Film Culture (May-June 1955)

FILM SOCIETY DEPARTMENT FILM SOCIETY PROGRAMMING: A CHALLENGE Should film societies concentrate on features or on shorts? Should they show The Birth of a Baby or Rescued From an Eagle’s Nest? Are they “growing up” by turning away from educational films and toward the classics? Are they to function simply as substitutes for art cinemas in smaller communities? Is there a place on their programs for films banned by censors? It may be useful to once again discuss these questions, especially because of the results of the questionnaires circulated among societies by the Film Society Caucus in cooperation with FCA which indicated that a majority of groups concentrated on foreign and U.S. feature films. Similar questions were also raised in the last issue of Film Culture. An attempt will be made here to discuss them in as sharp and controversial a form as possible in order to stimulate contributions from other film societies in subsequent issues. A film society functions as a viable entity only if it both expresses and satisfactorily fulfills an existing need: to provide a forum and showcase for an increased awareness and appreciation of film as a medium of art, information and education. The Federation of British Film Societies states this very succinctly: “The objects of the society shall be to encourage interest in the film as an art and as a medium of information and education by means of the exhibition of films of a scientific, educational, cultural and artistic character.” This seemingly innocuous formulation leads to a number of interesting considerations: 1). It establishes as the sole criterion of programming the artistic merit, the informational-educational value, the significance of new techniques, of any given film. 2). By the same token, it excludes any moral, political, religious, ideological criteria, or objections to content and subject matter of any given film. Were content to become a criterion of programming, film societies would quickly become subject to pressure groups representing political, ideological, moral viewpoints that have no relevance to the aesthetics of film. We must remember that the society contains a cross section of human beings with all their conscious and subconscious drives, values, prejudices and fears. In determining to resist their varied pressures to the extent that they are irrelevant to a greater appreciation of the film medium and to stick closely to the criteria advanced above, the programming director or committee must take the broadest and most objective possible viewpoint. This very objectivity is in itself an “education in democracy” for the group as a whole, quite applicable to other fields of human endeavor. It represents the antithesis of censorship in any form and makes the society a workshop in democracy, a free marketplace of different and opposing ideas, schools of art and aesthetic tendencies. The program directors must withstand attempts to prevent the showings of such films as Triumph of the Will (an important example of the propaganda film at its best, however vicious) , Birth of a Nation, Potemkin (or any other Soviet films), the Murrow-Oppenheimer Interview, Ecstasy, Oliver Twist; likewise, some members may object to modern art and hence deplore avantgarde, expressionist, abstract, surrealist, symbolist, poetic films (including, very definitely, Un Chien Andalou). Others cannot bear the sight of blood (as in one of the outstanding postwar European documentaries, Blood of the Beasts) ; still others object to the portrayal of sexual problems on the screen (homosexuality in Fireworks) or to “decadent” art (such as Anger’s portrayal of a Black Mass in his new film, The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome). Provided the criteria of artistic and educational value are met, all of the above films have a definite place on a film society’s program. Anyone objecting to their showing has the right to absent himself from the performance; he has no right to impose his particular moral or political values on the rest of the group by asking it to withdraw the film. 3). Keeping these criteria in mind, the distinction between shorts and features becomes meaningless, a mere matter of running time. To congratulate societies on a supposed drift away from shorts and _ towards features, as the article in the second issue of Film Culture did (a purely imaginary drift, since most societies have all along been concentrating on features) is to miss the point entirely. There is much film art in some shorts and little film art in many features and vice versa. Film societies that have been showing features almost exclusively, have deprived themselves of a rich and essential source of important film material. It is easy to “program” a series by mixing together one Garbo, one Eisenstein, one Marx Brothers, one Griffith and throwing in Ecstasy for good measure. But serious programming includes the patient search for the large mass of material available in shorts. In fact, a good case can be made out for the argument that there is often more freshness, more experimentation and a greater striving for new cinematic achievements in EDITED BY AMOS VOGEL —Executive Secretary of CINEMA 16. shorts than in features. The reason for this is quite obviously purely economic. The investment in commercial features is too great to permit of much experimentation. It is frequently in the short film, the “sub-standard” film, the independent film (more often a labor of love than of commerce) that we find new approaches, however halting, to the film medium. Just think of this by no means complete list of names: McLaren, Lee, Deren, Rotha, Wright, Hugo, Grierson, Peterson, Franju, Epstein, Vedrés, Bellon, Cavalcanti, —_ Lorentz, Broughton, Van Dyke, Harrington, Ruttmann, Richter, Maas, Storck, Anger, Mitry, van der Horst, Elton, Anstey, Kirsanoy, Dullac, Hammid, Emmer, Buiuel — and you will see how meaningless the separation between the short and the feature really is. 4). It is also clear that programming will vary with local conditions, the composition of the group and other factors. In states where local censorship laws obtain, it becomes part of the function of the society to provide a showcase for otherwise unavailable films (as long as the criterion remains the inherent artistic or educational value of the film). Thus, a case can be made out for both Ecstasy, an important early poetic film of aesthetic interest, as well as for a film on childbirth, a subject of great educational interest. In other areas, the absence of a local art theatre will determine a concentration on foreign and art theatre-type feature films. This remains true of a large number of film society operations in the U.S. In all areas, specific interest groups will often gather as a society and determine the main character of programming, expanding slowly into other fields of interest. There are today film societies consisting entirely of doctors, housewives, union members, film directors and others; in many of these much educational work remains to be done to broaden their scope of interest in the film medium as a whole. Thus a film available widely in one community and hence not film society material, may very definitely be of much interest to societies in other areas where it is not otherwise available. 5). To encourage interest in the cinema not only as an art form but also as a “medium of information and education” is, to the British and European cine-clubs, a self-evident function of a film society, implicit in its very concept. This may possibly come as a shock to some American societies. The truth of the matter seems to be that the European societies, possibly due to a broader and older cultural tradition, have never made an air-tight separation between the various functions of the film medium. The important consideration is to get more and wider circles of audi 29