[Frameworks] Asking for a friend

[Fred Camper]

This utopian view of experimental cinema seems to me to be incorrect. 
Some of those I would call the very greatest experimental filmmakers 
were also sexual harassers. Remember that many filmmakers had a position 
of profesorship, which certainly conveys an aura of authority, or other 
positions of power. Asking for sex from a very young and very admiring 
student enrolled in one of one's courses  is highly inappropriate, and 
not only in my view, even if it is nowhere near as awful as the worst of 
the actions we are hearing about today.

I do not wish to name filmmakers now very old or deceased, but I can 
without searching my memory very hard quickly count to eight, not all of 
them among the greatest filmmakers and not all of them professors. I 
felt the need to chime in in response to the we are better than they 
tone of this post. I am a bit out of the current scene and do not know 
of currently active harassers in our little film world. It would be nice 
to think that there are fewer today, and nicer to think that such 
actions will be greatly reduced by the current shift in climate around 
this issue.

Perhaps the old HIV slogan, Silence=Death, can be resurrected with a 
slight rewrite now? I am not sure what to use instead of death though.

Fred Camper
Chicago

On 11/23/2017 8:21 PM, Pip Chodorov wrote:
> Asking for a friend?  Hilarious subject line.
>
> I think experiemental film's freedom comes from its marginality.
> In this business there is no money or power because these films are 
> outside the film industry and outside the art market. There is only 
> passion, sharing, and working in cooperative communities.
>
> That is not to say that there is no competition or territoriality 
> between people or groups, we feel that maybe even stronger than in the 
> film industry or the art market. But there is certainly no sense of 
> entitlement over others due to one's position. There are no bosses, no 
> job interviews, no big opportunities, no moguls... Also the nature of 
> these film works are self-expression and thrashing out issues of 
> difference and marginality and self-identity so it is a very welcoming 
> community in those terms.
>
> Of course there are other kinds of negative energies that can crop up 
> in our communitiy besides sexual haassment, other, more "experimental" 
> harassments that could be interseting to discuss...
>
> - Pip Chodorov
>
>
>
>
> At 21:06 +0000 23/11/17, Chuck Kleinhans wrote:
>> Given the proliferation of items in the news about sexual harassment 
>> in the film industry, and entertainment, and politics and academe, 
>> etc. why is this listserv so quiet on these issues?  Nothing to report?
>>
>> Chuck Kleinhans
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