From: 40 Frames (email suppressed)
Date: Sun Aug 21 2005 - 17:52:23 PDT
David T wrote:
> Trying to sum up some things:
> 1) There IS a problem. Dominic reports that Canyon's rentals and
> revenues are down (and no doubt their costs are rising).
> 2) Dominic attributes this problem to the availability of AG work on
> DVD, and specifically to colleges substituting DVD screenings for
> film rental screenings.
> 3) While this thesis seems to have merit, and should not be lightly
> discarded, there is no hard evidence that this is the sole or major
> cause of the problem, and other, more broad scale economic factors
> may be at work.
David, thanks for laboring to recap the discussion. Much needed as things
were beginning to
spiral off a bit. A common course for things discussed on Frameworks.
> Nothing much has
> ever gotten done by moralizing appeals to individuals. For one thing, most
> film scholars (especially younger ones) just don't agree with the
> notion that film-must-be-seen-as-film-and-not-on-video.
[....]
> For another, as Joel mentions, most colleges have been
> facing twenty years of budget reversions, and most faculty, as I've
> noted, are already too overworked with other duties to take on the
> fundraising and organizing efforts necessary to create a film series.
> Add to this the fact that many film scholars are non-technical, and
> have to work with AV departments that provide ONLY video playback....
> We can preach at them all we like, but academics are not going to
> change because it is not in their interest to change, and there is
> zero institutional support for it.
In regards to the last line and your mention of "zero institutional
support" allow me to provide an example of the opposite. Of course, this
may be extremely localized and not plague other colleges/universities.
Though I won't be surprised if similar problems exist elsewhere.
At Portland State University there is a Film Committee which presents
films to the student body (for free admission) as well as the larger
public (for a mere $2-3 admission). This student-run group has been around
since the 1950s and is one of the longest running film societies in the
US. Because of the amount of time the Film Committe has been active they
were receiving a rather large sum of money, $50,000 annually to be exact.
This student-run committee typically rents all their prints from Criterion
which offers Swank-style second run H-wood movies. Lots of Kubrick, Coen
Bros, Lynch and the like. Now the committee changes every so often, people
come and go, ideas get recycled, etc. Last year the Committee had a number
of students who felt they should use some of the money to "make films" of
their own so they bought a G5, FCP, and some DV cameras. Of course, the
money was not to be used for these purposes and an audit proved where the
money had gone, so the budget was then slashed in half as a penalty.
There are several small groups exhibiting 16mm films here in Portland that
could effectively use a $25,000 annual budget yet it's allowed to be
squandered.
Alain
================
40 FRAMES
Alain LeTourneau
Pamela Minty
425 SE 3rd, #400
Portland, OR 97214 USA
+1 503 231 6548
email suppressed
http://www.40frames.org
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