Edit:
Whachoo talkin’ bout Willis?
I am interested but a little too dull to decipher exactly what you’re sayin.
Well, i’m usually inclined to side with challenging leftist films, but i’m very prone to love the aesthetic qualities of less radical films, so, much as i may (often) agree with say Ken Loach’s views i am less impressed or taken with his films overall than i feel i should be. I admire Pasolini’s Gospel according to St Matthew politically and for other qualities, but some of his films like Decameron and the Canterbury Tales i found off-puttingly scrappy. Some Bunuel films have a visual beauty but the satire is more important. I think in his case, the overall effect still feels artful (but not “arty”).
Damn, double post. I was watching Maria de Medeiros’ Captains of April earlier today: it’s no great shakes artistically, but tidy enough; what matters is that the story itself, of that marvellous carnation revolution of 1974, should be better known. Of course, if it was an artistic masterpiece too, that would help. But anyway it’s fair enough for political film-makers to concentrate on script and message more than self-promoting aesthetics
Fassbinder: another who challenges the comfortable bourgeois system, and right to confront and shake it, trouble is, with a softie like me, the abattoir scene in In a Year of 13 Moons is a turn off. Necessary but hard to stomach. Is it therefore likely to succeed in changing attitudes?
How should leftist film-makers approach cinema? By a new approach and form, or from within the system? Godard’s late 60s and 70s films strike me as self-indulgently intellectual and doomed to fail except with a small percentage of fellow intellectuals. He seemed to me to forget Fuller’s message in Pierrot, in a word emotion. Fine for his ego no doubt but hardly likely to effect change in large numbers of viewers
I would add that “aesthetic concerns” seems a very arbitrary concept. In the thread ‘Use of the Female Form,’ there was a long discussion about female form, specifically, and aesthetics. I liked Kim’s point in this thread that aesthetics seems relevant when talking about either a)a film slowed down to frames and viewed individually, or b) in the mind of the audience . What I mean is that i think it is somewhat missing the point to get caught up on aesthetic concerns when watching a movie, because you are then separating yourself from the characters you are watching rather than identifying them with your own humanity. I also mean that ‘activist,’ or ‘good,’ filmmakers see no reason to divorce themselves from the process of filmmaking in order to achieve aesthetic gratification in the eyes of their audience.
Justin, I like your points. I would add than anybody who goes through the painstaking trouble of making a film in the first place is interested in liberating people and saving lives. I don’t think it is necessary to classify them as ‘activist.’
Kenji – maybe you should watch Gaspar Noé’s short ‘Abattoir.’ Nasea followed by cerebral vomit. Clear the sinuses.
“I would add than anybody who goes through the painstaking trouble of making a film in the first place is interested in liberating people and saving lives. I don’t think it is necessary to classify them as ‘activist.’”
I’m not sure that Leni Reifenstahl would agree.
Joshua, but was it not the critics themselves who pegged Leni Riefenstahl as an aesthetic pioneer? If we asked her ourselves, her experience while making her films may have had aesthetic concern as PART of her overall process, but she no doubt had other concerns in mind beyond aesthetics. Admittedly, I’ve not seen her films, so thank you for bringing her up.
There is very little capacity in the American feature film production/distribution pipeline for political films—very little. Fictional features have been so far outstripped by docs in this regard; and among those certain television productions such as PBS Frontline’s Bush’s War far outstrip the 2-3-hour standard theatrical doc. In the ecology of film production, I guess it’s only natural that engagement with political issues
(cont.)
would not lead a film project to thrive. So what we get instead are tabloid pieces like W, or else the very occasional satire on war-profiteering and such e.g. War, Inc. But I can remember the good old days when for example Costa-Gavras made Missing, and Oliver Stone made Salvador, and Alex Cox made Walker, very in-your-face stories about the consequences of American foreign policy. With regard to domestic policy and reigning political conditions, I guess films like Thank You For Smoking and Goodnight and Good Luck are relevant and in earnest…
I was thinking of Costa-Gavros as an example of someone working within the system to make a challenging point, more likely to reach and possibly influence a mass audience even if not artistically innovative or radical. But mainstream American cinema hardly overflows with leftist politics, even if Fox News and Republicans might try and generally succeed in portraying the US media as too liberal. I take the widepsread belief in that myth as evidence of the control and strength instead of right-wing propaganda.
