@ T
I occasionally read those threads, re such:
I took some of my work to a gallery – the owner was interested and asked me about one of the prints. I started to talk technically and she stuck her face in mine and yawned so I could see her tonsil scars. She was right, I never talk technically to non-photographers. In fact, I went to see Tina Barney
film and she got up afterwards and started talking technically – some things she said were flat out wrong and I actually question something and she seemed totally shocked – it was bad moment in a really dull presentation.
Now, I try not to talk technically to photographers.
So my question re garage: is there some movement forming or is everyone just getting whacked financially by manufacturers?
Something’s happening. There’s a gathering. We’re trying to stay rooted in practice as much as possible, which means an emphasis on production (hence the technical questions in the G forum: auto-didactic school)— you know how this site is, it can be amazing, or it can be total trash theory talk with no one listening to each other. I’m contacting established filmmakers and musicians from outside the community to widen the scope and raise the bar. Yes, it’s a serious endeavour. No, there’s no one defining manifesto, because they are always nails in a coffin— which is why we evolved the projects approach. Its not YouTube and it’s not really for outright beginners, unless they are willing to burn several skins off themselves very fast and hard and commit to serious advancement. No vanity films, no soft options. Ideally (this is just me), I’d like it to be molotov cocktails all round. I see the key questions of the hour being — DISTRIBUTION, MEANS OF PRODUCTION and PURPOSE.
Also—How to have a real voice in a white noise of media? Is the internet already a dead zone laid to waste by corporations seeking audiences, teasing people with new technology and the promise of 15seconds of viral fame? Can VOD become a serious platform running concurrent to traditional screening? etc etc.
We have resources now: the backing of The Auteurs, open doors into major festivals (see TA site festival list for a good indication), I’m negotiating deals with distributors and galleries and more… aiming to set up cells in different cities globally, so that it operates in the physical world and not purely virtually…
Everyone’s tired of getting whacked. A simple impulse: we rise together, as a collective. We may not always agree with each other and we may not always like each other, but if that is channelled into a call-and-response banter that steps outside of forum chattery, we might spark something powerful.
There are no limits to how far this could go, and I say it again—
Right now, this site is akin to a 21st century Cahiers Du Cinema, with a global reach and perspective. I’ve got filmmakers emailing me from Nigeria, Bombay, London, Tokyo (hence the SUBWAY MAPS project, for example). If an audio-visual dialogue could opened between us all… a new wave? I dare not think it. But the question begs.
bumping this great ‘hubble of cinema’ thread
there are no boundaries, sillies. :)
^ next you’ll be telling us there is no spoon, either.
There is no spoon.
Filmmaking has no boundaries I have found. As long as the universe and the human being exists. Every historic period stimulates it’s social and artistic community, creating new meanings, new content, new forms, new ideas. Every era has it’s bunch of filmmakers who wants to invent something different, something unique.
What do you guys think about this ?
Thanks, Colin, for reviving this great thread. When I joined the site in Nov 2008, there were many stimulating threads such as this where discussion was wide ranging. I encourage anyone who wants to explore what the auteurs had to offer at one point, to read this thread.
Filmmaking, indeed, has no boundaries outside of those of the human imagination. It exists in all countries and all time periods where cinema is allowed to grow and develope into an independent voice.
What does Mubi have to say to this classic the auteurs thread?
Against the potential neologism “Sovietic”; or, “No, there’s no one defining manifesto, because they are always nails in a coffin”
The Garage is a powerful actual and potential, and it is significant that it is here and that it has come from discussions such as these. When I first arrived at the Auteurs I basically did not look enough around, and whence the Garage was revealed to me the site came to more clarity (moving away from the Mubi debate, the Garage is still there so who cares the name of the discussion forums?).
Sovietic, however, does not exist, and if it will, will fall under the same post-modern confusion that any other art “movement” creates when the word comes before the movement—people trying to fit their works into the ideas and definitions of the neologism become more interesting for the ways that they do not manage to. The opposite neologic approach is to try to define a range of things already done as one singular movement, also broken apart by confusion when key differences in style and approach are acknowledged by the theorists. In other words, I hate those fucking words, because they’re meaningless and only create debate that distracts for its continual division and subdivision of more words over things that already are as opposed to things that could be. In other words, in a thread about the boundaries of film and film’s future, the creation of a neologism applies a boundary that adhered to or not still dictates a sense of working for or against, which cripples the boundariness of film.
