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SB -Jl S D) 2.2 2! 5 FILMS FROM THE SOVIET UNION CONTEMPORARY have a wide range of Russian feature films as well as shorts, dating from the early '20's to the present day. Specialities include the films of Sergei Eisenstein; the Maxim Gorky Trilogy; films by Pudovkin, Donskoi and Dovzhenko; Many operas, ballets, plays and literary adaptations from the Russian Classics as well as a number of films on the Revolution. Most films are with Russian dialogue and English subtitles. Future releases include:— Kozintsev's KING LEAR Karasik's THE SEAGULL Panfilov's THE DEBUT # . Write now foi Oitalogue giving full details, price 50p (inc. postage) CONTEMPORARY FILMS LTD., 55, Greek Street, London, W1V 6DB Telephone: 01-734 4901 (6 lines) . THE INTERNATIONAL FILM GUIDE SERIES 3 New Titles — Publication December 1971 USTINOV IN FOCUS Tony Thomas Allowing Ustinov to recount some of his experiences in his inimitably funny way, this book discusses his background and work in the Theatre, his career as an actor, and his work as the director of such brilliant productions as ' Vice-Versa ' and ' Billy Budd '. 192 pages, over 80 stills. 90p THE CINEMA OF JOHN FORD John Baxter The legendary career of John Ford, undoubtedly the most universally admired of all American .directors, is traced from ' Cameo Kirby' to ' Donovan's Reef'. The first monograph in English on Ford's work. 176 pages and 66 stills. 90p HOLLYWOOD TODAY Allen Eyles & Pat Billings A reference volume in dictionary form listing alphabetically the major talents currently active in Hollywood, giving basic biographical data, a thumbnail sketch of the style of each figure, and credits of all work seen since 1960. 192 pages and over 90 stills. 90p Companion Volume to: HOLLYWOOD IN THE TWENTIES David Robinson 60p HOLLYWOOD IN THE THIRTIES John Baxter 60p HOLLYWOOD IN THE FIFTIES Gordon Govv 90p A. ZWEMMER LTD. 76 - 80 Charing Cross Road, LONDON, W.C.2. The British Film Institute has denied certain facts printed in the. last number of Screen relating to the. administration of the Institute and the way in which the Educational Sub- Committee conducted its enquiries. The Society did not check certain facts with the Institute, before publication and conveys its. regrets to the Governors and staff of the Institute for not having done so. A new relationship has been formed between SEFT and the Film Institute and we hope that we can look forward to a Downloaded from period of fruitful cooperation in which construc- tive criticism and debate may usefully take place. http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/ Foreword The last number of Screen was devoted to a critique of the British Film Institute and the American Film Institute. Both at Freie Universitaet Berlin on May 7, 2015 Institutes experienced internal conflicts over matters of film education and general policy questions concerning the role of national film bodies. In the United States the internal conflict at the American Film Institute did not remain purely administrative but was brought into the open and made public. Issues were pursued within education, within the industry, by the film journals and by the national, local and trade press. In Britain only Screen among the film journals opened a critique of British Film Institute policies and administrative practice. The Society put much at risk in doing so since its finances and those of the journal are dependent upon a grant from the British Film Institute. The purpose of Screen's critique was not destructive, was not aimed at making the Institute lose ' face' nor even public con- fidence. On the contrary, the aim was to bring out into the open issues and questions relating to film culture and film education which is the Institute's preserve and to have these matters debated fully and in public. Such an aim seems right and proper. The Institute is a public body, publicly funded. The Chairman of the Institute has stated recently to Institute members that ' it is no bady thing for a body like the Institute to have its work challenged from within and without from time to time *. The Society welcomes this statement and looks forward to a response from the Institute to criticisms made for what is now required is debate of film education policies in which the Institute ceases to be an object of debate but becomes a participant in a debate. The matter of the Society receiving a grant from the Institute is separate from the Society openly criticising the Institute. It would be stretching credibility if we refrained from criticism because we received money. Not only would the Society appear Downloaded from corrupt, but the Institute even more so. The first duty of the Society is to film education and film teachers not to the British Film Institute. Our existence financially may depend on the Insti- tute but the reason for that existence is to serve the needs of the film education movement. The