Berlinale Talent Press 2012

Why to Become a Film Critic
Young Critics Introduce Themselves

The Talents:
Critics Anonymous… By Aderinsola Ajao
Reaching Critical Mass. By Anders Wotzke
The Double Life of Cinephilia. By Guido Pellegrini
The Critic: Maybe a Glâneur, But not a Dilettante. By Janaina Navarro
Film Criticism Beyond Judgment. By Katja Čičigoj
Walls and Binoculars: Cinema of My Surroundings. By Makbul Mubarak
A Place at the Table. By Michal Oleszczyk
Canadian cinema: Talent right under our noses. By Tina Hassannia

Critics Anonymous…  By Aderinsola Ajao

In the forever-expanding world of international cinema, there is hardly a bad time or place to be a film critic. Being one means I stay informed, enjoy myself (or not), influence the audience's viewing decision sometimes (and perhaps, earn a living.)

An early introduction to motion pictures influenced my interest in film theory and practice. I became a film "critic" because I simply could never keep my opinion on films to myself. Working as a culture reporter and editing a film magazine have also greatly broadened my interest in international cinema and film criticism. Notwithstanding the absence of a Film Studies programme or proper appreciation for film critics/criticism, as Nigerian cinema grows, so should I be many steps ahead by providing informed, constructive, critical commentary.

Unfortunately, more film reporters exist here than do full-time critics. Some reporters, rather than appraise the local cinematic art, choose to focus more on celebrity gossip. Some depend more on press releases from a production company, and end up giving every movie a positive, half-hearted review, much to some producer's wrongful delight. Critical exposure from academic scholars, foreign researchers and critics, who take the time and effort to deconstruct these productions, has however contributed in no small way to a recent spurt of quality productions in Nigerian cinema. This new deviation from primarily commercial films to the arty is an improvement that has resulted in local productions premiering in Nigerian cinemas plus screenings on the international festival circuit: a detour from the era of films going straight to DVD rentals for home viewing.

There remains the argument about whether or not Nigeria's film industry (popularly called "Nollywood") constitutes a form of "national cinema". The indigenous and English language sub-sections take drastically different approaches to representing national issues in their art, refusing to be seen as the same. Nonetheless, each has garnered an impressive following even outside their origins; making an especially huge impact across the African continent and with Africans in diaspora. The sprouting of more locally-organised international film festivals embracing features, shorts animation and documentaries, also gives a wider and better portrayal of nationally-relevant issues in more nuanced productions: better stories and better technique that can compete in a global context.

Despite my critic's instinct to hunt for the bad and the ugly, I myself have a few favourites. Alas, I remain generally undecided about the greatest movie ever made.

Reaching Critical Mass. By Anders Wotzke

Before I could even spell the word "critic", I was one. Just ask my mother who, upon returning home with a trendy new hairdo, was met with a look of utter disdain from a pint-sized version of yours truly, adamant that she return to the hairdresser and "cancel it!" While I like to think my critical appraisals have evolved to be more considered since then, they remain just as honest and passionate, albeit less about the cut of someone's hair and more about the cut of someone's film. I can't pinpoint the exact moment I became enamoured with the moving image, but I can vividly recall the film that coerced me into becoming a critic: Christopher Nolan's Memento. Never had a work of art left me with such an uncontrollable urge to understand it, dissect it, discuss it and, fatefully, write about it. I've since had no say in the matter; film criticism is now an obligation, not a choice.

At first, I teased my newfound appetite for film analysis as a writer for The University of Adelaide's student magazine "On Dit", each trip to the cinema offering welcome respite from my double degree in Media and International Studies. Next, I took to the internet where I began to develop my critical voice as an editor, contributor and video presenter for the website "Cut Print Review", using humour as a means to lure the movie-going masses into thinking critically about film. Since then, I've been accepted into the Online Film Critics Society and have become an award-winning member of the Australian Film Critics Association, granting me the credence necessary to turn my passion into a career.

Admittedly, film journalism is hardly the most sensible career path to undertake in Australia, a place where local critics tend to be the first shown the door during any mass media restructuring, and local filmmakers tend to seek out international approval before daring to take on the Hollywood-obsessed market back home. In my stomping ground of Adelaide, South Australia, I could count on one hand the number of film journalists who attend the weekly press screenings, and on one finger the number of whom earn a comfortable living doing so. But while the scarcity of critical voices in mainstream media is discouraging, the rising number of young and talented film conversationalists emerging online is nothing short of inspiring. Embracing and enabling this new generation of e-critics is vital to the continued existence of film as a platform for stimulating discussion, as is keeping film discourse an inclusive activity, not an exclusive one. The way I see it, we're lucky enough to be writing about a medium that billions enjoy watching, so what's stopping us from developing it into a medium that billions enjoy discussing?

