Dear crumb
seeing as we haven't actually gotten around to posting an official topic
for January - in part as there have been some interesting threads which
have been provided by you, our faithful readers, I thought I'd just
bring this question into the fray.
I have been following the reports on the Rotterdam film festival from
the Watershed site here in the UK (www.watershed.co.uk) in part because
the festival has a strong digital/new media component this year, and was
interested by this snippet from Sunday:
"The very independent filmmaker and thinker Stan Brakhage continued the
provocations on the roundtable What (is) Cinema? with a broadside
polemic about museums and galleries corrupting film and that Hollywood
at least was honest about its intentions in approaching film whereas
this might not be true of curators. Cue audible gasps from the adoring
art fraternity in the packed auditorium. However there seemed to be a
consensus that film was indeed part of the family of the arts rather
than the bastard populist offspring. Filmmaker Mike Figgis
(Timecode/Leaving Las Vegas) will be amongst those taking up the
challenge this evening on the next roundtable on Film and Digital Realities."
There was an extensive retrospective of Brakhage's work at the Walker
Art Center in Minneapolis in '99, organised by the film and video
department. There is a curious debate erupting it seems, given that film
and video departments in museums are in some ways changing into film and
media departments. I wonder if the skills needed to program (curate?) an
auditorium space with a film series are very different from the skills
needed to curate (program?) a gallery space with film or video
installations. Where does experimental digital video/film work that is
"performed" (3D video, live sound mixing, streaming software
developments) fit in?
sarah
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