It’s hard to make a movie dealing with political issues without it being something that becomes dated after some time. I also believe that a lot of artists by make are not interested in politics unless they’re embedded in it and have to deal with it on a regular basis. I was watching an interview with David Lynch about a month ago and the interviewer asked him if he was political to which he said that he wasn’t at all. My first thought was, what if he didn’t live in the bubble of the United States and was for instance living in a country with real political and social turmoil? Would he be the very same David Lynch that we know and love or would his movies be political at all? Is what an artist creates a true representation of their self or of their circumstances or both?
I want to see AIM put out a movie that once and for all exposes Ward Churchill. Too bad I find his work very informing, and his life a sham,
Lenin said (I think) that cinema was the most socialist of all art forms, but I may misquote.
Well, as an international language, and watched by working classes, it should have been, but those with the purse-strings have managed to arrange otherwise, and Hollywood and its often violent and imperialist American worldview dominates worldwide. I think the classic status of many American (and other) films isn’t questioned often enough for their underlying political messages; we can be dazzled by cinematic prowess or accepted wisdom
Michael; i think an example of a political film that has (so far) passed the test of time, and relevant as ever, is The Battle of Algiers.
“Political” has a broad meaning. Is an American able to see politics in the same fashion as Kieślowski or Wajda?
“Ashes and Diamonds” is pretty ambiguous and a film like “No End” even more so but they are dependent on an understanding of the Polish post war experience . Then you’ll find Polish political films a lot different than something by an Italian Communist like Pasolini (or was his homosexuality the critical element)? And they all have a different take than Chris Marker.
The one thing these directors have in common is limited box office and outside of a few folks like Costa-Gavras or Michael Moore there really haven’t been many widely screened political directors in America.
All films deal with politics. Some filmmakers are aware of it, some (most) are not.
I find John Carpenter to be a very political filmmaker.
my main concern with this is the differentiation between aesthetics and politics. spike lee is used as an example above, so i will use him as well. in do the right thing, i find that the aesthetic meshes well with the politics. the camera is constantly in motion, much like the busy melting pot community it films. the use of bright colors almost radiate heat and exude the tension necessary to lead to a violent climax. the multiple point of view shots allow for events to be seen from different angles so that one can find perspective in the various takes from people as diverse as sal and mookie and the d.j. the aethetics are the politics…and the awesome thing is that the constructs of the film inform us more than any of lee’s somewhat forced generalizations about race and such.
then again i may be approaching this from my white middle class perspective. but when you talk of saving lives, i think it is important to note one of the more amazing things about spike’s work, the camera work of ernest dickerson. he brings the vibrancy in a way that made me want to enroll in film school and splash color on the screen like that…if there are more like me, then the art of cinematography and filmmaking has saved many more lives than any soap box pundit’s political agenda.
I like these responses, thanks. There’s room for art that is not strictly political — David Lynch is radical in terms of form rather than content, which is a parallel struggle in that he challenges structure and meaning. Sometimes I feel the need to go overboard a little in order to pull awareness closer to the middle, at least. I think that film has already shown that it has great power to change the world — more so, in our time anyway, than literature or theater. This is because, as people have said (Tom C and Kenji), the audience is wider, and also because we identify in a very visceral way with seeing real people (actors) acting out situations. A bunch of films about working women come to mind: North Country, Silkwood, Norma Rae, Erin Brokovich, even 9 to 5. That’s just one subgenre of (political) cinema, and it isn’t even that hard for many moderates or conservatives to take because it’s packaged essentially as entertainment. That’s a good use of entertainment, imo.
George Romero, who was mentioned on another thread recently, has political subtexts running throughout his films; indeed, horror and sci-fi are highly politicized genres, usually using metaphor rather than direct discourse. Perhaps this approach works better than Godard’s late 60s and 70s cinema, which often features a kind of lecturing voice. But once one is primed to read films politically, it’s not difficult to find political awareness or lack thereof. It is a question of who needs the liberation — I think Michael’s point about David Lynch is correct. A well-off (relatively) American filmmaker with little imminent stuff to fear on a daily basis is not going to be as politicized as an Iranian or an African filmmaker. As Americans, we have to seek out political positions; we don’t just have them handed to us, although there is much in the U.S. to think about politically. We have a system that tends to distract us from thinking/worrying about things.
