CINÉ - TRACTS A JOURNAL OF FILM AND CULTURAL STUDIES PORNOGRAPHY AND FILM: NOT A LOVE STORY THE NATIONAL FILM BOARD POLITICS AND THE DOCUMENTARY FILM FEMINIST FILMMAKING IN QUEBEC QUEBEC FILM: AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW MEDIA THEORY AND MEDIA PRACTICE 16 PHOTO: N.F.B. J. A. MARTIN PHOTOGRAPHE VOLUME 4 NO. 4 WINTER 1982 $3.50/£2.00 VOLUME 4 NO. 4 WINTER 1982 Visual Communication cine-tracts contents Ciné-Tracts, A Journal of Film and Volume 4 Number 4 ---------------------Winter, 1982-------- Cultural Studies is published four times a year on an irregular basis and is a non- NUMBER 16 profit publication. Editorial and Business Office: 4227 Esplanade Avenue, Montreal, "Not a Love Story...." Notes on the Film Québec, Canada H2W 1T1. by Martha Aspler-Burnett.............................................1 Editor in Chief: Ron Burnett "Not a Love Story" Knowledge, Power and Pornography by Hart Cohen...............................................................4 Editors: Martha Aspler-Burnett, Hart Cohen, Phil Vitone, Alison Beale. Communications and Journalism: Associate Editors: Ron Abramson, Peter The National Film Board and "Not a Love Story" Harcourt, Teresa de Lauretis, Bill Nichols, by Phil Vitone..............................................................7 Zuzana M. Pick, Peter Ohlin, Virginia Fish, Rick Thompson. The Films of Jean-Pierre Lefebvre by Susan Barrowclough..............................................17 Australian Correspondent: Noel King. The Crisis of the Documentary and Fictional Film in © Quebec, by Ron Burnett............................................29 Please note that the articles printed in Ciné-Tracts are copyrighted and their Quebec Film 1966-1980: An Historical Overview reproduction is not permitted without the by Louise Carrière......................................................36 consent of the editor. The viewpoints expressed in Ciné-Tracts are those of its The Rhetoric of Meta-commentary: Another Look at the authors and do not necessarily reflect Earlier Films and Writings of Pierre Perrault those of the editors. by David Clandfield....................................................52 Manuscripts are not returned and must be The Feminist Fiction Film in Quebec: La Vie Révée and sent in triplicate, double spaced. Dépôt La Cuisine Rouge, by Brenda Longfellow...................63 Légale Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec et Bibliothèque Nationale du Canada. Denys Arcand and Le confort et l'indifférence by Lise Bissonnette.....................................................74 Indexed in the International Index to Film Periodicals (F.I.A.F.) and Film & Literature Index (Albany). Single Issue . $3.50 Contributors: Martha Aspler-Burnett teaches at John Subscription (yearly) . $10.00 Abbott College in Montreal, Hart Cohen teaches at Institutional Subscriptions (yr.) . $20.00 Vanier College in Montreal, Phil Vitone teaches at Orders outside North America, Vanier College in Montreal, Susan Barrowclough works please add postage . $2.50 at the British Film Institute, Ron Burnett teaches at Vanier College in Montreal, Louise Carrière teaches at CEGEP Vieux Montreal, David Clandfield teaches at the Second Class Registration Number 4104 University of Toronto, Brenda Longfellow is doing re- search on Quebec film in Montreal, Lise Bissonnette is ISSN 0704016X the Editor in Chief of Le Devoir Newspaper in Montreal. WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT! CINE-TRACTS IS IN ITS FIFTH YEAR OF PUBLICATION Ciné- Tracts THE JOURNAL CONTINUES TO BE A FORUM FOR THE DEBATING OF QUESTIONS RELATING TO THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF FILM AND MEDlA. Previous issues have included articles on Realism, Semiotics, The Film Subject, Psychoanalysis and the Cinema, The Documentary Film, Ethnographic Film, Latin American Cinema, The Film Body, by writers such as, Raymond Williams, John Berger, Teresa de Lauretis, Stephen Heath, Jeanne Allen, Zuzana Pick, Judith Mayne, Linda Williams, and David Bordwell. Forthcoming issues will be on Photography, Television, The Teaching of Film and Media, The Inter-relationship of Film and Literature. "NOT A LOVE STORY"... NOTES ON THE FILM Martha Aspler-Burnett Near the end of NOT A LOVE STORY, Susan Griffin, the author of PORNOGRAPHY AND SILENCE, is quoted as saying that «pornography is hating life, hating oneself». This is confirmed by Linda Lee Tracey, ex-stripper, poet and filmmaker who, at the end of a soul- searching odyssey into a world of pornography, claims to be sick and embarrassed by the experience. She has also been deeply moved. More of this later. 