"THE POLITICS & POETICS OF OBSOLESCENCE": THE MUBI INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS ELSAESSER

My thanks to Danny Kasman at MUBI for publishing my brunch conversation with Thomas Elsaesser, recently conducted inbetween panels at the UC Berkeley international symposium on silent cinema—Cinema Across Media: The 1920s. Equal thanks to Laura Horak and Althea Wasow for arranging the time for me to sit down with Elsaesser and, of course, to Thomas himself for being so generous with his time during such a busy conference. Along with the topic of the changing role of national cinemas in international film festivals, Elsaesser and I also discussed another subject of recent interest.

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Michael Guillén: Recently, I was asked to introduce a revival screening of Black Narcissus at the Mostly British Film Festival in San Francisco and what was foremost on my mind was how eager I was to see the film again, even though it was going to be about the eighth time I had seen it. I had to ask myself: "What is it about this movie that keeps you coming back to it again and again?" I knew the story inside out. I knew all its plot developments. The performances were familiar. And yet I keep returning to the film with the same degree of anticipation.

The best clue to understanding this in myself is an observation made by poet Mark Doty in his lovely volume Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, wherein he suggested that paintings exert a gravitational force and that—if a painting "speaks" to you—you are drawn into its orbit, returning to contemplate it again and again, at times for extended lengths of time. This caused me to consider that it was not the narrative or story that was pulling me in but the underlying beauty of the film—its painterly qualities—that had caught me in its orbit. Not only with Black Narcissus; but, recently as well, with a restored print of Luciano Visconti's The Leopard, which I watched at the Castro Theatre and equally appreciated for a similar gravity.

Thomas Elsaesser: Well, first, I recall that The Leopard is a pretty sexy film as well, if I remember it right. I was much younger when I saw it.

Guillén: Can you speak to that quality of what is "painterly" in a film?

Elsaesser: That's a big question, but an interesting one. Now, with Visconti—both in Senso and The Leopard—the director and the art director very clearly thought of where the color scheme comes from, costumes and so on, because they were historical dramas. There you are talking about the echoes of the film literally created with historical paintings, with the settings, with a kind of gravitas, which traditional art conveys. But when you talk about Leo Carrax, or someone like that, using Paul Gauguin—and Gauguin painting is a fascinating subject—using color schemes from Piet Mondrian or an abstract expressionist or a painter friend, that quality is more difficult to locate but it may actually have a deeper resonance.

If we're talking about "painterly", you really have to make a distinction. Are you talking about "painterly" in the 19th Century sense? Or are you talking about Modern art or painting? So I would make a big difference there. Both you can find in film. But Visconti is as operatic as he is painterly whereas obviously Godard is not operatic at all.

Guillén: I guess what's interesting me is that sensorial experience of having an aesthetic arrest when faced with a beautiful painting or a beautiful film; the physical attraction.

Elsaesser: There we come to what we've already talked about: the contemporary contemplative film, which has the quality of attention that you associate with painting. My question is: do you return to the painting because what is beautiful is somehow "out" there or is the effect of the beautiful something you establish in dialogue with the painting? The beauty is not something that your eye slides off after a couple of seconds because you think you recognize it, but more the fact that the longer you look the more the painting becomes something else. You know?

You see a Renoir and at first you think, "Wow, what voluptuous nudes" and then you think, "But, no, the brushstrokes!" How often he must have gone over and caressed that particular part of the body. Or that he gave as many caresses to a painted tree as he gave to the back side of one of his nudes. You see? And then you establish a rapport with the painting. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to put yourself in the place of the painter, as I've just now suggested, but it's that something happens and your mind gets drawn into things that you never thought you'd be interested in or think that you'd notice. Even though this is a painting full of light where all sorts of things happen, if you look long enough and if you follow certain colors and color schemes, you realize incredibly there's a geometric grid underlying the composition which on the surface is not noticeable at all but it gives the painting its strength that allows you to watch it for 20 minutes or half an hour. So if you transpose this to film, then you can call "painterly" films those films that really—on the surface of it—do not evoke painting as such; but, which allow you to unravel the way they were made and why they were made over a period of time. They were made to attach your attention to them.

When everyone was raving about Marlene Deitrich, Josef von Sternberg used to say, "Forget about Marlene. Frankly, the way I think about a great film, if you turn it upside down and back to front, it would still be a great film. Because what really interests me is the distribution of light and shadow over two hours." That would be a painterly point. A filmmaker says, "It's not what everybody else thinks that's important. If that rhythm, that way I catch light and shadow, wasn't consistent and interesting over two hours, Marlene Deitrich wouldn't strike you as beautiful."

Cross-published on Twitch.

FRAMELINE34 2010—The Evening Class Interview With Executive Director K.C. Price

I waited almost a little too long to interview Michael Lumpkin, Frameline's former Executive Director, before his unexpected retirement. I told myself not to hazard the same mistake twice and to make a more concerted effort to get to know and interact with his successor K.C. Price and, further, to become more involved with Frameline's championing presence in the Bay Area. I dropped the ball last year on meeting up with Price but rallied this year. My thanks to K.C. for so graciously considering my 35mm complaints even as he invited me into Frameline's office at the Ninth Street Film Center for a conversation. He carries on Frameline's ongoing tradition of being responsive to its constituency. A tall, affable and well-spoken gentleman, I sensed our conversation would be the first of many in years to come.

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Michael Guillén: K.C., I was Googling you last night to see who the heck you were and I kept getting all these hits on this Black evangelist fleecing his flocks....

K.C. Price: Frederick K.C. Price!

Guillén: That's right. But I found very little on you and so would like to start out this morning by securing a little background information for a brief profile. You've clearly been around for a while?

Price: Yes, I've been working for Frameline directly or indirectly for 11 years now.

Guillén: Were you originally on their board?

Price: No. Michael Lumpkin hired me in 1999. I came on then and worked for four years as their Development Director. Frameline, CAAM, and the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival co-own the Ninth Street Film Center and—when Frameline moved into the building—we enhanced that partnership. All of a sudden the Center became its own non-profit so I moved from the Frameline position and became the Managing Director of Ninth Street. I did that for five years. I was still basically working closely with Michael and Frameline through those years. When Michael left, I applied for the Executive Director position and that's how I came back into the office directly.