The Double Life of Cinephilia. By Guido Pellegrini

I began writing film reviews because of an adolescent impulse. Even when I had more urgent school assignments to attend to, I would still spend hours tailoring write-ups for the latest movies I had seen. Eventually, my need to write about cinema morphed into, simply, a need to write.

When I first began reviewing, my audience mostly consisted of a void, the chaotic void of the Internet, where you can write anything you want, but find no one to read you. Only those who insist, who visit forums, and who connect with fellow cinephiles, can, at long last, start finding a readership. And most of these kindred souls will likely be scattered around the globe.

Film critics and bloggers now have an international audience, and their interactions are equally cosmopolitan. Those who have grown up online can sometimes feel like they have a border-less cinephilia. From an isolated house in Los Angeles, I honed my film love with an Englishman living in Italy, a French-Canadian who mixed brilliant insights with hilarious typos, a New Zealander who had apparently seen every film in existence, a Portuguese restauranteur who would write every other word in italics, and an Australian who preferred men but would make an exception for Audrey Hepburn.

These interactions had the benefit of being multicultural, but the drawback of detaching me from my national context. First in the United States, and then back in my country of origin, Argentina, it would seem to me as if I were leading a double life: local student by day, globe-trotting movie critic by night. Buenos Aires, where I now live, redresses this problem to a degree. Its cinephilia, like its culture and politics, is something physical, something that gestates in its streets. Film clubs abound, projecting movies in secret rooms, neglected theater attics, and roofs under the night sky, where crazed neighbors yell and complain about the midnight soundtrack.

Like modern cinephilia, the Argentine film industry is similarly varied. There is no adequate manifesto to explain the sinister banality of Lucrecia Martel, the intense observation of Lisandro Alonso, the grandiose storytelling of Mariano Llinás, and the talky humanity of Daniel Burman — the term "New Argentine Cinema" is so woefully inappropriate by now — just like I can hardly mend the schism between my double identities as global, English-language Internet critic and twenty-something film lover who walks down dark hallways to watch movies with fellow porteños, as the people of Buenos Aires are called. Maybe there's no mending to be done, only celebration of fragmented joys.

The Critic: Maybe a Glâneur, But not a Dilettante. By Janaina Navarro

As a young Visual Arts student, and in my work as a critic I try to articulate realms of knowledge seen as diverse. I believe in an interdisciplinarity of Arts, and I see in cinema the possibility of putting them together, creating new significations and significances. In my texts I look to, rather than judging an art work, reading it. I see the work of the critic as someone who tries to analyze the content of the subject through his personal reading. In that reading can be the possibility of creating new associations and, therefore, new layers for the work. In a certain way, I see the critic as a upside down prism, that absorbs different stimuli from the world — cinema, music, visual arts, daily routine, readings, politics, etc — and gather them in a unique beam put in words. In my role as a critic I try to share my reading and maybe bring new angles of comprehension for those who are interested, and give my contribution to a bigger debate. I also believe in the necessity of a critic being always open for what happens around him, without prejudices toward any kind of artistic manifestation.

Therefore, within the world scenario of criticism, I see myself as someone looking for space to share ideas and reflections. Inside the Brazilian sphere, however, this work is not so easy. Even though we have some excellent cinematic thinkers, it is very hard to find or keep printed magazines with space for deep reflections about cinema. Most Brazilian criticism only maintains their existence through the Internet, with online magazines and websites. The common media such as daily newspapers and weekly magazines don't usually publish real criticism, but only some kind of cultural journalism, based on grades and short reviews. From time to time some specialized magazine appears, but usually only those that make intellectual concessions are able to keep going.

However, I see the situation of Brazilian cinema with optimism. The incentive laws (based on tax deduction), are contributing with our cinematographic production – which had been suffering with a monetary shortage, that may had delayed it. Nowadays directors can look for this aid, which enables the process of making a movie. That, further then bringing us some young and new filmmakers, gives the possibility of great directors to develop their works and improve it with each new film. The fact that these filmmakers are able to regularly make new movies is, without a doubt, a very positive aspect of Brazilian cinema today.

