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CINÉ-TRACTS A JOURNAL OF FILM AND CULTURAL STUDIES I0 A SPECIAL SECTION ON SONG OF THE SHIRT BY THE ORlGlNS OF CINEMA CONFLICT OF INTER- THE FILM AND HISTORY VERITE: A SPECIAL PRETATIONS: A SERIES PROJECT DOSSIER ON THE DOCU- OF ARTICLES ON RED MENTARY FILM WORK RIVER BY HOWARD CO HOEDEMAN AND THE OF MICHEL BRAULT HAWKS. ART OF THE ANIMATED FILM. $2.50/£1.50 new german critique cine-tracts contents Ciné-Tracts, A Journal of Film and Cultural Volume 3, Number 2, Spring, 1980. Studies, is published four times a year (on an irregular basis) and is a non-profit publication. Special Dossier on the Radical Feminist Film, Editorial Office: 4227 Esplanade Avenue, The Song of the Shirt: Montreal, Québec, Canada. H2W 1T1. An analysis of The Song of the Shirt, by Alison Beale. .1 Editor: Ron Burnett Interview with the filmmakers, Jonathan Curling and Sue Clayton . .14 Editors: Martha Aspler Burnett, Hart Cohen, Phil Vitone, George Mitchell. Editors debate on The Song of the Shirt . .23 Correspondant: Alison Beale. On The Origins of Cinéma-Vérité and the Associate Editors: Ron Abramson, Documentary Film — Michel Brault Peter Harcourt, Teresa de Lauretis, Pierre Perrault on Michel Brault . 30 Bill Nichols, Zuzana M. Pick, Peter Interview with Michel Brault . 37 Ohlin, Virginia Fish. Claude Jutra on Brault . 49 Advisors: David Crowley, John Fekete, Donald Theall. Jacqueline The Moral Eye by Guy Borremans . 52 Levitin, Thomas Waugh. A Special Section on Conflict of Interpretations Please note that the articles printed in Modes of Analysis of Red River by Howard Ciné-Tracts are copyrighted and their Hawks: An Introduction . reproduction is not permitted without by Roberta Reeder. 54 the consent of the Editors. The Literary Version and the Film, The viewpoints expressed in Ciné-Tracts by Roberta Reeder. .56 are those of its authors and do not The Mythic Mode: Archetypal Criticism and necessarily reflect those of the editors. Red River by Roberta Reeder . .58 Manuscripts are not returned and must Woman as an Element of Narrative in be sent in triplicate, double spaced. Red River by Margaret Fete . .68 Dépot Légale Bibliothèque Nationale The Semiotic Mode: Anchor and Relay as du Québec et Bibliothèque Nationale Sign Function in Red River, duCanada. by Lawrence Benequist . .72 The Drives and Cultural Production in Indexed in the International Index to Red River by Michael Silverman . 83 Filin Periodicals (F.I.A.F.), Film and Literature Index (Albany) and The Freeing The Spirit: The Animation of Co Alternative Press Index. Hoedeman by Eugene Walz . .88 Book Review by Ron Burnett . 96 Single Issue $2.50, Subscription, $8.00 per year. (Foreign, including U.S. $10.) Collaborators: Alison Beale is a correspondant for Cine- Institutional subscriptions are $1 2.00 Tracts and is currently doing research on Harold Innis,Pierre (Foreign inc. U.S. $14.00) Perrault, Claude Jutra and Guy Borremans work al the National Film Board and independently and are among the Exclusive Distribution in tile U.K. by most famous filmmakers in Québec and Canada. Roberta The Motion Picture Bookshop, National Reeder is involved with the Semiotics Program at Brown Film Theatre, South Bank, London, SE1 University. Margaret Fete is at Ohio Weselayan, Lawrence 8XT Benequist teaches at Keene State College, New Hampshire, Michael Silverman is associated with the Semiotics program SECOND CLASS REGISTRATION NUMBER at Brown University. Eugene Walz teaches at the University 4104 of Manitoba and is a member of the executive of the Film ISSN 0704 016X Studies Association of Canada. WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT! Now when you subscribe or renew you can order any two of the following articles from our out-of-print issues for FREE 1. Realism, Naturalism and their Alternatives, by Raymond Williams. 2. An Extract from the Script of Jonah who will be 25 in the Year 2000. CINÉ-TRACTS by John Berger. 3. The Truth Lies on the Cutting Room Floor, by Saul Landau. 4. Film, Technology, Ideology, by Ron Burnett. 5. On Middle of the Earth, by John Berger. 6. Film Performance, by Stephen Heath. 7. Camera Movement and Cinematic Space, by David Bordwell. 