Guillén: What are your duties as Frameline's Executive Director?

Price: The Executive Director in a non-profit typically oversees all the departments. Normally, you'll have a program department, an administration and finance department, and a development / fund raising department. I manage all three of those larger areas and am ultimately responsible for the organization. I'm the one who reports directly to the Board of Directors.

Guillén: So you've been in this position two festival years now? How are you settling in? Have you been enjoying yourself?

Price: Absolutely! I feel lucky to have this job. No doubt about it. Of course, anybody working in the non-profit sector with the economy right now has been facing financial challenges—especially at the end of 2008 when all this started—but, we have weathered all that very well and things are going great. No, I couldn't love this job any more. Being in this role last year during my first festival—especially following in Michael's footsteps—felt pretty terrifying sometimes; but, at this point, going into my second year, it feels so much more comfortable to me.

Guillén: Are you from San Francisco?

Price: No, I've lived here for 15 years. I'm from North Carolina.

Guillén: Is that where you were educated?

Price: I went to undergraduate school in North Carolina and then went to graduate school in Washington, D.C. for a number of years. Then I lived abroad for about 2½ years.

Guillén: With regard to this year's edition of Frameline, I'd like to focus on the two sidebars I'm most anticipating—the focus on South American queer cinema and the mini-retrospective of the queer shorts of Andy Warhol—and the festival's overriding attention to history. As you went to organize the festival, did these themes present themselves in the submissions received or did you sift through the submissions in search of works to fit chosen themes?

Price: That's an excellent question. I would probably say it's a little bit more of the former but there is a little bit of the latter to help bring it all together. For one thing, in terms of the films that we're looking at that are being screened at the larger film festivals—Toronto, Sundance, Berlin—we'll be able to see the brightest gems in LGBT cinema that are out there. On top of that we have about 500-600 submissions during Frameline's submission process; a lot of shorts but a large number of narrative features and documentaries too. So you will start to see some themes that are gelling out there in the zeitgeist in terms of what filmmakers are making.

I noticed last year that in a lot of the films that were coming in—and, of course, we were going for the high-end artistic quality films—there seemed to be a lot darker themes and more violence in the films last year. I remember some audience members mentioning that to me and all I could respond was, "That's what the filmmakers are making right now." I don't know if that was a consequence of the administration....

Guillén: Let's blame them for bumming us out.

Price: [Laughs.] Or maybe it was the war in Iraq?—I don't know—but, it was interesting to see that. Whereas this year—in terms of finding a theme—the whole South American program was definitely what was happening, which was really interesting. Back in December-January, people were asking, "What are you seeing?" and it was all these films from South America. When we drew close to the programming decisions in March, it was an easy thing to do. It wasn't just that there were a large number of films from South America, it was that there were at least 10 really great films from South America.

Guillén: Latin American cinema is primarily what I cover so it's always great when there's a respectable LGBT sampling and this year is just fantastic. As I was researching Frameline's selection, it was heartening to see these films popping up in other queer film festivals in the U.S. and Canada, most recently Toronto's Inside Out, which just wrapped a few weeks ago. How much does Frameline coordinate with other queer festivals to bring these films to North American audiences? Does it help to acquire the films since they're already on the festival circuit? Does their availability influence your programming decisions? Do you interact with these other LGBT festivals?

Price: We do interact with them—not necessarily to make the programming decisions—but, we have a lot of close relationships with several of the other queer film festivals. We get to know each other at the larger film festivals. They're wonderful people working at the other festivals. We have a great working relationship, for example, with Outfest in Los Angeles. One thing we do get out of knowing the other programmers is that sometimes we can check in with each other for tips or if we're looking for information on a particular film; but, it's not a close network in terms of making mutual programming decisions.

You do have to remember that there is a limited body of work that's being made each year that is high quality LGBT cinema. A natural consequence of that is that you're going to see some of the same films programmed at other festivals as well.

Guillén: In terms of the spectacular dimension of the festival and inviting talent to accompany their works, there's not any coordinated efforts between LGBT festivals to finance travel costs for—let's say—bringing in directors from Argentina, Brazil or Peru to attend their screenings? I imagine the complication there would be the calendaring?

Price: You've described what the issue would be. It is mostly about the calendar. As I mentioned to you, one of the things I learned from working for the consortium at the Ninth Street Film Center is that it's not always easy to collaborate. Collaboration is beautiful and it's wonderful when it works; but, it's also a tremendous amount of work.

Guillén: It looks good on paper?

Price: [Laughs.] Yes, it looks good on paper. It sounds really great when you're describing it but then there's the whole level of actually doing the work, which can sometimes be very challenging. When you can make it work, though, it's really exceptional in the non-profit world. As you say, if you can combine resources to finance travel, that's great; however—though there are some queer festivals close by to our's—sometimes they're just not close enough to make the travel work. For example, as I said, we have a great relationship with Outfest in Los Angeles and would love to partner more on travel with them because they're situated not too far after our own festival, maybe a week or so after Frameline; but, it's always almost impossible to split costs because, no, talent can't hang around for two and a half weeks inbetween festivals.

Guillén: Does Frameline receive much consular assistance for some of the films you're bringing in from other countries?

Price: Yes. We have a number of partners that help us in different years. For example, in the two years I've been here, last year we had generous support from the Swiss consulate and some from Sweden, I believe. This year, the Israeli and Norwegian consulates are supporting us.

Guillén: Being that you have such a strong South American sidebar, are you receiving any consular support from the South American countries?

Price: No, we're not. Usually we can make the consular support happen when we already have a working relationship. Sometimes it just doesn't work because—by the time we confirm that a guest is coming in and the amount of work it takes to get the consulate's support—it doesn't work for the timeline. It always sounds really good, but—when you get to it and try to make it all happen—the timing doesn't work unless there's already an established relationship. One of our longest supporters was the Canadian consulate; but, we haven't been receiving support from them in the last couple of years. I don't know if that's due to a change in government or if there have been budget cuts.