Film Criticism Beyond Judgment. By Katja Čičigoj

"If it is so disgusting to judge, it is not because everything is of equal value, but on the contrary because what has value can be made or distinguished only by defying judgment. What expert judgment, in art, could ever bear on the work to come? It is not a question of judging other existing beings, but of sensing whether they agree or disagree with us, that is, whether they bring forces to us, or whether they return us to the miseries of war, to the poverty of the dream, to the rigors of organization…this is not subjectivism, since to pose the problem in terms of force, and not in other terms, already surpasses all subjectivity." [Gilles Deleuze — To Have Done With Judgement

The position of a film critic today cannot remain unquestioned. Not only does the proliferation of all kinds of public opinion expressed on films (enhanced by web technologies that open potentially infinite platforms) work towards undermining the authority of the film critic, who can no longer be considered an arbiter elegantiae of this relatively new art form or of the entertaining quality of film as a work of mass entertainment. And I am tempted to write: rightly so. Even though knowledge of film history and theory certainly enables one to consider more contextual factors when analyzing a film-text, there can be no unequivocal set of norms that would enable us to "objectively" assess a film's value.

Why then engage in film criticism at all? In a country like Slovenia (but as far as I know this is the tendency elsewhere in Europe as well), where film (and other) critics are by and large precarious workers that have to entertain several other occupations to make ends meet, this is not exactly a prospect for a nice and easy career, certainly not for the young generation. Why perseverating then, if not with the belief of separating what is good from what is bad?

"As Spinoza had said, it is a problem of love and hate and not judgment; 'my soul and body are one .... What my soul loves, I love. What my soul hates, I hate... All the subtle sympathizings of the incalculable soul, from the bitterest hate to passionate love '" (Deleuze).

By this I do not mean to romanticize this profession and turn it back into a naïf cinephilia or quasi-democratic subjectivism. Film criticism might be grasped also as an opportunity for public analyses of cultural objects that we cherish, an opportunity to produce knowledge about them (not to discern the Truth in the form of a value judgment), as well as an opportunity to raise certain issues we deem important, to (ideally) encourage a public debate.

Film criticism might be used to turn the attention of the public towards works that might otherwise go unnoticed or to raise issues that are generally overlooked. This might be of some help especially to young filmmakers making their way towards film audiences.

After long periods (or waves) of difficulties in film production in Slovenia due to an obscure system of state financing (the main financial source for Slovene filmmakers) and political games within it, which made it very hard for filmmakers to get to do their first, and made it even harder to do their second feature, they are slowly finding their way out, also by resorting to low budget or independent productions. At this year's national film festival in Portorož, two young filmmakers with their first features overshadowed the already established middle-aged generation. While this had gone unnoticed by the main jury, the film critics' jury chose to point to these nascent talents. Of course this will not completely turn the tables; but if it helps them gaining at least a tiny bit more  public attention and references for next projects, maybe this is good enough.

Film criticism is thus, not as a matter of absolute judgment, but of passion love and hate; not a war for Truth, but a combat for knowledge-making and awareness-raising. But, more than anything, a (very Deleuzian) meeting between the writer (the critic, the journalist, the theoretician) and the film, a meeting that might generate new concepts, percepts and affects.

Walls and Binoculars: Cinema of My Surroundings. By Makbul Mubarak

Indonesia is a country with endless generations of filmmakers. But on the other hand, we have almost no regeneration of film critics. There are three notable causes. First, when a film critic has gained some acclaim, they turn to filmmaking. Second, there wasn't a Film Studies major in any university in Indonesia for a very long time. Binus University just opened one several years ago, and it is the only one. Third, film criticism is not a financially promising job.

I wasn't aware of those calamities when I started writing about films on my tiny blog which turn out to have thousands of readers. My sole motivation was that "a massive tradition of filmmaking is logically blind without a balanced response of film appreciations." There are many potential films made in Indonesia, but there is no one there to write about them and to later  capture and place them into some frame in our history. This is where I wish I could do my task.

The scene of film criticism in Indonesia has been fading in and out for many decades. Andjar Asmara, the oldest known Indonesian film critic started his magazine before facing bankruptcy in the late 1940s.  Heretofore, there is no media that specializes in film criticism. Articles on films are usually written on small and unimportant columns in cultural magazines and newspapers. This era was marked by two of the most-remembered Indonesian film critics, Armijn Pane and Rosihan Anwar.

That "hitchhiking tradition" continues until the early 2000s when a magazine called "F" started to publish reviews focusing on cinema. Unfortunately, "F" had to close not so long after its initiation. Today, Indonesian film criticism is dominated by catalogue-like film magazines that are mainly used to promote the upcoming Hollywood movies aimed at popcorn eaters and loitering couples.