Society has moved to new offices with the help of the http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/ British Film Institute and has been promised a grant of £9,994 by the Institute for 1972-1973. The Institute has stated that it will do all it can to see that this figure is attained. (The entire Institute budget is a draft budget subject to approval by the Department of Education and Science). The Society is grateful for this financial sign of the Institute's confidence in our work and policies. The General Secretary at Freie Universitaet Berlin on May 7, 2015 Editorial The teaching of film as film is rare. More usually film is ' used' in other subjects or alien curricula. Even where taught the teach- ing is more ideology than an understanding of an artistic product. Attention is to.' content', what is signified, what is depicted, rather than to the manner of signification, to the modes of depiction. Downloaded from Movies are in part responsible for the ideological readings given them. Though film ' represents ' the world, is a mediation of it through a structure of signs, it often appears as an unmediated reflection or presentation. The technological apparatus of film- making (more and more refined) presents an appearance on the http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/ screen of an accurate reproduction of external reality. Film-making has an in-built realism. It is no accident that aesthetics of realism long since rejected for the other arts continue to dominate the most technically advanced art, in criticism, teaching and produc- tion, in part because of its technical ' superiority '. Screen has chosen in this number to reproduce the debates and ideas of Soviet artists and film-makers of the 1920's for these debates are reflections upon and struggles with notions of ' realism' which Screen regards as crucial to any understanding at University of Iowa Libraries/Serials Acquisitions on May 25, 2015 of the cinema in the past and at the moment. Two sorts of reality concerned Soviet artists - the reality of the artistic material (the sound, the letter, the word, the shot, the celluloid) and social reality, either (or both) as something the work of art depicted or as the context in which the art product functioned and had a place. This area of debate and concern was marked by confusion and struggle. The confusion is clear in the texts -. the recurrence of terms such as * objectivity', ' facti- city ', ' factography \ ' material' used in double often treble senses. But the confusion was indicative of the struggles to pre- serve the formalist pre-revolutionary concern with artistic elements and the social and political necessities raised by the revolution. A revolution in art and thinking about art had simultaneously to be worked out with a revolution in society. The power of the cinema to reproduce reality brought these two aspects together in a very acute form revealing both a connection and a disparity and problematic. The issue was in part expressed and battled out over the question of the ' play' film and the ' unplayed' film, Eisenstein and Vertov, the staged October and the revolution itself, an actor-Lenin, the real Lenin. What is clear in the debates is the complete awareness (no matter what position is adopted) that the signs of the cinema are signs, are mediations with their own particular structures and specificities. And such structures had to be understood as con- structs not as simple reproductions of external reality. It was the beginnings of a science of cinema with an object of its own. In Britain ' realism' dominates without question or reflection. The documentary tradition of the most mystified kind persists in film and television. Criticism orientates still towards content and signified and impressionist ravings. Film education is obsessed either with film ' themes ' or the cinema's ' talents '. Theory and reflection are resisted at most levels — because these are threats. The resistance most often gets expressed in deep anti-intellectual- Downloaded from ism, accusations of dogma or in the retreat towards ' practicality ', the nitty-gritty, what we really need. Sometimes, at the very worst, the language is of creativity, the artist, art, intuition, the language for example of Free Cinema, of Lindsay Anderson. Films made in the Soviet Union in the 1920's were not ' art' but part of a struggle in defining the specifics of the cinema. Films http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/ were both experiments and counters in a debate; they were also the practice of certain theories and the theorising of a practice. Practice and theory went together, as indeed they must, reflecting and modifying each other. There was not that divorce so evident in film education (and education generally) in this country between those who make things (the talented) and those who criticise (the tasteful).

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