Guillén: So let me be clear, when you're saying "support" do you mean financial support? Or administrative support?

Price: Most of the time, it's usually financial support to bring in filmmakers. That's what we use it for.

Guillén: And—since, as you know, I have a vested interest in waning 35mm culture—do the consulates help out at all with print trafficking costs?

Price: Sometimes we'll ask if they can help with print trafficking costs; but, mainly we ask for support to bring in a director.

Guillén: Can you speak to Frameline's collaborations with Bay Area community organizations? Are there any new organizations that you're particularly proud to be working with this year?

Price: We have two different types of sponsorship support. We have corporate sponsorship where companies, businesses and sometimes non-profits donate either corporate financial gifts or in-kind gifts. The other part of it is the co-presentations where we work with different community organizations—this year I think we have more than 60 different community groups, mainly all non-profit organizations—and they help us get out the word about Frameline and the festival and we get to talk about them at the screenings as well as provide tickets to their constituents so they can attend the festival. Servicemembers Legal Defense Network is one of our relatively new co-presenters that we're excited about this year. They're co-presenting two wonderful films related to Don't Ask Don't Tell: A Marine Story (2010) and Out of Annapolis (2010).

Guillén: Taking the South American sidebar as an example, do you reach out to the Latino community?

Price: Sure, absolutely.

Guillén: Do these Latino community organizations meld with the queer community?

Price: Oh sure. We work with particular partners [Amor Sin Fronteras, El/La Program Para Trans-Latinas, Queer Latina/o Artists Collective, Somos Familia] that serve the Latino community in terms of getting the word out about this special program that we have in the festival so that the constituents they serve are aware that these films coming from South America are available. Then we give free tickets to them as well.

Guillén: I note this year that Lucho Ramirez, who I believe is affiliated with Cine+Mas, wrote up your program essay on the South American sidebar.

Price: Our Community Engagement and Communications Coordinator Harris Kornstein is amazing and has done a great job with the co-presenters this year. I'd say more than half of our programs have a co-presenter associated with them and, typically, in the introduction before the film starts we acknowledge the co-presenter; but, unfortunately, we can't get into much detail in the introduction because it will just bog things down. We're wondering if there are other ways that we can talk about co-presentation so that our community understands how many non-profit groups we work with? One of the wonderful things about the festival is its relationship with the larger community, as represented by the co-presentations.

Guillén: I might suggest profiles of your co-presenters on Frameline's recently-launched blog? That strikes me as the perfect place to get the word out. As you mentioned earlier, the other arm of sponsorship is corporate. This year Yahoo! joins Frameline as one of its premiere corporate sponsors. Talk to me about the value of that association and how it benefits the LGBT community.

Price: Frameline's been fortunate to have a long, successful set of relationships with corporate sponsors for decades now. Some of our sponsors have been with us on and off since the '80s and early '90s. What's fascinating is how these major companies have developed these rich relationships with us, supporting us so generously, which shows how far the community has come in terms of how eager these corporations are to be a part of a film festival that serves the LGBT community. That's exciting. Yahoo! has been a sponsor for four, maybe five, years and this year they went up to one of our two highest levels of sponsorship.

Guillén: As a non-profit with a festival arm, how much support do you receive from the City?

Price: Grants for the Arts is one of our largest funders. I believe about 5% of our budget comes from Grants for the Arts. They're a significant funder to Frameline and have been for a really long time. We couldn't do without Grants for the Arts!

Guillén: Then the remaining bulk of financing comes from memberships and ticket sales?

Price: We have about a $1.6-1.7 million dollar budget to run the organization year-round and the way it breaks down is that for contributed income we have individual donations and membership, which is close to about a third of our support. Our donors and members have been so much of what's made Frameline strong through the years. It's just like the audience itself, which has always been there for us. The foundation also gets government grants, along with the corporate sponsorship that we've talked about, and then we have a set of earned income and the primary one, as you said, is ticket and pass sales. We also have earned income from our distribution department through film rentals and DVD sales.

Guillén: Speaking of the distribution arm, I'd like to follow-up on a question I asked Michael Lumpkin when we spoke a few years back. I expressed to him how much I admired the "Send It Home" program that Frameline initiated back in the late '80s, I believe, and he told me that the program had been discontinued due to administrative complications. He mentioned, however, that it had morphed into Frameline's "Youth In Motion" program, a carryover of the "Send It Home" initiative. Can you speak to where Frameline stands with its "Youth In Motion" program?

Price: Educational facilities have always been the main, fundamental customer base for Frameline Distribution, which has been around for more than 20 years now. We have about 250 titles. The "Send It Home" program from a number of years ago was a specialized program where people could order films that they could send back to the libraries and colleges of their choice, provided they were accepted. [Laughs.] Once in a while, they weren't. So—though someone might have wanted to send a title home to Nebraska—we had to check to see if they even wanted it.

The "Youth In Motion" program that Michael talked to you about has been in effect for almost two years now. The concept for the program was based on "Send It Home", but basically what we did was we made four DVDs that each covered a separate theme, such as gender identity, LGBT marriage, there's one on the Latino LGBT community, and the fourth one is on visionary leaders (for example, we have a film we've distributed on Harry Hays). So, we took different titles and grouped them into these four DVDs and created action guides and curriculum for each of the DVDs and then we started working with gay-straight alliances throughout the state of California to get them into the GSA network clubs and sometimes into the more liberal schools especially and they're using the DVDs as teaching tools in these GSA clubs so that they have discussion topics and films that they can watch. It's a great way to help end homophobic violence within schools. The program has been incredibly successful. We've confined it to the state of California because we've standardized the DVDs to conform to California curriculum.

Guillén: Another question I asked Michael but I pose it to you because I think it's important to revisit this question every so often: with increased mainstream acceptance of queer cinema—not only through the inroads we've made into outlying communities through festival, theatrical and television programming, but in the accessibility and increased visibility of our queer stories on many of the new exhibition platforms—how long will it be necessary to have LGBT identity-based film festivals? Are they still relevant? Do they continue to serve a necessary purpose for our community? Do they still help in organizing identity and community?