Something changed when blogging became a trend. Blogs with their costless feature provide possibilities for people to write what they want freely. That trend led me and my colleague to an idea of making a weblog on cinema. Alongside us, there are more than 200 active film blogs in Indonesia. The sad thing is, most of these blogs are not critical hence not influential to the audiences and film goers. This becomes my biggest disquietude. Most of these blogs don't go beyond showing which part is pleasing and displeasing before their eyes, in many cases leaving holes which they suppose to fill with plausible insights. There has been a change in modes of film criticism in Indonesia, but it's only on the form and not the content.

I always learn to avoid the writings that merely commend and condemn films, especially films from a manifold cultural ambience like Indonesia. The majority of Indonesian films nowadays are repealed from the social story that they speak about yet serve just as amusement for the audiences before they go back to their hard life. This is where my wish lies, I wish to keep spreading thoughts to people that (Indonesian) films are actually (could be) a binocular to observe their own reality, not a dark wall that stands between them and their reality.   

A Place at the Table. By Michal Oleszczyk

Seemingly passive, based on an endless cycle of watching and reflecting upon what one has just seen, film criticism seems a supremely enviable profession. However, watching movies all the time can be as much of a drudgery as anything — unless it's fueled by some sort of inspiration that would turn it into a quest of self-discovery. The language we use to describe movies — to pin them down, or at least to render an impression they leave us with — inevitably testifies to who we are and how we respond to the world around us. If we're attuned enough to how our own language shifts over the years, film criticism can become a true platform of self-knowledge.

By engaging with movies, we engage with things as abstract as societies and cultures, but also as concrete as actors' bodies or physical objects shown upon the screen. Having grown up in communist Poland, I can still remember vivid impressions made on me by Hollywood films – literally everything in them seemed exciting and colorful. For me, the biggest special effect in Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters II wasn't the walking Statue of Liberty at all, but a plain delivery-pizza box seen in one of the scenes. How I dreamed of a pizza like that; how I mythologized the world in which pizza like that even existed…

Polish cinema of the last twenty years has been trying to come to terms with the 50-year period of communist enslavement, and so far has achieved only partial success. As we still wait for great Polish movies that would help us understand our collective identity, the world of Polish film criticism is divided by a sharp generational split: the older critics rely almost entirely on print outlets, whereas the young cinephiles eagerly embrace social networking as means of making film criticism a communal experience.

We are witnessing a time of enormous change in film criticism – and I firmly believe it is one for the better. The mere fact that I can discuss new movies via Facebook or Twitter with my friends from around the world is incredibly enriching. The whole world seems to have become one huge round-table, capable of seating thousands of people passionate about cinema. It's strangely comforting for me to think that our conversation goes on every hour of every day and night, bringing us all together and inviting to shape the world in new, exciting ways.

Canadian cinema: Talent right under our noses. By Tina Hassannia

It is well-accepted that Canada has an inferiority complex. This often makes us lose sight of our own significance in international cinema and film history. Here's a rhetorical question: Is it possible to discuss 1) body horror without mentioning David Cronenberg? 2) experimental cinema without including Michael Snow? 3) queer film theory without listing the contributions of Robin Wood? 4) governmental film institutes without a case study of the National Film Board?

Of course not.

And yet, of those four notable figures, most Canadians will only definitely be familiar with the NFB, because its films are aired on television. I'd be reluctant to call even Cronenberg a household name. There is a tremendous lack of awareness among Canadians that a national cinema even exists here, or what it looks like. Our video rental stores stock our own films in the foreign film section.

The only province where this is a non-issue is Quebec, which has its own respective and rich history. Francophone-Canadians will watch Quebecois films because it's an act of cultural preservation. Anglophone-Canadians, on the other hand, suffer from cultural cringe.

There are a few reasons why Canadians are sceptical of our own talent. Canadian films never receive ample distribution and exhibition. Canadians equate "cinema" with "Hollywood" because that is the diet force-fed to us. The Canadian government has a track record of refusing cultural protection measures that would solve this problem. Our close relationship with Hollywood has made defining a film "Canadian" difficult to do, because so many American films are shot in Canada or with Canadian production crew. We've also remained quite ambivalent about defining Canadian identity, to the point that our ambivalence has actually become a cultural emblem. We're not quite sure what would make a film "Canadian" (those are indeed, scare quotes, because conversations about national identity regularly raise the hairs on the back of our spines).

As a Canadian critic with a film studies background I find it difficult to discuss cinema with many Canadians that travels outside the well-known "movie lore" of Hollywood. But the optimist in me also sees an opportunity for education. Sure, there are information gaps. That should give Canadian film critics a sense of purpose then, to inform our countrymen of exciting new foreign films – even when they're from our own backyard.

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