8. Kino-Truth and Kino-Praxis: Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera, by Judith Mayne. SONG OF THE SHIRT ALISON BEALE THE FILM AND HISTORY PROJECT AND THEIR ATTEMPT TO MAKE A RADICAL, FEMINIST FILM ON THE NEEDLE TRADE IN BRITAIN IN THE MID NINETEEN HUNDREDS. Framework film journal THE SONG OF THE SHIRT U. K. 1979 Directed by Susan Clayton and Jonathan Curling. Produced by the Film and History Project. Edited by Fran MacLean. Music composed, researched and arranged by Lindsay Cooper. “Would that its tone could reach the rich”: The Song of the Shirt The Song of the Shirt was first presented at the Feminism and Cinema event at the Edinburgh Film Festival. It was produced in London by the Film and History Project and co-directed by Sue Clayton and Jonathan Curling. The film is about the history of dressmakers and seamstresses in the England of the 1830’s and 40's and the reform movements and appeals to bourgeois conscience and philanthropy that addressed the problems of these “Distressed Needlewomen.” During this period, which saw the repeal of the Corn Laws and a shift in power from the aristocracy to merchant capitalists, thousands of single women whose labour had been integral to family agricultural and artisanal production moved into the cities to take up industrial and servant work. However, many of them became engaged in the prod- udction of clothing, a trade with the uncertain status of mass non-technical labour. The terms of employment ranged from independent dress-makers who began as apprentices, to “slop-house” workers who did the rougher sewing on a piece work basis as it was distributed to them by middle-men. 1 The media of the period, serialized novels, magazines, newspapers, cartoons and even songs, took up the case of these workers. The “slop-house’’ workers were a favourite of both the bourgeois and radical presses. They were horrified by the pic- ture they saw of the single woman in this casually organized and over-supplied trade. Her independence and misery disturbed the hypocritical convention of the “protection of women” in the family and in the Law. Her person, as it was waged, starved and sexually active, disturbed the womanly ideal, the passive domestic con- sumer, that accompanied the rise of the bourgeoisie. She presented problems for the propaganda of social reformers and conservatives alike. However, the film is not a piece of historical detective work, awarding the unknown figures their proper (and final) recognition. The presence of the seamstresses was acknowledged in certain ways: the film is concerned with the forms which that recognition took. The motivation for making the film lies partly in the persistence of comparatively bad working conditions for women in the garment trade. But in addition to its specific historical material, The Song of the Shirt also constitutes a confrontation with a problem-area which has arisen within the economic and cultural conditions of independent filmmaking in England, and within feminist film analyses and practices of the past few years. On the basis of the concerns which have arisen from these areas, the suggestion is being put forward that filmic representation (paradigmatically of women, or of his- tory) and film production, distribution and exhibition have a relationship which exists not only in after-the-fact exegesis of a film text whose only equal is the film critic who locates the film socially and historically. Instead, the relationships importantly referred to by these terms are those (a) between the audience and the film, and (b) between the audience and “history.” A key feature of this argument is the centralized and monopolized international film industry, which means that the viewing of most films is part of “mass enter- tainment” or its marginal opposite, Art Cinema. Given this fact, the role of the audience is to consume and to perform a “suspension of disbelief.” Disbelief in the illusion, but also cynicism (and in much of the world, cultural estrangement) with respect to the rightful authority of its presentation must, supposedly, be laid aside, and as if they were the same, This temporary, “voluntary” forfeiting of reason for pleasure is frequently joked about in commercial film, and by its apolo- gists, as though in a conspiracy among equals. But it is temporary only in one sense, because it is an attitude that is maintained by the repetition, at nearly every occasion of viewing, of the same exhibition practices. Film practice of this kind is part of the system of the social production of knowledge, which includes, as in the common-sense rationalization of the audience’s position, the construction of the relationships between producer and consumer, or exhibitor and audience, within which knowledge is categorized. Thus we have notions of “common-knowledge,” and so also “entertainment” and “history,” which are apparently arrived at not by struggle but by a consensus whose machinery is invisible. What can be argued though is that a common-sense approach to being a member of the audience, re- peated and ritualized, is disguised as choice but rests on a partial knowledge by the audience of its own position. The Song of the Shirt treats this partial know- ledge as directly analogous to the type of knowledge of the situation of the needle- women possessed by the bourgeoisie; by the reforming parties, and by the women themselves. In this film common-sense Victorian attitudes to class, to gender difference and sexuality are taken apart, through their representations, in such a way as to call into question attitudes of the present.