Price: Yes, yes, and yes. [Laughs.] It's really wonderful that we do have all these new platforms and options to see things on television that we didn't used to see; definitely a plethora of queer images in media that weren't available, say, 10-15 years ago. On the other hand, though, Frameline's festival as well as the other LGBT festivals throughout the country still fulfill a really important need of bringing out a large collection of independent, really wonderful LGBT films that you're not going to have access to. If on your cable networks or your IPhone—should that be the medium you prefer to watch films—these films were available, I wonder if it would be a different question? Yet, it isn't. LGBT film festivals really are the only opportunity people will have to see a lot of these works.

Another thing around this is that—although we do have a specific community we serve and our films are about LGBT content—there's still this whole dimension that is no different than any other major film festival in the Bay Area. There's this other piece of it. Yup, we're offering you most of our films for the first time and giving you a chance to see them because they haven't been on television or shown up at the theaters yet. Plus, of course, the wonderful opportunity to see these works with your community in the Castro Theater. Because of those things, I don't see how queer film festivals are going to be diminished. I'm reminded of the argument made 100 years ago when the phonograph was invented that there wouldn't be any reason to meet for a symphony or an opera anymore because you could just listen to a record. As we know, that argument hasn't panned out. Queer film festivals will be around for a long time. There is a need there around it that you can't replace in a living room. Also, our numbers have not been going down. We've been increasing the last few years in terms of audience size.

Guillén: The attendant question would be whether it's become more difficult to coordinate programming with other festivals in the Bay Area who are now prone to incorporating LGBT cinema into their line-ups? Do you find yourself more in competition for some of the major titles?

Price: That's a really good question and the answer is no. Again, it's based upon collaboration. For example, within our building, we have incredibly rich relationships with the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, and outside of the building with the San Francisco International Film Festival. There are crossover titles; but, we always talk about it. San Francisco International will sometimes show queer titles but we're in communication with them about what we are and are not showing. Based on those great relationships, competition for titles is not a serious factor of concern.

Guillén: A case in point would be François Ozon's Le Refuge, which I caught at Toronto, and which Frameline has included in its line-up, but which was also shown previously in the Bay Area at a preview screening at the recent San Francisco International. I'm curious, did they situate the film in their festival in that way because they knew you were going to be showing it at your festival?

Price: Those decisions are usually made by the distributor. The distributor then lets us know what they're doing and we usually just sign off on it. "Okay. Sounds great. Love it." Both festivals benefit.

Guillén: Returning to Frameline Distribution, are any of your titles available through Netflix Instant Play?

Price: I'm glad you asked. They're available through Amazon and TLA. You can actually buy some of our DVD titles through Amazon or our website directly. We've also just started making a selection of our titles available for downloading through TLA and Amazon. The benefit of associating with Amazon and TLA is that Frameline secures access to their broader market. For us to set up download streaming is cost-prohibitive so it's better to work through those partners and their technology and allow them to do it.

Guillén: With regard to the historicity that has become the underscored theme of this year's Frameline festival, was this a theme you already had in mind? Or was this again the case of recognizing what was out there on the circuit?

Price: More of what was out there. We didn't purposely do that. We did more consciously program the Warhol sidebar just because of a number of things that had happened over the past few years. We thought it would be a nice add-on after the underground cinema we programmed last year. Plus, we were motivated by the wonderful Centerpiece documentary Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar.

Guillén: Is Canyon Cinema providing the Warhol prints this year?

Price: No, we worked with Canyon Cinema last year for our special program on underground cinema; but, this year we're working with MOMA for the Warhol films since they had the 16mm prints. They just came in the other day. I was excited when the big box arrived. Ron Gregg, the Yale film studies professor who's curated the sidebar, is absolutely marvelous and I'm personally looking forward to his lecture as well.

Around your question regarding the historical theme, that one came up after we had started programming and we started looking at what was the theme and we thought, "Wow. There are a lot of historical dramas here or films about our history in terms of narrative features."

Guillén: Do you have a take on that? Why historicity has become a thematic focus out there in the LGBT zeitgeist?

Price: I don't have a take on it. I haven't given it much thought as to why that has happened. I am interested, though, and I don't know if we could ever answer this question because it's just so mysterious what causes themes to happen. Is it just coincidence? Personally, in terms of my own taste in GLBT film, I love historical queer films. I find them fascinating. I come from a point of view of history that we didn't just start happening a few years ago. I don't feel that we've had a rich enough sense of history—whether through novels, films or art—and, for me, there's something lacking so there can never be enough of it.

So, for example, I was really excited how much you loved The Consul of Sodom. I did too. One of the things that just fascinated me about the film so much was that I would never think that a person such as the poet portrayed in that film would have led such a life in post-World War II Franco Spain. It surprised me; but, then—watching the film—I thought, "Well, of course." I would have thought it would have been a more oppressive time where a gay man couldn't live quite as openly; but, then again, when you come from such a wealthy family, you can get away with a lot more.

Guillén: That's a valid point. I felt the same thing watching Frameline's opening night selection The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, where the individuation of a young lesbian was furthered by her social station and class privilege. Those are certainly factors worth consideration in assessing how individuals like Anne Lister and Jaime Gil de Biedma got away with as much as they did in the times they lived. But what captures my imagination even more is how the sheer driving force of their individuality pierced through oppression and repression. In each of them was their fierce desire to live an authentic life.

Price: Exactly. And just imagining the challenges that they must have been up against, especially someone like Anne Lister in Regency England. I wasn't familiar with Anne Lister when I previewed the film for the festival, although I've since found out that she is well known in women's studies courses—she's often been called Britain's first modern lesbian—but, otherwise, I didn't know anything about her. I think it's absolutely wonderful that films like this can bring a person such as Anne Lister back to a wider audience, especially since she has such a strong historic significance for the LGBT community.

