I recently took part in a Q&A session following screenings
of films that I curated from the EFS (Experimental Film
Society) archive. The programmes
consisted of short films by a number of EFS filmmakers and a feature film of my
own and both played to packed houses.
While the overall feedback was very positive, there were two harsh and
challenging comments that really got under my skin. I responded to them briefly
and politely, not lingering on them unduly so as to keep the Q&A flowing.
But in the weeks since, I have given them a great deal of thought and discussed
them at length with my colleagues Dean Kavanagh and Maximilian Le Cain. What
follows is the considered response that I have formulated.
The comments were:
“The films in
this series were so personal, formal and experimental that no-one can
communicate with them. There is no way to enter into the world of these works
and thus no way to enjoy them at all.”
“Many of these
works shouldn’t even be here! I repeat- these works should never have been
screened here.”
Essentially, my understanding of these statements is that due to
the fact that the films were ‘personal’ in form, spirit and content they cannot
be understood and therefore they should not even exist. As an underground
filmmaker committed to creating intensely personal, formally radical cinema, it
is certainly not the first time that I’ve heard responses like these. And not
just aimed at my work but also at the work of colleagues and other experimental
or even sometimes relatively mainstream films. Perhaps this reaction of violent
rejection is a natural defence mechanism that kicks in when someone is
confronted with the shock of an idea so alien as to seem fundamentally
inappropriate. Of course, the history of alternative cinema is also a history
of such confrontations. When a filmmaker gets this type of response, unless he
or she is interested in provoking the audience for the sheer sake of
provocation, it is because the viewer’s received understanding of how to
‘communicate’ with a film has been thrown into crisis. As an experimental
filmmaker, one hopes that if the film works, this confrontation will result in
the viewer’s perception rising to the challenge and that ideally he or she will
leave with an opened mind or even an expanded consciousness. And not just with
a broadened understanding of cinema but with a somehow enriched (or, indeed,
disturbed) sense of perception itself.
However, the specific nature of the ‘personal’ aspect of my
filmmaking gives this ambition a whole other dimension. Working as I do - with
no budget, doing more or less everything myself and essentially inventing a way
of making films all of my own - results in films that naturally emerge as
something close to a pure manifestation of my thoughts and emotions. Therefore,
admittedly, there may be certain elements of them that remain impenetrable when
not experienced through my individual biology. Yet the remnants and spectres of
internal moments that remain on the surface of the work are sufficiently
present, when light strikes them, to communicate enough to an audience for them
to form a relationship of their own with what they see and hear. And the
emphasis should be on ‘a relationship of their own’.
Making these films is a process of freely exploring one’s own
often strange and disconcerting perceptual reactions to existing in a world
that appears more and more mysterious and unstable the more one looks at it. A
world that we largely perceive through sight, sound and the medium of an
individual sensibility. The techniques of cinema, therefore, are ideally and
uniquely suited to investigating personal perception in a way that can reveal
the nature of one’s inner relationship with the world to a heightened degree.
Likewise, plunging cinema into such murky and volatile territory results in a
profound research into the capacities, mysteries and limitations of cinema
itself. The filmmaker uses cinema and cinema uses the filmmaker’s unique
sensibility each to probe the nature of the other. Each goads the other on,
each pushing the perceptual boundaries of the other, each revealing hidden
aspects of the other’s nature. Far from using film as merely a device for illustrating
preconceived ideas or conveying information in a conventionally manipulative
fashion, this approach can result in confronting the audience with a vision
that is truly unique. A vision that is as frail and delicate as any person, and
sometimes as aggressive and enigmatic as well.
What results from this open, exploratory way of working is not
ultimately solipsistic but profoundly interpersonal. The filmmaker is not
presenting the audience with a pre-digested idea expressed from the position of
authority that most films automatically assume. There is no attempt to take the
viewers ‘out of themselves’ through entertainment or to ‘make them think’ in
the manner of films with a ‘message’. Instead, they are invited to join the
filmmaker in an experiential exploration of the atmospheres, emotions and
processes that the film embodies almost in a spirit of co-creation. Each viewer
remains conscious of his or her own feelings and reactions throughout the
screening. And these reactions are as important a part of the film as what is
being projected before them. The experience of watching the film becomes a
personal interrogation of the viewer’s perceptions by and for that viewer.
Therefore, the film can become as much about the viewer as the filmmaker.
A strong audience can not only enrich but actually alter the
film. These are films that can only be concluded in the viewer’s mind, not on
the screen. I like to think of the film as a mysterious object drifting in the
void of deep space. Both the filmmaker and the audience are satellites floating
around this strange entity, both trying to decipher it in their own way. This
results in a state of constant exchange: we are not alone because we have
cinema through which we can communicate, viewer and filmmaker both on an equal
level (albeit admittedly within terms set by the filmmaker). And what we are
trying to communicate is something ineffable that we can perhaps sense but
which only the techniques of cinema can make visible.
The difference between this way of creating and the traditional,
emotionally manipulative narrative techniques of the mainstream are so obvious
as to be almost not worth mentioning. To pitch EFS against Hollywood is
redundantly quixotic. Today, with everyone making films and moving image equipment
of one sort or another almost universally accessible, there is nothing
exceptional about a film existing outside commercial structures. Through my own
experience as an underground filmmaker, however, I have become aware of other,
more insidious orthodoxies that have sometimes emerged from what was once
radical, and which perhaps should be called out.
