From: Fred Camper (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Mar 23 2009 - 21:45:46 PDT
Cari Machet wrote:
> negativity fred
>
> she built a house in it's entirety
> plumbing/electrical...
> she said all 'artists' should do it
>
> maybe she should have filmed that -
> but then fred would be bored with the pipe fittings -
> dear fred have you ever heard of duchamp?
Oh, no, of course I never heard of Duchamp. Thanks so much for your
illuminating reference to him.
What just happened here? I posted my opinion of a hard-to-see film, and
"cari" responded with what? An argument about cinema? A defense of the
film? No, a personal attack on me. I guess we're all supposed to love
all "alternative" cinema here?
Thank you, Cari, for reminding me of why I haven't read FlameJerks in
some weeks.
A film of pipe fittings could be great, or awful, depending on the skill
and care and inspiration and originality that goes into making it. But
there isn't much point arguing skill and care to someone who puts so
little of it into the writing of her posts.
Our dying planet does not possess infinite resources. Film viewers do
not have infinite time. Every really bad film hurts the "cause." People
who make and show art have a responsibility to TRY to make something
worthwhile. Agnes Martin certainly earned the right to some mistakes
with her sublimely great paintings. But I am sick of the attitude of
many that everything is valid, that the epoch-making life work of the
painter of the incredibly great "Tu m'" can be used as an excuse for
junk, that we all have equal rights to fill the screen with whatever
inarticulate misuses of the film and video media we care to make and
show (of course I support the legal right to show anything-- I'm arguing
something else here, the right to judge based on quality, and then let
others make couter-aruments), that we all should happily show poorly
made films that the filmmaker hasn't even worked on very hard. I'm not
talking about "Gabriel" now, but about films that long ago drove many of
us away from going to too many screenings, films that not even the
curators that showed them would, when asked, care to defend.
In a great film, every shot is meaningful, and every part connects in
surprising and complex ways to the whole. A bad film rambles on and on
incoherently, wasting everyone's time, showing little respect for the
viewer. And there are also films that elude "great" or "bad" or even
"pretty good" categorizations, but are original and provocative and
worth seeing.
Maybe I'm wrong about "Gabriel." I posted partly to see if it has any
defenders. But the film I remember is a really bad travelogue, almost
painfully stupid, whose trite imagery added nothing to cinema, or art.
Fred Camper
Chicago
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