Cine-Tracts 4, Vol. 1, No. 4, Spring-Summer
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# 4 CINÉ-TRACTS A JOURNAL OF FILM AND CULTURAL STUDIES $2.50/£1.50 NUMBER 4 BACK ISSUES CINE-TRACTS, # 1 FILM/TECHNOLOGY/IDEOLOGY JOHN BERGER STEPHEN HEATH Unavailable DUSAN MAKAVEJEV IDEOLOGY & MEDIA MESSAGES ETHNO-HERMENEUTICS CINE-TRACTS, # 2 "THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES IN CINEMA" FILM AND PERFORMANCE THE FUNDAMENTAL REPROACH (BRECHT) SOME PROBLEMS OF TECHNOLOGY, PERCEPTION AND REPRESENTATION Unavailable IN CAMERA MOVEMENT REFLEXIVITY IN FILM AND BROADCAST DOCUMENTARY KINO-TRUTH AND KINO-PRAXIS, VERTOV'S MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA THE CONCEPT OF CINEMATIC EXCESS CINE-TRACTS, # 3 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE CINEMA SAUL LANDAU: THE TRUTH LIES ON THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR RAYMOND WILLIAMS ON REALISM $5.00 JOHN BERGER ON JONAH ARTICLES ON WALTER BENJAMIN & JACQUES RIVETTE LEFT CURVE Magazine published by artists on the role of culture in the struggle for liberation. Issue # 7 includes: analysis of mural movement photography of Lester Balog camera obscura history of Artist's International Italy today including photos of daily life (Provisional) Art & Language: Auckland 1976 contemporary appalacian poetry practice of architecture - from positivism to dialectics video on the left: a Critique critique of Harvey Swados Teamsters Graphic Group Radical Elders Oral History Project plus reviews, documents, letters, etc. $2.50/copy Subs, $7 (3 issues) $10 Institutions 1230 Grant Ave. Box 302 San Francisco, Ca. 94133 art & revolution CINE-TRACTS VOLUME 1 NUMBER 4 SPRING - SUMMER 1978 DOUBLE ISSUE CONTENTS Cine-Tracts, A Journal of Film and Cultural Questions of Property; Film and Nationhood Studies is published four times a year (on an Stephen Heath ....................................... 2 irregular basis) and is a non-profit publication Editorial Office: 4227 Esplanade Avenue, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H2W 1T1. A Dossier on Johan Van Der Keuken ............................ 1 2 Graphic reproduction Vanier Press. The Truth Lies on the Cutting Room Floor EDITOR: Ron Burnett Saul Landau ......................................... 30 EDITORIAL COLLECTIVE: Martha Aspler Burnett, Chandra Prakash, Hart Cohen, Phil Vitone, Ron Burnett. On The Practice of Political Film, An Interview with Jean-Louis Comolli .................................... 4 4 ADVISORY EDITORIAL BOARD: David Allen, David Crowley, John Fekete, Virginia Fish, Peter Harcourt, Teresa de Canadian Section edited by Peter Harcourt Lauretis, Jacqueline Levitin, Bill Nichols, Introduction: The Invisible Cinema ........................ 4 8 Peter Ohlin, Donald Theall, Thomas Waugh. From the Picturesque to the Familiar: Production this issue: Martha Aspler Burnett Films of the French Unit of the NFB (1958-64) Chantal Browne, Nicole Chene, Paul Fournier Kevin Roch, Hans Speich. David Clandfield ...................................... 50 Depot Legale, Bibliotheque Nationale du The Film as Word (Perrault) Quebec (D775 699) et Bibliotheque Nation- Peter Ohlin .......................................... 63 ale du Canada. INDEXED in The International Index to Film On Television Docudrama: The Tar Sands Periodicals (F.I.A.F.), Film and Literature Seth Feldman ........................................ 7 1 Index (Albany) and in The Alternative Press Index. A Review of Chronique de la Vie Quotidienne ALL ARTICLES COPYRIGHT Ron Burnett ......................................... 77 The viewpoints expressed in Cine-Tracts are those of its authors and do not necessarily The Arrival of the Instrument in Flesh and Blood: reflect those of the editorial collective or the Deconstruction in Littin's The Promised Land editor. Robert Scott ........................................ 81 Manuscripts are not returned and should be sent in duplicate, double spaced. A Critique of Cine-structuralism: Review article of Movies and Methods Single issue, $2.50, Subscription $8 per year Bruce Elder .......................................... 98 (foreign $10) Institutional Sub. $12 (foreign $14). With a response from Bill Nichols. ............................. 