Guillén: So to wrap up here, what are you hoping Frameline's audiences will take away from this year's festival?

Price: I hope that everybody gets to as many films as possible because I'm completely blown away by the breadth of excellent films in this year's festival. I keep shaking my head in disbelief at just how many beautiful films there are day after day after day. It's an especially strong year so I hope that people get to as many films as possible and don't miss out.

Guillén: I'm likewise invested in several of the projects chosen this year. Scott Boswell's The Stranger In Us is dear to my heart and I'm so pleased it sold out its original Roxie engagement, such that you've added a second screening at the Castro.

Price: Yes, we're doing a repeat screening at our first TBA slot.

Guillén: I saw my own youth in The Stranger In Us and it confirmed for me that all I have to do is look in the mirror to experience the selfsame historicity that has thematically veined Frameline34. Having arrived in San Francisco in 1975, not only has my entire adult life been lived here; but, I've been witness to the gay liberation of the '70s, including watching Frameline grow as a festival since its early beginnings. All these years later, my interest remains in how the festival shifts along with current trends. I'm glad to see the festival continuing to grow, that you have settled in so well into your stewardship, and I look forward to participating in this upcoming event.

Price: Thank you, Michael. I appreciate it.

Cross-published on Twitch.

SFIAAFF28 2010: FILIPINO CINEMA & "IMAGINED COMMUNITIES"

Before finding words to describe my pleasure in viewing my first Lino Brocka film You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting (1974), I'd like to render a few comments on the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) and this year's focus on Filipino and Filipino American Cinema. When Festival Director Chi-hui Yang first mentioned to me that the festival hoped to build connections with the Bay Area's Filipino American community by "bringing them into the festival", I was impressed with CAAM's strategic outreach to the second largest community in the Bay Area after the Chinese; but, I was also slightly confused because I had long imagined the Filipino community as being more of a Latino community by way of shared colonial histories and a Catholic substratum. In retrospect, I realized this understanding had been shaped by a 1994 Mexican Museum exhibit "Paraiso Abierto a Todos" curated by Enrique Chagoya, and featuring the work of Philippine artist Manuel Ocampo.

I phoned my friend Tere Romo, former curator for The Mexican Museum, and asked her what she recalled of that exhibit. She remembered that the Manuel Ocampo retrospective was already in the works when she arrived on the scene and—though she did facilitate it—it had largely been set into motion by curator Enrique Chagoya and fellow artist Rupert Garcia, who were both enthusiastic about the political dimension of Ocampo's work; a dimension they felt affirmed a shared identity between Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Chicanos and Filipinos.

I asked Tere if it had been the exhibition's intention to diversify the Mexican, Mexican American and Chicano community by focusing on a Filipino artist? Romo confirmed that Chagoya and Garcia approached the Mexican Museum to mount an exhibition of Ocampo's work simply because they loved his work and wanted to show it; but, Tere saw it as the perfect opportunity—not only to extend the community to draw in another audience for the sake of drawing in another audience—but, more, to enunciate linkages already present historically, socially and culturally. She accomplished this by setting up a complementary exhibit in the orientation gallery next to Ocampo's retrospective. She drew pieces from the Mexican Museum's collection that showed the actual influences via the Manila galleon trade in Mexican art. For example, she looked at the Chinese influence on Mexican laquerware and floral rebozos. The Museum's collection even had a Filipino buto—a statue of a saint—which confirmed a direct reference. These trade items manifested during the time period when Mexico was—in a sense—the viceroy for the Philippines. Trade passed through Acapulco, was transported across Mexico to Vera Cruz, then transferred to Spain. In the process, handlers—often artists themselves—influenced by the work from China and Japan, adapted the imagery.

But Tere wanted to emphasize that the connection between Mexican and Filipino communities was not only a historically distant trade connection. More recently—with the United Farm Workers effort—the Filipinos were the first to go on strike for farm workers rights. Filipino organizer Larry Itliong formed the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC). César Chávez and Dolores Huerta became involved when the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA)—which they co-founded—voted to join the AWOC, creating what is now known as the United Farm Workers of America. Additionally, the first martyr in that cause was a Filipino farm worker.

Having now experienced the Filipino community approached by both the Mexican Museum and the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), I can more fully appreciate what Dina Iordanova has proposed in her contextual essay "Mediating Diaspora", published in Film Festival Yearbook 2: Film Festivals and Imagined Communities (2010:12-44).

The concept of "imagined communities" comes from Benedict Anderson's 1983 study Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, wherein Anderson proposed "an imagined political community" as a definition for "nation". Iordanova found this applicable to film festival communities. She writes: "The festivals that we zoom in on here are all linked in some way to the concept of the nation as 'imagined', precisely as Anderson conceives it, and, in most cases, to 'diaspora' as well. Members of the community probably will never meet face-to-face; however, they may have shared interests or identity as part of the same group." Film festivals, however, instigate community by being a live event that convenes "only in one place at a time, usually at regular intervals as yearly events. For the festival to happen, organizers and audiences must come face-to-face in exactly the same place at exactly the same time. They practically suspend the 'imagined' element of the community by substituting it with a very real one that is, nonetheless, configured around the same axis of imagination that drives the ideas of nation and nationalism. There is a double-step process when transnationally-positioned film festivals are involved. On the one hand, audiences and programmers involved with the festival are invited to experience themselves, by an undisguised act of imagination, as an extension of a community that is 'headquartered' somewhere else but to which they, by virtue of their very attendance at the festival, now relate to through a mental image of affinity and through the act of their very real togetherness. Yet, a secondary act of imagination is implied as well, linked to the need to experience a certain degree of identification with imaginary, fictional characters whose stories are told in the films projected at the festival. In the 'live' space of the festival, organizers and audiences form a community, an actual one, that congregates face-to-face for the purpose of fostering an 'imagined community' that comes live in the act of watching a film and imagining distant human beings becoming part of one's own experiences. Thus, the festival's set-up extends an invitation to engage in what is essentially a political act of imagined belonging and to continue the nation building process that is pre-supposed by extending it to the diaspora and beyond." (2010:12-13, emphasis added.) This concept of festival attendance as "a political act of imagined belonging" speaks to me on many different levels.