Basically, by and large it’s a question here of individual identity — are you represented in the films you see, and how are you represented? For women, gays, blacks and other ethnicities, this is an issue. I don’t believe we need to create reverse stereotypes to offset existing prejudicial ones — I’m fine with minority characters who are flawed, since I believe that nothing turns you into a flawed human being faster than being on the brunt of prejudice. That can bring out the worst in anyone. And because people tend to move in closed-circle communities more often than not (gays with other gays; blacks with other blacks), their problems often get taken out on each other. Nothing is more interesting than the cases where filmmakers are accused of attacking “their own kind” (as Fassbinder was with The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and Faustrecht der Freiheit) because they depict the problems within individuals and within communities.
Political awareness is something I often look for in films. I guess I understand if many people don’t look for it. But when I see that it’s there in some way, it reassures me that the director is conscious of what’s going on and is attempting to change it. It’s like encountering an ally and a friend, and then naturally you want everyone to notice the great things this friend is doing.
One of the things about Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There is the stress that is placed on Dylan’s defection from explicit folk-protest music to rock songs whose sense of alienation was couched in surreal metaphor rather than “finger pointing.” Depriving people of a common enemy can be a fairly traumatic thing at historical moments when an oppressed group feels that it has such an enemy. I’m Not There seems to pose several different theories for why Dylan moved in the direction he did, all of which feel equally valid — he was afraid of his own influence, he was bored with message-mongering, his new experiences (drugs, Edie Sedgwick, etc.) simply made him want to write more personally, he had come to the conclusion that “truth” was multi-faceted and elusive. All of these things probably contributed. There is a sense in which art should not be beholden to helping people in their political struggles; and there is also a sense in which an album like Blonde on Blonde can be just as liberating as The Times They Are A-Changin’. Whether we see decadence or enhanced subtlety, confusion or ambiguity, is a function of how dogmatic we want to be. Sometimes I can be dogmatic, maybe too dogmatic, in my sense of where art connects with justice.
In a perfect world, clearly, these issues would cease to matter at all. But we don’t live there, we live here. And sometimes that makes an enormous difference.
Regarding this comment: “A well-off (relatively) American filmmaker with little
imminent stuff to fear on a daily basis is not going to be as politicized as an Iranian or an African filmmaker.”
Maybe I’ve been watching the wrong movies, but the majority of pictures
I have seen that address social and political issues in enlightening, inventive ways
were not made by filmmakers politicized by poverty and fear.
They were made by well-off white guys.
And the films I have seen that were indeed made by the politically
desperate tend to be agitprop, to varying degrees.
I’m not sure what criteria
might suggest that the latter is more valid or more crucial than the former.
Of course, my observation may not count for much here, as I find your initial post, Justin, the kind of framework
that leaves me painted into a corner somewhat.
I’m a straight white male.
Therefore, when you write of my demographic: “some have chosen to open
themselves up to seeing the way the rest of us do, the rest of us meaning the majority of life forms on this planet…”
anything I say will be tainted by the suspicion that I might not have chosen
to take the “open” view that the entire rest of the planet apparently readily enjoys.
I’m reminded of a very bright classmate (back in the late 1990s when I returned to academia)
who was gay, and whose chosen focus on queer theory came to fore
quite often in the Shakespeare class we were taking.
He and some other students agreed that my take on certain plays, regarding gay subtext,
might not bear scrutiny because my readings originated from a point of privilege (straight white male).
At which point I couldn’t help thinking that, having had my credibility
called into question merely because of my race and sexual persuasion,
I was enjoying a rather odd kind of privilege.
This is an interesting topic, one that I find even more interesting due to how politics are divided based on the origin country of a film. Audiences are much more inclined to take away political messages from filmmakers like Kiarostami and Apichatpong Weerasethakul due to the political climates of their home countries. I recently read a debate between two members of another forum over Apichatpong’s Syndromes and a Century with one member saying that the film’s failure to address the class/linguistic divisions of the nation – for example, the majority of the Thai population speak Lao, but Apichatpong’s characters speak Thai – is a major flaw of the film because the member argues it is crucial to understand a film in the political/social climate of its country, and for that film to address its origin country’s political/social problems. However, other members assert that the film’s intention was not to address political issues but instead showcase Apichatpong’s parents’ transcendental romance, and that criticizing the film based on politics fails to understand the film’s purpose. I have not seen the film, but I found the questions that arose from the debate to be interesting: does a film that exists in an environment where there are obvious social injustices – such as a majority of the population existing in poverty and numerous cases of slavery – have to provide a public voice for those injustices by portraying them on screen?
