From: Steven Budden (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Sep 05 2005 - 20:34:20 PDT
I agree with Sam on this one.
I'm not sure advocating that filmmakers give up film solves anything. In
fact, it could make the issue worse by blurring the distinction between video
installation and ag film. I am working with film, and one of the reasons is
BECAUSE it is not digital/ video. I would simply move out of film back to
painting, writing, photography before I would consider digital. That is just a
personal choice, of course, but I think it illustrates how extreme the adherence
can be. The difference is somehow immense.
If artists stick to a medium venues open up to view it. If filmmaking were
rampant there would be 16mm projectors everywhere. But it isn't rampant. Fear
(of anonymity, poverty) seems to repel artists bent on stardom. We shouldn't
be worrying about whether film will die someday (as makers)... we should be
making what we can today. The future of film is in the hands of filmmakers.
"(No one in their right mind should choose experimental film in the
first place. And I mean that)."
That's part of the beauty of it.
Steven
In a message dated 9/5/2005 7:48:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
email suppressed writes:
But that IS a major aspect of the tradition, *like it or not*
It's the medium some artists who are among those we are ostensibly
discussing have chosen, better or worse.
(No one in their right mind should choose experimental film in the
first place. And I mean that).
Now, I'm all for expanding this thing in directions that definitely
include "digital media" -- I'm working in a hybrid myself currently.
But I'm suspicious; If the exhibition spaces won't do film right or
film at all when that IS the choice (the artist's choice which I WILL
defend here) why will they automatically respect *whatever* givens the
work in "digital" (or whatever else might happen) as well ?
The struggle, as it were, shifts to other fronts but it doesn't go away.
-Sam
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