SFIAAFF's focus on Filipino Cinema finds precedent—according to Variety reporter Christopher Alford—in a comparably-mounted program at the 2006 Hawaii International Film Festival whose "generalist approach of the festival," Iordanova observes, "cuts across ethnic divides and aims to draw large crowds of diverse backgrounds." In a way, Iordanova adds, festivals such as the Hawaii International and SFIAAFF "work with a political vision of a certain imagined community and target a diasporic audience that is intrinsically diverse." (2010:24)

Here, Iordanova expands her thesis to juxtapose diaspora with "the global city". She writes: "Within multicultural societies, film festivals related to diasporas and 'imagined communities' all happen at the periphery of the mainstream public sphere." Though conceding that some skeptics criticize that such ethno-specific film festivals not only remain isolated from each other but contribute to "the profound fragmentation of an ideally public sphere", Iordanova balances with an alternate viewpoint that celebrates multicultural hybridization, "undoing diaspora in favor of the global city concept." In other words, though "the existence of various 'imagined communities' within the multicultural sphere may lead to fragmentation, there are also processes of hybridization and integration, of 'situated' yet mobile identities that come about as a result of [what Dr. Avtar Brah (1996:1, 187) has termed] 'the honing of diaspora'." (2010:33) Mobile identity is an apt term, especially in light of SFIAAFF's "Filipino Or Not?" phone game app.

All of this is to suggest that I no longer see SFIAAFF as a film festival catering to diasporic identities as much as a festival committed to celebrating its hybrid citizenry in a global city. Their focus on Filipino cinema confirms as much and allows for the Latino community to share equally in solidarity.

Here I will reiterate Michael Hawley's consummate overview of the Filipino sidebar: "One of the strands running through 2010's festival is a Focus on Filipino and Filipino American Cinema, the highlight of which is a long overdue tribute to Lino Brocka. Openly gay and often at odds with Ferdinand Marcos' regime, Brocka directed 60-plus films between 1970 and his death in 1991, most of them melodramas with a social/political bent. To the best of my knowledge, with the exception of one-off screenings of 1988's Macho Dancer (for better or worse, his best known film in the U.S.), the Bay Area hasn't seen a Brocka film since the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) showed Dirty Affair in 1992. (And if memory serves, the screening I attended was cancelled after the film broke midway through). Even the venerable Pacific Film Archive lists only one Brocka screening in its entire online archive; again the 1992 SFIFF presentation of Dirty Affair.

"The SFIAAFF mini-retrospective consists of only four films, but they seem very well chosen. Yang explained that SFIAAFF wanted to program more, but prints were extremely hard to acquire. 1975's Manila in the Claws of Neon is a neo-noir about a country boy in the mean city, which I first saw at the 1980 SFIFF under the title Manila in the Claws of Darkness. (Oddly, the film is a.k.a. Manila in the Claws of Light). SFIFF also screened Brocka's mother-from-hell masterpiece Insiang in 1984, but I missed it. Bayan Ko is the film that got Brocka's Filipino citizenship revoked, and a print had to be smuggled out of the county for its competition screening at Cannes in 1984. The fourth selection is 1974's You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting (what a title!). All four films will be screened in 16mm or 35mm prints.

"The rest of SFIAAFF's Focus on Filipino and Filipino American Cinema can be found scattered throughout the line-up. "Classic Filipino American Shorts" is, well, exactly that. From this year's Documentary Competition comes Ninoy Aquino & the Rise of People Power, about the revolutionary leader, political prisoner, exile and martyr to the cause of Philippine democracy. Manilatown is in the Heart—Time Travel with Al Robles is part of the CAAM@30 Documentary Showcase and the latest from director Curtis Choy (The Fall of the I-Hotel). From the Narrative Competition we have the world premiere of Gerry Balasta's The Mountain Thief, a docudrama about one family's struggle to live amidst a garbage dumpsite. And finally, the one I'm most looking forward to, Raya Martin's hyper-stylized allegory of early 20th century American colonialism, Independencia."

I also replicate my capsule review of Independencia from the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival:

Listening expectantly in the dark is Miguel (Sid Lucero), the son in Raya Martin's lustrous Independencia who—crouched still with vigilant eyes—hears the sounds of war approaching within a raging storm that ravishes the Philippine rain forest. The wet foliage—as Joni Mitchell phrases it—"looks like slick black cellophane" and as if to emphasize the film's irreality, Martin purposely employs theatrical devices and fabulist artificiality to emphasize not only the history of his country, but the history of his country's cinema. Martin describes Independencia as "an intimist film in the woods."

Cross-published on Twitch.

FILM FESTIVAL YEARBOOK 2: FILM FESTIVALS AND IMAGINED COMMUNITIES

I am pleased to announce the publication of Film Festival Yearbook 2: Film Festivals and Imagined Communities, edited by Dina Iordanova with Ruby Cheung, published by University of St. Andrews Film Studies in conjunction with their Dynamics of World Cinema project. The book is the second in the series; the first volume, the Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit, was published in 2009. I'm pleased—not only because I was invited to contribute my essay "Diasporas by the Bay: Two Asian Film Festivals in San Francisco"—but, primarily, because my essay promotes two of my favorite film festivals in the San Francisco Bay Area: the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival and the 3rd i Film Festival.

As the publishers have synopsized: Film Festivals and Imagined Communities, the second volume in the Film Festival Yearbook series, brings together essays about festivals that use international cinema to mediate the creation of transnational "imagined communities". There are texts about the cultural policies and funding models linked to these festivals, as well as analysis of programming practices linked to these often highly politicized events. The case studies discuss diaspora-linked festivals that take place in Vienna, San Francisco, San Sebastian, Havana, Bradford, Sahara, South Korea, and London and that feature cinema from places as diverse as Nepal and Kurdistan, Africa and Latin America. Authors include Lindiwe Dovey, Ruby Cheung, Michael Guillén, Jérôme Segal, Miriam Ross, Roy Stafford, Yun Mi Hwang, Isabel Santaolalla and Stefan Simanowitz, Mustafa Gündoğdu, and Dina Iordanova. The Resources section features an up-to-date bibliography on film festival scholarship (by Skadi Loist and Marijke de Valck) and an extensive thematically-organized listing of a variety of transnational festivals. Dina Iordanova has offered the volume's contents at her own site DinaView.

