in the UK, where humanities and arts students are now liable to pay full fees, £9,000, or around $13,500. per annum. Although that may (?) sound cheap to people in the USA, it has deterred at least 8% of potential applicants for the next academic year, which is the first year the new fees scheme is running. 

For many years, thanks to a modest but crucial budget, I have hired a handful of films from LUX that really must be seen on film; Wavelength, Arnulf Rainer, Raygun Virus and a few others, including things that are only available on film (William Raban's Angles of Incidence, Steve Farrer's Ten Drawings). The rest I show on DVD and VHS. The availability of reproductions over the last twenty years or so has been a wholly good thing in terms of enriching the possibilities of introducing students to a wide range of work previously unavailable or unaffordable or both.

In my experience, students fully appreciate the difference between original and reproduction, film and video, once it's been explained. Furthermore, there has been a significant increase here in students wanting to work with film, especially Super 8.

Nicky Hamlyn. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Patricia R. Zimmermann <patty at ithaca.edu>
To: Experimental Film Discussion List <frameworks at jonasmekasfilms.com>; f at fredcamper.com
Sent: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 5:26
Subject: Re: [Frameworks] canyon in the news (bad news dept)

A small point along the lines of political economy, as per David:

The decline of cinema on celluloid is dwarfed by the crisis and catastrophe of 
the massive cuts to higher education, its humanities, its arts, its professorial 
jobs, and all ideas and practices that are not instruments advancing 
transnational capital. 

PRZ 

-------
Patricia R. Zimmermann, Ph.D.
Professor, Cinema, Photography and Media Arts
Roy H. Park School of Communications
Codirector, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival
953 Danby Road
Ithaca College
Ithaca, New York 14850 USA
Office: +1 (607) 274 3431
FAX: +1 (607) 274 7078
http://faculty.ithaca.edu/patty/
http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff
BLOG: http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff10/blogs/open_spaces/
patty at ithaca.edu

---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 00:06:33 -0500
>From: frameworks-bounces at jonasmekasfilms.com (on behalf of David Tetzlaff 
<djtet53 at gmail.com>)
>Subject: Re: [Frameworks] canyon in the news (bad news dept)  
>To: f at fredcamper.com,Experimental Film Discussion List <frameworks at jonasmekasfilms.com>
>
>> There are people who try to show film on film and can't, and
>> there are some who succeed.
>
>I did show film on film, not exclusively, but to the best I could manage.
>
>> But even when you can't, you can talk about
>> how the film shown on film actually looks,
>
>Of course, I did that.
>
>> and recommend screenings if
>> there are any in your locale,
>
>There aren't any screenings in my locale, but many of my students spent time in 
NYC and I strongly encouraged them to visit Anthology.
>
>> in the same way that a good art history teacher (of whom there are all too 
few) showing slides would talk about
>> what some of the art works actually look like.
>
>We ought to give a lot more thought to this analogy. No one would accuse any 
art history professor showing slides of somehow violating the essence of the 
art-form under study.
>
>> Yet, at present, many do manage to keep their projectors going. And there are 
still a lot of prints around.
>
>I think you are missing the point, which is about the critical mass needed to 
maintain an institution such as Canyon.
>
>> You seem to be appealing to some form of "majority rules" -- not enough care 
about film on film, so it will die out. 
>
>I'm not appealing to anything. I'm trying to construct an economic analysis of 
the viability of business models for experimental film distribution in the 21st 
century. I'm not saying 'the majority should rule,' or making any proposition of 
policy. I'm saying that revenues have to come from somewhere, and there just 
aren't enough paying customers to keep the system going.
>
>> Maybe you're right. Or maybe a few of us will manage to keep it alive, for 
some decades into the future. Who appointed you to write its obituary?
>
>How is it not clear that _I_ want print projection to be an available option 
for as many people as possible for as long as possible? Why do you think I take 
the time to write this shit and give straight answers to Scott's query?
>
>As for 'writing film's obituary,' well that's too much to bite off in this 
post, so I'll have to defer that for later.
>
>> That you profess to care "very little" for the artist's intentions as to
>> how a work should be shown leaves me speechless.
>
>To be clear, I care very little about the artist's intent ABOUT ANYTHING, not 
just about the artist's desires as to how a work is presented. But that does not 
mean I do not care about how a work is presented. I care about that very much. I 
simply believe that the range of 'right ways' to experience any work of art are 
embedded in the work itself, and may or may not correspond to the artist's 
desires. (A lot of times it does, just not always.) For me, the key battle here 
is not film/video but cinema vs. personal screens. I think many film works 
absolutely need to be seen on a large screen in a dark room in the company of 
other people. Young people today are happy with YouTube and their iPods. That 
leaves _me_ speechless, and the difference between those things is what I 
devoted my time trying to get my students to appreciate.
>
>Moreover, if we look at the other fine arts, we will see that there is 
tradeoff/tension between appropriate presentation (be that dictated by the 
conscious intent of the maker, or the nature of the text) on the one hand, and 
survival and preservation on the other. Are viewers meant to be separated from 
paintings by ropes, their encounters with the art under the obvious surveillance 
of suspicious docents? In the Art Institute of Chicago there is a wonderful room 
where a number of Cornell boxes are presented in a setting designed by Cornell 
himself that place the work in an enriching context. However this was not how 
Cornell intended the works to be engaged. He made them for individuals to hold, 
move, examine. Next to that room are a number of additional Cornell works in 
glass cases. The light reflecting off the case glass makes them very hard to see 
well, the viewer struggles in vain to get a good viewing angle, to get closer to 
the work. To me, this presentation is an epic !
!fail in aesthetic terms. But I know why those pieces are in those glass 
cases... You get a better sense of the spirit of those works from good 
photographs, and then seeing them in person in that yukky setting fills in some 
of the blanks about their physicality so it's not totally worthless. 'You can't 
always get what you want, but maybe you can get what you need.' 
>
>> The specifics have been aired here many times: the differences between
>> film flicker and most forms of video, between projected film light and
>> other kinds of projection/display, between the physical look of projected
>> celluloid and the very different look of video. I don't prefer one to the
>> other. It is simply my claim that many of the best avant-garde (and other)
>> films come through far better in their intended format.
>
>But you have so far failed to identify the aesthetic value that is gained or 
lost. You offer the usual technological litany (all of it of increasingly 
tenuous validity as technology develops, but that's not the point.) If you can't 
name what these things DO, name the value you do not want to lose (in some 
non-tautological way), we're not going to get anywhere.
>
>So far, all we have is the same-old same-old line: the co-ops are in trouble 
and its up to the academics to save them by ponying up more money. That is not 
going to work. Not even close. That's the box we need to get out of. If you 
think that getting out of that box is to 'write an obituary for film,' then I 
submit your concept of 'film' is patently absurd.
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