(no subject)
two from jonathan rosenbaum
"The most striking difference for me in overall atmosphere between Cannes in the seventies and Cannes in the nineties can be seen in the press conferences, which used to resemble gladiatorial combats and are now almost completely predetermined publicity sessions, most of them controlled by compulsive politeness and relatively useless when it comes to the exchange of either ideas or information. Two characteristic questions I can recall from the seventies are (1) after the screening of The Mother and the Whore, addressed to Jean Eustache: "Why did you choose to make a film instead of write a novel?" and (2) after the screening of One Hamlet Less, addressed to Carmelo Bene, dressed in a white suit:"Do you sleep at night in pajamas or in the nude?" to which Bene replied, 'Fuck you.'"
"even bad or mediocre foreign movies have imporant things to teach us. Consider them cultural CARE packages, precious news bulletins, breaths of air(freash or stale) from diverse corners of the globe; however you look at them, they're proof positive that Americans aren't the only human beings and that the decisions we make about how to live our lives aren't the only options available--at least not yet.
As strange as it sounds, this is fast becoming an endangered position. I assume that writer-director Kevin Smith was well past his teens when he told an interviewer a few years back, 'I don't feel like I have to go back and view European or other foreign films because I feel like these guys [Jim Jarmusch and others] have already done it for me, and I'm getting it filtered through them. That ethic works for me.' It shouldn't be suprising that Jarmusch was as appalled by Smith's statement as I was, if only for what it reveals about a certain kind of landlocked naivete--the kind that assumes that world cinema, and therefore the world, can be categorized and summarized so simply. But it isn't all that different, really, from the kind of sweeping judgments that can easily pass for cleverness in our culture. 'one of the extraordinary advantages of growing up French,' began david denby's review of catherine breillat's Romance in The New Yorker, 'is that you can be absurd without ever quite knowing it'--an advantage presumably denied to world-weary americans such as himself."
"The most striking difference for me in overall atmosphere between Cannes in the seventies and Cannes in the nineties can be seen in the press conferences, which used to resemble gladiatorial combats and are now almost completely predetermined publicity sessions, most of them controlled by compulsive politeness and relatively useless when it comes to the exchange of either ideas or information. Two characteristic questions I can recall from the seventies are (1) after the screening of The Mother and the Whore, addressed to Jean Eustache: "Why did you choose to make a film instead of write a novel?" and (2) after the screening of One Hamlet Less, addressed to Carmelo Bene, dressed in a white suit:"Do you sleep at night in pajamas or in the nude?" to which Bene replied, 'Fuck you.'"
"even bad or mediocre foreign movies have imporant things to teach us. Consider them cultural CARE packages, precious news bulletins, breaths of air(freash or stale) from diverse corners of the globe; however you look at them, they're proof positive that Americans aren't the only human beings and that the decisions we make about how to live our lives aren't the only options available--at least not yet.
As strange as it sounds, this is fast becoming an endangered position. I assume that writer-director Kevin Smith was well past his teens when he told an interviewer a few years back, 'I don't feel like I have to go back and view European or other foreign films because I feel like these guys [Jim Jarmusch and others] have already done it for me, and I'm getting it filtered through them. That ethic works for me.' It shouldn't be suprising that Jarmusch was as appalled by Smith's statement as I was, if only for what it reveals about a certain kind of landlocked naivete--the kind that assumes that world cinema, and therefore the world, can be categorized and summarized so simply. But it isn't all that different, really, from the kind of sweeping judgments that can easily pass for cleverness in our culture. 'one of the extraordinary advantages of growing up French,' began david denby's review of catherine breillat's Romance in The New Yorker, 'is that you can be absurd without ever quite knowing it'--an advantage presumably denied to world-weary americans such as himself."