1 The National Film Board has taken a look at pornography. It has fully endorsed pornography as a subject for study (and defended the film's right to bescreened publicly in Ontario, where it was banned by the censorship board), here by filmmakers from the women's studio, Studio D, legitimating any and all images (some of them «shocking»), statistical claimsand an uncertain ideological position. The Board stood behind the film and the film stands behind the Board. «A» pornographic world has been represented such that it is, to the Board's credit, a testament to documentary filmmaking; the sophisticated packaging of interviews, personal statements, filmed images, still images combined with the direct and immediate concerns of the filmmak- ers. In addition, the film uses the metaphorof the journey/odyssey — a physical and moral one — which ends in the filmmakers gaining knowledge and becoming purified. It is important to examine sequences in the film and to look closely at what is said and what is seen. It is also important to consider what is juxtaposed in the editing process and to question what the filmmakers themselves project as self-image by their presence in the film, and what, ulti- mately, they would like the spectator to believe. The film is structured around the presence of Bonnie Klein (filmmaker) and Linda Lee Tracey (former stripper). Both women, each in her own way and for her own reasons, feel that she has a duty to fulfill for the spectator. Duty means nothing less than the communication of a messianic-like message. This message is primarily about the materiality i.e. the existence (as opposed to the history, the ideology) of pornography. Each feels the necessity to experience pornography first hand for us because, believing themselves and the spectator to be good «individualist» products of our culture (i.e. equating experience with evidence) they feel we will learn more as a result. Linda Lee Tracey clearly enunciates the individualist position when she says that she needs to experience everything for herself first. For example, she needs to see what it is like to pose for a pornographic magazine. She is photographed by Hustler photographer Suze Randall. Suze does an «operation» on her, transforming her vagina into the requisite «flower». Linda begins to feel uncomfortable. («....but a vagina isn't a flower...»). On camera she grits her teeth and completes the session/sequence, but she feels violated. Earlier on in the film she puts down a women-against-pornography group because she feels, as a result of an interaction, that they put her down. As a stripper she felt as much a working woman as any other working woman. She felt the strip club where she worked to be an «honest» arena, and she had devised and performed an act which was in fact a parody of an act... as she put it, «neither porn nor erotic». Thus, she was alienated from an organized group, (like woman against pornography) yet she was concerned. She becomes a surrogate in the film for Bonnie Klein's purposes: a subject to be worked upon and transformed into the image of liberal feminism. Consider the image of Linda on the beach in the last scene: she is filmed with Klein and then alone, reading her poetry. This scene is very much removed from the image of Linda on stage at the beginning of the film, nude at the end of her act, proclaiming «God bless the working woman-and accepting money from a drunk spectator at the edge of the stage. The film is the medium for Linda's individualist self-expression and the site for her transformation. After a visit to 42nd street in N.Y.C. she will state that she cannot go back to Montreal unscathed. On 42nd street the camera follows her. She is free to roam, to look, to ask questions. She literally climbs upon a soapbox to state her position and provoke bystanders into discussion. She recites poetry she has written. Bonnie Klein's role could be defined, in part, as that of an actress, who appears in many scenes: she is sensitive to Linda, inquisitive with Suze Randall, a traditional journalist with her «experts», and cleverly subdued (out of necessity, to «get the interview») with a pornographic magazine publisher. She is also, clearly, present as a filmmaker — or more precisely, as a factor of control. Her odyssey parallels Linda's in some instances, (they are present together in many of the same places), but is also more specific in terms of whom she chooses to «visit» and what she feels needs to be seen by the spectator. In NOT A LOVE STORY, the filmmakers probe people, such as ex-porn stars, a magazine publisher, an expert on aggression, as well as American feminists Kate Millett, Kathleen Barry and Susan Griffin. (Why has Bonnie Klein gone to the U.S.? Why is Margaret Atwood filmed at a public speaking engagement as she reads poetry while the American women are filmed in personalized settings? What kind of validation are the filmmakers looking for in their choice of critics or sites of pornography?) One does not get the sense, however, that anyone or any 2 environment is ever truly probed. In part, the overall editing plan works against this. The film moves too quickly, too neatly from one sequence to another. In the following example we see how deterministic and mechanical the editing is. In covering a series of ideas the editing invokes a closure such that the critique can barely exist within the sequence and is not made, developed or extended elsewhere.