Paul Farrell was a participant on this year's Film Critics Day workshop at the Cinema Rediscovered film festival in Bristol and Clevedon in the U.K., a celebration of the finest new digital restorations, contemporary classics and film print rarities from across the globe. Further examples of the writing from the workshop, as well as information about the program, can be found on the Cinema Rediscovered Blog.
The thing about poetry is you have to keep doing it. People have to keep making it. The old stuff is no use Once it's old. It comes out of the instant And lasts for an instant Take it now Quickly Without water. There! Tomorrow they'll be something else.
—Margaret Tait, Now (1958)
In every frame of film there is an image; a moment captured in time, taken from a continuity of events and isolated, flesh to film, cell to celluloid. When combined, these images create a language that communicates moods, intentions, sensations and meaning from the raw materials of reality. And, in most cases, this is the end of the process. Once the best edit of a film is achieved it can exist as an object and be shown to audiences, who in turn can interpret it through the language of this assembly. But, what happens when we see a film in a new context? What if the frames are re-edited, or the film is shown in an unusual location, or viewed with new social perspectives garnered over time? A new film is made—the "best" version thrown into debate—and it is given a new lease of life.
Cinema revived, cinema reframed, cinema rediscovered.
Margaret Tait (1918 – 1999) was an artist continually rediscovering her own work, in process rather than appraisal. The work never finished in a conventional manner. Blue Black Permanent (1992) was the only feature film she made among a career of many shorts. Towards the end of the film, Greta's (Gerda Stevenson) son is collecting stones in a bucket, numbering them as he goes along and, as soon as the job's done, joins his brother in hurling rocks into the ocean, a better craic than counting. This, I would argue, is where Tait's philosophy can be seen: the process of art is its grace, to be concerned not with an object, but with an objective, and by being present in the infinitesimal moments that comprise the everyday. These moments are revealed through their natural beauty; you need only look and will know when the looking is done. Film is a moment captured, filmmaking is a moment lived.
Tait kept copious notes, not just regarding the condition of films she had made, but also the ideas and images that informed other shots she wanted to capture in future. This cataloguing of filmed and potential ideas could be read as Tait's own attitude to her works, not as pieces of art, but as stock images for future use. If her work was still ongoing, then, how did she regard its exhibition?
For Tait, it was an extension of the work-in-progress. She personally screened her films in a variety of locations; in halls, on walls, the conditions of her exhibition were never set in stone. A film, for Tait, was a living, changing organism and, as with any animal or plant, would react to its environment, adapting, or not, to achieve greater harmony. And so, with Blue Black Permanent's online release via MUBI, a question is raised: how would Tait have felt about the democratization of film exhibition? While unclear, Tait paid no mind to the cinematic prestige of a picture-house, and yet, was intensely protective of her images. In her lifetime, Tait was profiled twice for television. In one of these instances, for BBC Scotland, they used extracts of her work, over which Tait expressed anxiety that her work would be misinterpreted and should be understood as films in their completed form. This response reveals Tait's focus on process and, seemingly, never on the wider culture.
This leads us to a contradiction: that a film, when separated from its author's process and intent, becomes invalid and unrepresentative of the objective reality it has captured. But, if we were to play custodian to past visions, to imprison all images to their assigned expression, then art would die with the artist.
Does that art lose its potential for further extrapolation and refinement? Like Tait, I believe that a work of art is never finished, but, I also believe that an audience constitutes half the process of filmmaking. If a film is screened in the woods and no one is there to see it, does it exist? This extends not just to passive consumption of art, but to an engagement with it, which programmers, critics, historians and audiences alike can use to change its very meaning.
Later, in Blue Black Permanent, we return to the young boy's bucket, the stones scattered beside it, disorganized—one is no longer one, and so on with two, three and four – their meaning lost, but form remaining. Tait then cross-fades to the beach, where piles and piles of stones line the shores, each of different size and color, millions of moments passing unseen, uncaptured, in waiting.
The reason I go on living is because I never win. I lose, and continue. Success is the end of trying. Success is defeat. Success wilts the spirit. Success is the great discontent.
—Margaret Tait, Seeing is Believing and Believing's Seeing (1958)