Introduction:
Questions
By Ezequiel Schmoller (Argentina)

If I had to name one thing I enjoy about film criticism, I would say the following: whether you like it or not, you have to answer basic questions about film criticism (and cinema and art) itself. I mean, I have not made up my mind about how much the ideology of a film should matter in one's view or if one has to rise above one's own ideology and analyze, interpret and judge only the formal aspects of a work, or if the ideology (as Adorno and Susan Sontag suggested) is embodied in the formal characteristics of a work of art, but if I watch a film and feel that it is misogynous or fascist and have to write a review, I am forced to choose between two — and only two — possibilities: either I put it down in the review or I do not. And this is only one of the basic questions which underlie film criticism. Is it true that there are no morally good and morally bad films but only well shot films and bad shot ones, as Wilde would say if he was still alive? Or, rather, camera movements and framing are moral questions, just like Godard and Daney stated? What should we give priority to: informing, analyzing, interpreting or judging? Should we write sensualist-impressionist reviews or informative ones? Or academic ones? Should we use language just as a means of saying something or as an end in itself? Should we speak about a film, about the cinema or about the world? Obviously film critics do not have to explicitly answer all these questions, and the answers given explicitly or implicitly in a particular review may change in the next one, but reading many film reviews by a particular critic will help us to trace his or her own intricate system of thought.

Here in Argentina, I write for the monthly magazine "El Amante". It is one of the few magazines specialized in film criticism in the country. It tries to avoid academicism; it has a broad criterion (it defends directors like Spielberg and Michael Mann as well as others like Tsai Ming-liang and Kiarostami); it defends and attacks films and directors with passion, a feature which has earned the magazine a few enemies, especially among Argentinean directors; it has a special interest in the political aspects of films and of film culture; it fosters debate (films often are reviewed by more than one critic, to contrast ideas). I am a proud contributor of the magazine: I write monthly film reviews and I also have a monthly column called "What should I download", where I recommend and analyze public domain downloadable films, old TV programs, advertisements, political campaigns, newsreels, shorts, etc.             

Ezequiel Schmoller

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