105 EXCLUSIVE DISTRIBUTION IN THE UK BY THE MOTION PICTURE BOOKSHOP NATIONAL FILM THEATER, SOUTH BANK, LONDON, SE1 8XT SECOND CLASS REGISTRATION NUMBER 4104 ISSN 0704 016X Cover photo: "Black Maria" by Edison. All photos this issue,courtesy La Cinémathèque Québecoise. COMMITTEE OF SMALL MAGAZINE EDITORS AND PUBLISHERS BOX 703 SAN FRANCISCO. CA. 94101 Thank-you Maija SUBSCRIPTION CAMPAIGN SUBSCRIPTION CAMPAIGN SUBSCRIPTION CAMPAIGN SUBSCRIPTION CAMPAIGN SUBSCRIPTION CAMPAIGN SUBSCRIPTION CAMPAIGN CINE-TRACTS HAS GROWN TREMENDOUSLY DURING THE PAST YEAR AND A HALF. WE NEED NEW SUBSCRIBERS TO KEEP OURSELVES HEALTHY FINANCIALLY AND SO THAT WE CAN REACH AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE WORKING IN FILM, FILM TEACHING, FILM MAKING, AND FILM CRITICISM-THEORY-HISTORY ETC............. EDITORIAL Though this issue of Cine-Tracts is a single one for purposes of subscription consistency, we are calling it a double issue because it is our biggest effort to date. There is no over-riding theme to the issue but many of the articles are concerned with theories of political cinema and the practice of political film- making. The work of Johan Van der Keuken is, we think of utmost importance to political filmmakers. His attempt to confront documentary codes and con- ventions from within the specific coded instances of the documentary is a crucial contribution to self-reflexive cinema. His documentary on the present crisis of Western capitalism — Springtime — tries to, as Hart Cohen says in his review; ". .deal with the relationships between subjectivity and the social institutions that both regulate and administer the economy." There is an equally important effort to critique documentary forms and conventions from within the film itself. The interview with Jean-Louis Comolli took place during the conference on "The Cinematic Apparatus" in Milwaukee in Februrary of 1978. The conference was organized by Stephen Heath and Teresa de Lauretis. Jump-Cut magazine (issue. no. 17) has written a long and bitter attack about the way the event was organized and carried off — about its elitism and sexism and "boys club" atmosphere. This editorial is not the place for a res- ponse to Jump-Cut's criticisms. The intensely personal nature of the critique requires an answer that will reveal as a counterpoint the productive results of the work at Milwaukee. Hart Cohen and I are in the process of writing an ex- tended article for the next issue of Ciné-Tracts on film magazines, Jump-Cut in particular. Many of the criticisms made about Milwaukee reflect the criti- cal, theoretical and political position of Jump-Cut as a whole and there is a need to open up an honest debate about what it means to situate a publica- tion as Marxist-radical-nonsectarian-anti-racist-anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and anti-sexist. In writing the article we intend to clarify what our own political position is and we will try and be as "unmonolithic" as possible about it. In many ways our position on political film is made clear by the kind of questions we ask Comolli and Van der Keuken. We are concerned with a kind of political film that sets itself up as a politicized window on the social and political process and on the contradictory forces at work in our society. The crisis (as we see it) of political-militant film is situated within the following set of contradictions. The camera — the production process seems to reproduce empirical reality and yet by virtue of the very prop- erties which make reproduction possible the screen cannot but reproduce the logic of a representational system that generates a tracing of the real — a shadow whose substance is defined by what is absent. The organization of images makes reproduction possible only with and as a result of a specific set of constraints that can be defined as naturalized (Barthes) because they appear not to need explication. They contain within their means of expression a clearly formulated structure that denies their artifice. At the very moment at which film appears to recover the real and give it to US it has to deny itself as film because the mediators that structure what we are seeing become peripheral — we see because it is there to be seen-artifice is present, mediation is necessary but the reproduced reality overcomes all contradiction and flattens the constructed into an enunciation that appears to have no subject behind it (unmotivated). The image, whether the intention behind its construction is political or not remains an image. It is a product and creator of signification — a carefully organized structuring and structured cultural object — that initially has to deny the real in order to produce a sense of reality. Yet given that we recognize that film constructs the real and given that the notion of film as window (an unmediated enunciation) has served to confuse rather than clarify the functioning of the medium (particularly the documentary) in relation to what it is showing the paradoxical position of political filmmakers is best revealed by the following quotes: "The documentary-vérité-political film opens up questions and creates crises in the viewer's experience and understanding of what is being shown and portrayed." (Cinema Action — London) "We showed the film and the response was incredible. People were shouting and seemed ready to discuss how they could organize themselves and deal with the issues that we had raised."(Newsreel) "Many members of the audience had serious questions about community health care and community health centers and our film opened up a debate on