From: Scott MacDonald (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Aug 20 2005 - 14:01:37 PDT
David T and interested frameworkers:
The idea that the arrival of DVD means that public exhibition of 16mm
film (along with video, DVD, digital work...) is no longer feasible
is simply nonsense. In no other art form do we make such an assumption.
David T. claims that I'm a little deluded about the real
opportunities for academics to show 16mm film because I teach at an
"elite institution"--Bard College--where I have unending
resources. However, every claim I've ever made about the
opportunities for academics to curate film series that maintain and
serve an audience, that grow audience, is based on the 27 years I
spent at Utica College, in Utica, New York. (I've taught at Bard,
one or two courses a year since 2000.) With all due respect to Utica
College, one thing it isn't, and certainly wasn't when I taught
there, is an elite institution. During most of my tenure, UC had no
endowment at all; it existed entirely on tuition revenues. It was
primarily a working-class college, catering to students who were the
first in their family to attend college.
But financially stretched as Utica College always was, it supported a
film series that catered to campus and community; the series was seen
as an ongoing educational and artistic event. I had the good fortune
to live in New York State and so the support the college offered was
matched by the New York State Council on the Arts. We hosted
filmmakers, and presented recent independent films, "foreign films,"
avant-garde work--25-30 events a year, for about 20 years--and had a
small, but loyal audience (we averaged about a hundred).
I continue to believe that any good college or university should be
sponsoring (perhaps in collaboration with other organizations) at
least one regular series of media events: events that include
filmmakers working in 16mm film (and other gauges, of course) and
exhibitions of 16mm prints of films made for 16mm exhibition. And I
believe that it is precisely the job of a film history teacher to
instigate such a series and to work with the institution to find the
funding for it. Colleges and Universities want to do what is
educationally sound, what makes the best sense for students (and what
redounds to the dignity of the institution); and a well-researched,
carefully-curated film series or media series is not that hard a sell.
Who knows, perhaps I am as deluded as David T. says, but I just
accepted a job at Hamilton College, in part to test out my
assumptions. I'm being paid to teach film history and to program
events. I am attaching the tentative schedule for my fall
series. (A more elegant mailer and poster are being printed and will
be available soon.) We'll have to see if anyone shows up. More on this later.
Scott
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.