Amateur Movie Makers (Dec 1926-Dec 1927)

A MAECENAS for the Monies By Roy Walter Winton THE seven arts of tradition, although they may have sprung from the soil or — if you prefer the romantic viewpoint — may have descended from Olympus, did not attain respectability unaided. Patrons, supporters, protectors, defenders of the faith have guided — and sometimes pushed — each of them into places of honor. Individuals have been succeeded by societies and foundations but patronage remains and creativity is given its bread and its tools while it experiments with beauty. The eighth art of the photoplay is the hardiest of them all. It was born in a nickelodeon and spent its childhood almost literally on the streets, moving from one temporarily vacant building to another, with too little in its purse to be given a lease, and driven from its make-shift stages and odorous auditoriums by the needs of commerce. It has come to its amazing adolescence owing no debts to protectors and forced to obey none of the conventions of polite society. What measure of dignity it has reached has been achieved through standards which it has created for itself out of experience, condemnation and the lack of charity of the cultivated world. The soil from which the photoplay sprang was mostly asphalt and the Olympians added no romance, yet a new art came into the world. It has earned its own bread and made its own tools and its experiments with beauty have been limited by a stern practicality. Unless a new idea could pay its way it had to be abandoned. The photoplay merits a sportsmanlike fairness of viewpoint from the intelligent. It has made its way unaided into the life of the public as no art has done. An objectively critical examination will show that it is, in all honesty, an art; that it does express beauty through a new medium, which is the essential thing to give it that title. The beauty it expresses may very likely be naive and may lack the subtlety that appeals to a nicely discriminating taste, but the photoplay is past the doubtful period of pseudo art and is an authentic and established means of externalizing concepts of beauty. Patrons have not only made it possible for the accepted seven arts to be busied with creation; they have also helped in setting artistic standards. They have brought a controlling taste to frequently rebellious creators and the older arts have reached their present place by the combined efforts of artist, patron and public. The photoplay lacks the conservative influence of the patron and is an affair of artist and public alone. This has emancipated the photoplay from the restraint of patron Thirty-two age, a restraint that artists have always resented but which has kept the broad stream of their expression from a licentious independence and has subjected them to the discipline of conservatism and to the standards of a taste not wholly determined by artist and public. The full development of any art requires enthusiastic creation, public approval and critical appreciation. Patrons have been the most effective critics and have brought an understanding^ objective viewpoint to all art. There seems to be small likelihood that the photoplay will acquire patrons who will serve it as they have served other arts. Patrons acquire a place chiefly because of a very practical and material contribution to artists who require aid. Their influence upon the development of any art comes only after they have, by a generous support in time of need, won the right to make themselves effective in moulding creative effort. The photoplay has established first hand relations with the public and has no need of subsidies. It has been profitable as no other art has been. It can snap its fingers at conservatism and ignore all standards but its own. It is the most liberated art of all. However free the photoplay may be and however direct the contact between artist and public, it stands in need of that influence which patronage has brought to the other arts, the influence of restrained and cultivated taste and of standards which are more complex and more exacting than those of the general public. The photoplay must, if it develops into a great art, have a criticism of understanding and a criticism of appreciation divorced from craftsmanship. The art of the cinema, failing a disciplining patronage, must look to its amateurs who are both artists and patrons. The amateur brings the understanding of the artist without the artist's urge of breadwinning; he brings the detachment of the patron without the patron's direct power of discipline. From the amateur photoplay maker can come a broad standard for this art, a standard not necessarily "high brow" and not inevitably puerile, but a standard brought into being, as all worthwhile standards are, by a non-professional, on the one hand, and on the other, something more than a casual interest in the thing evaluated. The Amateur Cinema League hopes to aid in the development of photoplay amateurs because it believes that a new and great art has need of them. The amateur can become the Twentieth Century patron. The Maecenas of the Movies will come from the non-professional experimentalists of the Little Cinema.