I love the Garage. The Garage is significant, “sovietic” is not. The Garage is something that when I tell friends, coworkers, peers, associates, and students about, I can provide a link, they can see it for themselves, they can think of the possibilities and problems, hell they can even decide if they feel it’s “for them” or not. The Garage is real, and is a real movement, and is growing—I regret my leaving of everything I was developing Statesside aside because I’m impatient to get involved. And not too long from now (say, a month or two), I’ll have built back enough resources to start to get involved again.
Somebody said something about “after we get to Cannes” we can make the 360 degree projection movie described, for the resources and freedom of movement we have. This is wrong. Art movements are rarely, if ever, created from the success of being an artist in a mainstream mode and using that success to build back from the very beginning. On the other hand, breaking down cinema and rebuilding it is sort of a false premise because one cannot decide for an entire world population to forget what they’ve already seen. What you have in your hands right now is what you have to start thinking about how you can use, and what you can get in the near future is what you should be planning to do. It is no use to wait for the RED Scarlet to come out, for money to come in, for someone to start paying attention to you. The Garage is here now. Stop making up words and get to work.
(This statement not to T and the OP, who are in fact the ones who brought up the word and started defining it, but for readers of this thread who similarly get excited by the passion in it, like I have).
Now, re: video games and interactive cinema.
Most of the technological movement of the past five years, both mainstream and otherwise, has been towards the object of audience immersion. Avatar came out less than two years after my university announced an increased focus on digital immersive art (projection art, dome projection, digital labyrinths). Now I do not care in the least what your thoughts on Avatar are, the mainstream has taken note and immersive 3D is the aim of the game right now, whether you like the particular product that announced it as more than another kitsch attempt like those in the 80s or not. I’ve also heard of Choose Your Own Adventure movies, first person narratives, the fading line between cinema and video games, in academic settings, conferences, lectures, and more—but only theoretically beyond pointing at some interactive like, video game like productions, not actually bringing actual experimental attempts to the fore and working with the audience, of whom apparently are supposed to be the ones interacting with the medium, yet.
As a result, I am starting to get a little impatient with these ideas, but understand that that impatience does not reflect my lack of faith or support in them. What I am saying here is that I personally am not going to be the one creating a quantum narrative because I am personally not interested in doing so. For those that are, I heavily and passionately beg of you to start working on it, now, start figuring it out and turning it into more than words. If you have an idea in your head of something you’d like to create, start figuring it out now and think about the technology it might (or MIGHT NOT!) require.
The fact of the matter is, the solutions to most of these problems are often more simple than one thinks. You look at something that was done and think it looks complicated, but the production that supports it is almost always simple and accessible—you just need creativity.
This goes right back to the Garage. You look at a professional movie set and you see all these people doing so many different things, within different units and heirarchies, and you either are impressed or afraid of it and for some who do not manage to see their success from this process immediately or get turned around in the social movement of it all, become frustrated and decide to turn against it. However, that big crew of boiling people are doing the same thing a person with a shotgun mic attached to a EX3 are doing: trying to capture a single image. It is just one approach to the same end, and all of the complications are in fact one industry’s solutions to the problem of how to capture that image. You can rebel against it and find another approach, you can mix that approach in with a new one, you can join that approach, or anything, all are perfectly logical and capable ways of getting that image. But if you’re not actually getting that image, but only bemoaning the lack of freedom you feel you have to get it, you are not being productive. So get to work.
When all else fails or all else succeeds, do not miss the larger picture: if you want to be a filmmaker, then you have to make films. The Garage is here. It is, well, pretty interactive. So start making them.
—PolarisDiB
I hope this thread remains timeless.
I love this thread. This will be the third time I’ve read through it and I’m finally nearing the point where I have something worthwhile to add. For the moment I’ll just support it and encourage others to read the first couple of pages.
T
It went “underground” (aka we had no resources, and therefore no space to use as a factory)— then entropy bit hard— the 05:00 project site went offline recently because I couldn’t keep up the site management (time+money drain, which was a pity, bec. it was beginning to look good)
-and now it’s all been re-birthed as-GARAGE
PROJECTS now operate on a case by case basis— http://www.theauteurs.com/topics/6079
and Garage has its own forum, partly set aside to discuss the mechanics of filmmaking, partly to allow threads like this to breathe free of more general cinephilia / typical internet cynicism— http://www.theauteurs.com/topics/garage
-the principles/energy behind this thread remain though- core values driving an ambition.