Cinema is assumed to have an obligation to operate within
defined and accepted rules. But those rules are not just the rules of the
mainstream. ‘Alternative’ traditions can be every bit as ‘safe’ and pander to
the complacent requirements of consumers of these traditions as lazily as the
most banal soap opera. Examples where this is prevalent include ‘mumblecore’
films, where ‘rawness’ is all too often an excuse for shoddy filmmaking;
materialist films where the very fact of something being shot on a small gauge
format makes it somehow worthy of admiration; and, most tricky of all, films
dealing with political oppression or revolt which simply by virtue of doing so
are accorded cinematic merit even if they are no more than reportage. Of
course, all three traditions have glorious antecedents in cinema history, often
from pioneering moments when such films were still rare events. And, still
today, all three traditions do sometimes produce magnificent work (as does the
mainstream). But the problem is that they are what is automatically recognised
in many quarters as radical cinema, which gives critics and festivals an excuse
not to look any further. They are frequently hailed by category rather than
quality and the viewer knows exactly where to stand in relation to them while
still being able to feel ‘radical’ or ‘alternative’. This is what occupies the
margins, pushing anything else even further into oblivion. And this sells
cinema short.
Truth be told, the audio-visual landscape of the 21st century is
so volatile and measureless that anyone conscientiously working as an artist in
it needs to keep on their toes as never before. Not in the sense of ‘keeping
up’ with the new but rather in constantly questioning the value of what they
are doing as against the vast quantity of moving images flooding the world and
the unprecedented ease of creating them. Broadly speaking, we are no longer
operating within a linear history of aesthetic development but adrift in a
flood of stylistic choices (or simulacra of same) which technology allows
pretty much anyone to assume with facile, cavalier ease. We aren’t links in a
chain of historical development now. We are denizens of a later era rummaging
in the boxes of bric-a-brac left over from that heroic time. This is not in
itself necessarily a bad thing but, if one still cares at all about cinema, it
is obvious that the responsibility in this situation is enormous.
Today, it is up to each filmmaker worth his or her salt to
reinvent cinema in his or her own image. Nothing short of that is sufficient.
This reinvention does not take place in a void. The lessons of film history
should be studied and assimilated because to exist in the world today is to be
influenced by moving images whether we like it or not. Studying the work of the
masters allows us to navigate moving images critically and perceive them
outside the context of what is generally fed to us in society. As a filmmaker, it
is necessary to formulate your own sense of composition, colour, sound and
rhythm – a voice and a heartbeat that is entirely your own. You must also
discover and explore a universe that is unique and personal to you, discarding
the alibis of ‘content’ in favour of presenting the viewer with something that
he or she can’t see anywhere else. It is necessary to cut into or even straight
through reality to reveal the deeper insights into existence that only the
tools and techniques of cinema can touch. To forge a cinematic language
entirely of your own is enough to accomplish this. Films should be born of a
particular vision, a personal way of using sound and image. This should be the
starting point of a film, which should then organically seek out its appropriate
subject matter. It should not be used simply to cosmetically amplify or
garnish an indifferent scenario.
It is paradoxical indeed that in a world where moving images are
our constant companions, interest in their intrinsic powers and properties seems
at an all-time low, at least beyond strictly utilitarian terms – normally ‘how
can I use this to sell something?’ Rather than the miraculous constructs of
sound and vision that they can be, they have become simply the least demanding
methods of transmitting information that could be conveyed otherwise. Moving
image makers and audiences have settled for a codified and superficial
relationship dictated by an accepted approach to ‘subject’. In consequence,
like the human brain, cinema, TV, gallery installations, internet videos and
all other forms of moving image work tend to chug along at less than 10% of
their potential capacity. It seems films are not generally allowed to directly
confront the mystery and immensity of things that we have no way of easily understanding,
such as nature, animals, the cosmos or our very existence without trivialising
them. Everything must be neatly reduced to bite-size portions of easily
digestible information, a weak reflection of the world where ideas can be
safely toyed with. Cinema’s vast experiential capacities are capable of so much
more than this, but it seems the majority of people don’t know how to look or
listen with any greater sensitivity than students at a lecture absorbing facts.
As a Spanish film scholar recently said in conversation: “The truth is most
people actually hate cinema”.
A Facebook friend of mine (Daniel Fawcett) put his finger on the problem with
this reaction to the art world, one that holds equally true for any area of
tepid moving image creation and consumption:
“The despicable
state of the art world summarised here in a comment:
“He’s a really compelling filmmaker. I’ve noticed that when his
films are shown in galleries people will sit through 45 minutes and no one will
leave.”
Is that really
the best that can be said about a winning piece of artwork, that people sit
through it? Artists, galleries, art schools and critics are participating in
crushing the creative spirit. Do artists no longer aspire to create great work,
to truly experiment and make works with their whole being rather than all this
pseudo-intellectual passionless dross? Nobody seems to take risks anymore, art
should aspire to expand our consciousness and to reach beyond our current
limitations not just get us a pat on the back and dinner invitations from art
world chums. As Campbell said in his acceptance speech
“the opinions of the people on the jury matter a great deal” so that’s what it's all about folks!”
So what should cinema be? I have always liked Nicole Brenez’s
ideal definition of art as ‘a catastrophe’. Cinema should be a catastrophe in
the way that life is, in the way that opening your eyes on the world every
morning is. Personally, I like to define the cinematic experience as something
similar to what some scientists predict death by falling into a black hole
could be like. When you fall in, you are not only pulled apart but also crushed
from below. When you look out of the black hole, you see every single thing
that has even fallen into it since its birth, rushing at you in a fraction of a
second, crushing you into nothingness. Cinema itself is not a black hole. It is
a human creation. But it can contain all galaxies and forms of life, even ones
we can’t fully comprehend but can only sense.
As Robert Bresson said: “I believe in cinema”.
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