I would say no if only because if that were the case then every film ever made that isn’t meant to be seen as pure fantasy could be criticized for not carrying a political message since every country – no matter how poor/rich, institutionalized/fragmented – hosts its fair share of social injustices. How does one quantify how much injustice should exist in a country in order for it to be criticized for lacking political overtones/undertones? There do exist situations where complete disregard for the political issues would be nothing short of baffling: a film set in Darfur that doesn’t mention genocide would seem both ignorant and offensive. In cases like Slumdog Millionaire where poverty is a clear theme of the film it can be criticized for its whimsical approach because it places itself in a context where it is both aware of and a display of the societal issues within the country, but treats them uncharacteristically – main character wins money, bags hot girl, everything is fine. But how do you determine that? How do you determine whether or not politics should play an integral role in a film? Must it be a Darfur-like situation in order for politics to be considered absolutely relevant? What is the cut-off? Should Woody Allen start addressing the issues of poverty and illegal immigrants in NYC? This is my problem with people who criticize a film for lacking a political message because they place bias upon a certain region’s cinematic output, they criticize a Sri Lankan director because he doesn’t address the Tamil Tigers or a an Afghan director who doesn’t mention the Taliban.
And yet, I can still understand the criticisms, as much as I object to them. Film is a public forum and to not address important issues of one’s nation seems to be ignoring those issues. But I don’t think a filmmaker should feel obligated to address politics in a realistic manner unless the film is political in nature. So do certain regions’ cinematic output – Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa – go hand-in-hand with a political statement simply because the region as a whole faces large societal problems? Does that mean that the films created by these regions are immediately political in nature because of where they come from? Perhaps that is the better question to ask, but at the moment I am tired and will leave curious minds to ponder…
Well, if you feel that you can get your politics and/or social conscience from films (whether whole or in part), I don’t know what to say. Who’s going to argue?
I just don’t see it.
I wish talking could act.
@Tom C: The exact quote from Lenin is, “The cinema is FOR US the most important of the arts.” That was said in the context of the Russian Revolution and the silent cinema. Most of the population of Russia at the time was illiterate and so a popular art, not dependent on literacy or bourgeois taste (opera, theater, modern painting, etc.) could be used for propaganda purposes.
Later Stalin modified that quote: “The cinema is the greatest medium of mass agitation. The task is to take it into our hands.” And he did. In 1928-29, he took over more control of the burgeoning filmmaking industry and the Soviet auteurs - Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Vertov, Dovzhenko, Kuleshov, etc., who were all denounced as “formalists”- and, in the early 1930s, Stalin appointed commissars to exercise even more censorship over movies.
So, it’s not just what films say about politics (after all, most of the Soviet filmmakers were dedicated communists), it’s also what politicians get to say about (and do to) films and filmmakers.
I’ll post something later about this separation of form and content. I tend to think that they are often one and the same. (More on that later.)
There are so many assumptions in this thread, and so much naivete, that I don’t know that I can cover it all, but I will try.
Firstly, for most of the history of man and his ability to create art, the great art has been largely spiritual and not explicitly political:Michaelangelo, Leonardo, Titian, Caravaggio, Reubens, Bach, Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, etc. Shakespeare and most authors were a little more concerned by human psychology. It has only been film and mostly Europe and also in the third world where political films have had much influence, and the films that many here and elsewhere would label as political are almost exclusive leftist leaning. You see because while even though American films gross more in Europe than any European films, they don’t openly push radical agendas, and it doesn’t take a lot of people to start a movement, just enough(ask Lenin, HItler, and Il Duce.)
There seems to be an insistence in these kinds of intellectual circles that the only valid political viewpoint is the leftist, and some even assert that filmmakers like Bunuel, Pasolini, and Spike Lee are in the business of liberating people and saving lives; readily forgetting that it was the British and Americans (those Imperialist pigs) who liberated Western Europe from the Socialists in Germany and Italy, and it was the other Socialists from Russia who lowered the iron Curtain down around Eastern Europe.