Jonathan Rosenbaum has written: "The very ambitious aspiration of the Film Festival Yearbook is, quite literally, to define a new area of film study. Part of the implied agenda of the book, given the scope and seriousness of the aspiration, is to combine some of the best and most valuable features of scholarly rigor with some of the most valuable features of journalism. The book can be useful to potential and actual film festival programmers as well as to academics who are studying film festivals as a social phenomenon. Filmgoers with particular interests of their own as well as those who are invested in specific national or ethnic groups will also be attracted to this volume."

Faye Ginsburg, Director of the Center for Media, Culture and History at New York University has written: "Film Festivals and Imagined Communities—the second volume in the series—opens up new horizons both for those who study media and those who create the significant but often overlooked "media worlds" where films first get launched: film festivals from the "periphery". Anyone who has attended or helped run one knows the intensity and significance of these distinctive social arenas in calling attention to new work as well as to emergent cultural possibilities. This excellent collection clarifies the role that film festivals play as venues that constitute a social universe for diverse groups, audiences, and artists (diasporic, indigenous, LGBT, migrant workers). With articles addressing how these festivals work—from the economic and artistic considerations of those who produce them to the way they help to 'imagine communities'—we start to understand the role these festivals play for members of minority communities that too rarely see cinematic work related to their lives. This collection is indispensable for anyone interested in understanding contemporary global media and what makes it work."

Finally, of related interest, is a recently-published article by Konrad Ng (University of Hawaii, Mānoa)—"Thoughts from Oslo, Norway: Film Festivals and Expanding the Moral Imagination"—published at FlowTV. In his article Ng aligns certain lines of reasoning from President Obama's acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize with cinema, especially with regard to "the continued expansion of our moral imagination; an insistence that there's something irreducible that we all share." Following this line of reasoning, Ng proposes that film festivals can serve as a "model of engagement that may help expand our moral imagination." Citing Michael Shapiro's Cinematic Geopolitics, Ng suggests that "film festivals can be a space for envisioning possibility and articulating critical attitudes towards acts of violence and oppression; film festivals can 'provide a venue for films with significant anti-violence and anti-war themes and cinematic styles' and by doing so, assist the expansion of the moral imagination." By way of case study, Ng takes a look at how grassroots Asian American film festivals such as the Los Angeles Pacific Film Festival (sponsored by Visual Communications), and the International Asian American Film Festivals in both New York (sponsored by Asian CineVision) and San Francisco (sponsored by CAAM) contribute "a critical role in translating and transforming a notion of community into cultural and political engagement."

CAAM's Executive Director Stephen Gong acknowledges Ng's thesis as "provocative and convincing" and states: "There are many kinds of film festival, [of] course. Some of the largest are integral to the marketing and distribution of cinema as entertainment. Some at the other end are more geared toward civic boosterism. Our sector, and one shared by dozens, if not hundreds of other culturally specific festivals, reflect, as Konrad asserts, an important connection to a cultural or identity-community, and as such, play a key role in the continued evolution of the community and its place within the larger world."

06/02/10 UPDATE: I'm so pleased that the Film Festival Yearbooks are receiving some coverage in film journals. Adam Nayman's review for the current issue of Cineaste surveys both volumes, along with On Film Festivals—the third edition of the Dekalog series guest edited by Cineaste staffer Richard Porton. Nayman has been especially kind to me. He writes: "This plurality of voices extends also to FFY2, which gestures towards the margins of the international film festival network, focusing on festivals geared towards different ethnicities and social groups. It's heartening, for instance, to see a piece written by somebody best known as a blogger—Twitch.com critic Michael Guillén, whose 'Diasporas By the Bay' patiently explicates the ways in which two San Francisco-based initiatives—the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival and the San Francisco South Asian International Film Festival—have thrived by matching "content to constituency." Thanks for the shout out, Adam!

Cross-published on Twitch.

FILM FESTIVAL YEARBOOK 1—A Response to Section Two

With the 47th edition of the New York Film Festival currently in progress, I thought now would be a good time to follow-up on my response to Section One of Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit, edited by Dina Iordanova with Ragan Rhyne, published by the Center for Film Studies at the University of St. Andrews and Wallflower Press; namely because Section Two of the Yearbook provides six festival case studies, including Rahul Hamid's informative and fascinating historical essay "From Urban Bohemia to Euro Glamour: The Establishment and Early Years of the New York Film Festival" (2009:67-81).

As stated in Iordanova and Rhyne's introduction, Hamid's contribution to the Yearbook plumbs the depths of NYFF's archives to narrate the establishment of the festival through a description of the institutionalization and organizational politics of NYFF's first edition. I was particularly captivated by this strategy because—in essence—by laying out the conflicts, issues and compromises that characterized the first years of the NYFF, it addresses "the curatorial challenges still faced by the festival today and can offer insight into the epicurean world of contemporary film festival culture." (2009:67)

"Epicurean" is a lovely and apt term to emphasize the role of curatorial taste in shaping any festival's given program and how conflicts in taste texture festival experience. What has become perhaps the most important value of my appreciation of Hamid's case study of the NYFF is how it has provided an ameliorative perspective on some of my ongoing complaints about the San Francisco International Film Festival, which I now understand are neither specific to SFIFF nor "original" in any sense of the word. Said complaints have longstanding historical precedent and reflect the ongoing challenges compromised by curatorial choice. That choice can (and perhaps should) always be questioned by audiences and press; though that's not to say the challenges become resolved even if the choices are commuted. More and more I've come to understand the staged irresolution of these conflicts through the film festival platform. No one is to blame. It is the nature of the beast; film festivals the cage within which the beast paces.

