Joe,
Rather than call names, why don't you actually try to move the debate on and say something clearer and more considered about why you feel the original post deserved censure in this forum? After all, censure was what you were suggesting when you said "Send your women only desperate requests to women only".
I don't think your original 'quip' had the intellectual quality that you seem to think it did. As for your explanations since, I'm afraid they don't demonstrate the "ability to anlayze and issue or engage in discriminating thought" that you see absent in the comments of others.
To my mind there is, in fact, an important discussion here vis a vis archives regarding how and why they're set up. There certainly are wide-ranging opinions on the matter - and wide scope for discussion - but your posts don't seem to open up discussion, only close it down.
I, for one, amy happy to see archives such as Cinenova exist, but have questions about its operation that I think are valid, eg. Does it have to be women 'directors'? How is the work of other women film-operatives to be archived? (eg. designers, editors, actors) How much of a factor is 'quality' in the upkeep of an archive - especially if it has to be reduced at all and some films kept whilst others not? How 'good' does a film have to be to be archived? (after all, someone has to archive all Luc Besson's films, but I wouldn't pay money to have _The Fifth Element_ kept)
Ultimately I think it is a bit of a shame that one of the Cinenova events is 'women-only', since it would (at first sight) naturally exclude some who would also be interesting in productively supporting it, or helping answer questions such as "In relocating or storing material, how can Cinenova re-address its activities and make new plans with active support?"
However, there is another, similar, event that isn't women-only, and clearly the principal imperative for the organisation is to find women keen to get involved, so it seems eminently suitable to have both events.
I would have thought the questions posed by the Cinenova email (re. archiving and support) would have given us plenty of scope for discussion - pertinent to gender politics or not. What a pity these questions were forgotten amidst this pedantry.
Damian
-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Billings [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tue 6/17/2003 8:22 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc:
Subject: Re: Cinenova
Its hard to move on when you say inflamatory things like,
"engaging with the reactionary politics of J Billings and
fellow travellers." Its hard to imagine a more reactionary
(or more baseless) statement than your own and those of a
few others apparently like you who cry for censorship when
they encounter a view different than their own.
The curious thing about your kind of libel and invective is
that it always seems to spring from a sorry inability to
analyze an issue or engage in discriminating thought --the
essence of mob thinking and historically the necessary
intellectual preconditions for all kinds of oppression.
I am quite finished with this issue, but perhaps there is
no limit to your emotionalism. You may have the last
accustic blast.
Joe
--- Richard Armstrong <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> By engaging with the reactionary politics of J Billings
> and fellow
> travellers, surely incidental to the original posting,
> have we not failed to salute
> Cinenova for sticking with their project through thick
> and thin? As I remember,
> they came to us with genuine and pressing issues
> requiring resolution. They must
> be disappointed, as well as bemused, by the strife they
> inadvertently caused.
> Is it possible to move on after 24 dense hours of this?
> Richard
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