John Ford is definitely not hard to the right in his political ideologies, and in fact is all over the map, but when he makes a film with John Wayne or Henry Fonda that has at its core good ole fashioned American values, I contend that these are in fact political films. They champion the individual, they often champion property rights, and the idea that you have to earn what you have, and sometimes you must stand up to tyranny, sometimes against a mob of tyrants; while more leftist leaning films champion the mob and the mob mentality.
It is very easy to talk about “White American Male” birthrights, and just forget the fact that it was these very same men who tamed this great wilderness, who defended liberty at home and abroad, even so that people like Godardl and Pasolin could continue making films that touted similar ideologies that they had just been liberated from, and it was the “White American Male” as you put it that resisted for so long the temptation of socialism that led to the murder and suffering of so many millions in Eruope, Russia, and Asia.
To understand the American mindset, does not require one to be White or Male. It requires one to acknowledge that everyone is equal, but everyone must earn their own, and that none are peasants, and that we are ruled by laws, and not men, and we do not simply trade one tyrant for another. The individual is superior to the collective in America.
The idea that leftist political thought is superior to the right, or that a political film is superior to a study of human nature, much less man’s relationship to his creator is one that only those inside the bubble subscribe to. Another false concept is the idea that in countries other than america that it is someone other than the so-called ‘bourgeoisie’ who are making films, when in fact it is only those with money or power who can make films even in socialist countries and among those who make leftist films. Luchino Visconit, who made some of the most brilliant and beautiful films about poor people in Italy, and was a communist himself, was also a Count, and one of the wealthiest men in Italy who made films at his leisure in between directing operas. How many of the great Russian filmmakers came from poor families in the Russian wilderness?
The idea that political ideology trumps ‘aesthetic concerns’ or craft and technique is merely an excuse for lack of technique and skill or pure laziness. If all you are interested in is politics then go draw political cartoons, but film is a serious artform, and just like painting, in order for a film to be great it must be visually masterful as well as intellectually stimulating. Leonardo is rolling in his grave at the thought of anything otherwise.
Once again, for my closing words, I would like to reiterate that leftist Ideology has NEVER liberated anyone or saved ANY lives. Leftist ideology is subordination to the State and has resulted in mass murder in Germany, Russia, China, Cambodia and elsewhere.
but aesthetic concerns dont trump ideology either. because aesthetics should only be talked about in relation to what ends they are serving. in other words, aesthetics are only a means.
My original post was written to try to address white attitudes toward black cinema, male attitudes toward feminist cinema, straight attitudes toward gay cinema, etc.
In thinking about this more, though, I have to say I think that film and television are inherently right wing, especially narrative mainstream films, in that they uphold our social assumptions rather than questioning them. Whether it’s a comedy, a heartwarming film, or a serious drama, everything usually hinges on characters fitting into society in various ways, through couples, family, financial success. The dreams that the characters have for their lives are some variation on the dreams that the consumer culture would like us to have, for our own lives. Part of narrative logic is giving the viewer something already familiar, thereby reinforcing socially ordered concepts of success and failure, happiness, etc. I think only a few directors have found a way to make films that question and challenge our social roles, which is to say, films that aren’t conservative in nature.
I can think of some really great films. However, none were made in this decade. Midnight Cowboy won an oscar with an X rating. That’s pretty damn crazy, right?
Midnight Cowboy is a very subversive, great film. It shows how easy it is to fail in this society, how dependent people are on money, how people have dreams and assumptions that are basically sold to them by the media, and how there’s also this possibility of finding an alternative form of love and happiness, though it’s filled with despair and denial.
Justin, you pose some inetersting questions.
My original post was written to try to address white attitudes toward black cinema, male attitudes toward feminist cinema, straight attitudes toward gay cinema, etc.
I am getting to be more and more aloof to the identity-politics strand of criticism. I went through a lot of it in college, and have lived in academic towns my entire adult life (I am 40), and it just started to feel – to me – like going ‘round and ’round in circles. I have a transgender friend who does a lot of theater and performance art, and that is a perspective I think needs to be out there, but at the same time, I have a difficult time with the idea of life and creative activity being about nothing but one aspect of one’s own identity. In my aloofness to the idea, I fall back on nothing – I am not straight, and I am not white, and I don’t enjoy straight- or white-privelege. And my life has been – at times – profoundly difficult.