Hamid situates his discussion by deferring to the seminal work of Thomas Elsaesser, who "describes the post-war film festival circuit as a direct response to the growing power and hegemony of Hollywood and the US film industry. This antagonistic relationship to Hollywood colored much of the international discourse around festivals, situating festivals and the European art cinema they programmed as anti-commercial 'high art' and American cinema and theatrical distribution as the province of the masses and lowbrow commercialization (though famously, Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut challenged this distinction)." (2009:67-68) As the awkward fate of commercial distribution of films presides over the future of so-called festival "art film" and alternative exhibition practices, this current concern appears to have been built into the film festival phenomenon from its onset.

Amos Vogel—along with his wife Marcia—created Cinema 16, which had a direct influence upon how the NYFF was initially programmed. His 1975 book Film as Subversive Art was (as Hamid describes it): "Part manifesto, part celebration, and part detailed cinematic catalogue, there is no better introduction to Vogel's curatorial philosophy, which prioritized the examination of form over content, allowing industrial film, experimental work and auteur cinema to be appreciated on an equal plane." (2009:70). Vogel and his compatriot Richard Roud—then director of the London Film Festival—were instrumental in the establishment of the NYFF.

The NYFF helped to elevate the stature of cinema on parity with more established art forms, such as theater and literature, largely due to the advocacy of Andrew Sarris at The Village Voice and Eugene Archer at The New York Times; both of who did not see film as subordinate to the established art forms, in contrast to older critics (like Stanley Kauffmann at The New Republic) who did (2009:75).

Kauffmann emerges as a problematic figure in discussing the formative years of the NYFF, especially for his 1965 essay "Are We Doomed to Festivals?" in the October 2 issue of The New Republic. As detailed by Hamid: "In 1965, Kauffmann viciously attacked the [NYFF], homophobically complaining that Roud's descriptions of the films were written with a 'limp mind and wrist'. He called Special Events a 'circus sideshow', maintaining that festivals were for selling films and not for the display of art. Good films will be released, so ran the logic, and the rest were not worthy of the exalted status given to them by the festival in the first place. Kauffmann argues that the festival films should be shown in small venues year-round like Vogel's Cinema 16 (Kauffmann 1965:30-32)." (2009:77) I'm not familiar enough with Kauffmann's work to know if he has since retracted his initial impressions, though Bart Cardullo—in his important Bright Lights Film Journal interview with Kauffmann—bravely circumambulates around Kauffmann's opinions shaped by nearly 50 years of film criticism.

Kauffmann was, by no means, singular in his criticism. Several older critics and the business establishment itself complained throughout 1964 and 1965. This criticism was compounded by that of younger critics who took objection to the establishment of the "hold review" policy (which has since become de rigeur for festival press coverage). "According to Sarris, the rule that films could not be reviewed during the festival (because this was too far in advance of their theatrical releases and therefore not useful for film promotion) grew to become a major cause of anger among critics, who were not primarily interested in the films' profitability." (2009:77).

Again, to be made aware that this longstanding conflict with the hold review policy has been in place since the onset of the NYFF serves to mollify my disgruntlement with the hold review policy at SFIFF. I now more fully understand the compromise struck between commercial and art cinema within the parameters of the film festival proper as a tension that is hardwired into the festival experience. That concession being made, however, I am still critical of the questionable policy of the tiering of press at film festivals, where celebrity "red carpet" journalists are granted more privilege and access than journalists who—like myself—elect to focus on first-time directors from the Global South or auteurial cinema. If reliance on studio fare provides essential financial backing and a spectacular dimension to film festivals—which I can appreciate—it should not, however, occlude the role of film journalists in advancing the work of non-studio fare. I plead for more parity in this instance.

Finally, "The NYFF also pushed the culture of film festivals one step further by being, in a sense, a festival of festival movies. The films selected were for the most part self-consciously artistic, created for an educated, international audience. On the other hand, the NYFF was non-competitive and stayed away from the hyperbolic atmosphere that surrounds festivals like Cannes and Venice. It was created as a haven for art appreciation. A staid and reverent atmosphere remains at the festival even today, as it approaches its fiftieth year. Further insulated from a promotion-crazed commercial atmosphere by the proliferation of festivals on this continent (Toronto in particular), the NYFF seldom hosts any North American premieres any more. Contemporary critics might also view the event as elitist and think of the festival as a completely bourgeois and irrelevant institution, but ironically that was part of the original point of the festival—to give film a place in the cultural establishment of the city." (2009:79-80)

In summation, Hamid's historicization of the NYFF serves as a template to understand the organizational precedents of international film festivals in general, drawing into focus the perhaps necessary contention between art and commercial cinema and the role of film festivals and their audiences in negotiating that tension.

The remaining case studies in Section Two of the Yearbook include Charles-Clemens Rüling's organizational analysis of the Annecy International Animation Festival as a "field-configuring event"; Kay Armatage's hands-on recollection of the 1973 Toronto Women & Film International, which examines—as the editors state in their introduction—"the ephemeral history of women's film festivals through her own memory" (2009:3-4); David Slocum's look at two African film festivals: FESPACO and the Zanzibar International Film Festival; and, finally—of related interest to the NYFF's current Masterworks series "(Re)Inventing China: A New Cinema for a New Society, 1949–1966", expertly graphed out by Kevin Lee at The Auteurs Notebook—Ruby Cheung's narration of how the Hong Kong International Film Festival transitioned from a government-run program to a model influenced by corporate efficiency and sponsors, and Ma Ran's examination of how "that policy and aesthetics collided as underground Chinese cinema found its way onto the international film festival circuit, much to the chagrin of Mainland Chinese bureaucrats" (2009:4).

All of these essays are fascinating, informative reading that broaden an appreciation of the film festival experience in its contemporary unfolding. I would also recommend Richard Porton's erudite Moving Image essay "The Festival Whirl", wherein he references the Yearbook in his consideration of "the utopian possibilities—and dystopian realities—of the modern film festival."

Cross-published on Twitch.