But I have a combative approach to this – race and sexuality are critical pieces of who I am, but they ain’t everything, and I insist upon the whole picture. And I enjoy reading films, because my subjective specifics are certainly not the norm, and I like the fact that my take on film (or other art) isn’t the same as everyone else’s. But I don’t see oppression or victimization or condescension everywhere – there was a time in life when I think I might have tried to, but I think that gives the media, and artists (even shitty, commercial artists) more power than they deserve. And perhaps for these kinds of reasons, I tend to be on the fence with activist filmmakers. I’m not so certain that they are saving lives, and in true activism, I am deeply suspicious of divide-and-conquer oppositional stances. They make for dramatic theater, and in certain circumstances they are perhaps necessary.
To me subjectivity and personal experience are everything – and I think the kinds of critiques coming from non-white, or non-straight, or non-male folks could stand to be more personal and considered in what we say, because I think there are profound qualities in human life that transcend those distinctions, and that is where foundations for progress will be constructed. This is also true if your are white, or straight, or male. For me I would point to many films I mention repeatedly on the forums here: many films by Ozu, Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray, Yi Yi, 60s Godard, Hal Ashby. Except for Godard (and occasionally Kurosawa and Ashby), this isn’t activist filmmaking by a long shot, but it’s radical, because it is constructed upon life experiences that connect people. I am clearly not Bengali, Japanese, French, Taiwanese, but those films mirror things that I know, have seen, or have lived, and their ability to remind you of the ‘art’ that might be hidden in the plain sight of your everyday existance is revolutionary. I think an African-American Ray or Ozu would be quite revolutionary, if he or she were as much of an aestheticist as Ray or Ozu, even if their films were as apolitical (at the surface) as Ray or Ozu.
Ray is a good example – he caught heat from the likes of Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak (both extraordinary filmmakers as well) for his aloofness towards making political film. But we should consider Ray’s handling of Bengali culture in his film – it is the equal to anyone’s culture, and as Ray reflected an abundance of non-Bengali influences in his work, it should be noted that one was never held to be superior to the other. He once said as much (and I paraphrase): if the west can draw influence from the east, the opposite can be just as valid in creative pursuits. But – either way – you have to make those influence your own.
In other words, you have to filter them through your own lens. Kurosawa said essentially the same thing, at least one Moshen Makhmalbaf film is actually built around the idea, and a close inspection of Ozu’s biography suggests the same again.
In good filmmaking, aesthetic concerns just can’t be subordinate. I don’t care who it is. When Spike Lee fails, and he does, often, this is part of the reason. I think black cinema, or feminist cinema, or queer cinema, needs to aim to be great cinema (and a little of it is, but there’s a lot of really embarassing stuff that looks more like a cultural studies thesis project than a film with any artistry whatsoever). If and when it’s that, then white perspectives, or any other perspective won’t seem like the titanic thing they are made out to be, because good work will speak for itself. A lousy gay film isn’t less lousy because it’s gay.
“I want to see AIM put out a movie that once and for all exposes Ward Churchill. Too bad I find his work very informing, and his life a sham,”
I actually attended the University Ward taught at during the whole controversy. I even served the man “M&Ms”, Coke and a pretzel, working at the local movie theater. He was attending a screening of The Good Shepard, if that says anything.
You can say whatever you like about the reasons for why he was let go. But the impression that I received was that he was just not that great of a professor. My professors would just resent any mention of him. And these were professors who were anti-Bush as the day is long. I think I recall my Film Theory professor, Bruce Kawin (contributing essayist for the Criterion Collection), stating, “If you want to know I think he represents everything that is wrong with academia today.” Though I am not one hundred percent certain.
Justin Vicari
Okay. It’s come to this. We need to break it down.
White
straight
male
Americans
have the luxury — a kind of birthright, if you will — to view art a-politically, aesthetically, or, in that worn-out buzzword people love to overuse because it is by definition vague and imprecise, “ambiguously.”
Not all white straight male Americans exercise this birthright: some have chosen to open themselves up to seeing the way the rest of us do, the rest of us meaning the majority of life forms on this planet…
And for us, the rest of us, we never had this luxury to begin with.
We know that there are certain political messages inherent in all things,
and that these messages are often matters of life and death.
Bunuel, Pasolini, Spike Lee — to name three guys whom I would call “activist directors” in one way or another — are about the business of liberating people and saving lives. I believe that this has to be understood about their films, even if it means subordinating aesthetic concerns to the periphery of the discussion, and even if it makes some people uncomfortable.
But I’d really love to hear what others have to say about this.