Import or Confront?
By Lorena Cancela

When I was a student, during a lesson regarding form and content, I asked myself: Why, if our times know that the conception of art is not eternal, or better yet, that it is subjected to the context, does it cause so much irritation at the university when somebody supports the notion that there are forms that, really, do not have any content, or that the content is its own form?

Or why — if most teachers celebrate Godard's inserts or interruptions in a film as the introduction of the first person, as the presence of a voice calling for attention — can't they accept that someone uses the first person in writing as a way of saying "Hey, here I am"?

In classes no one will tell you directly: "You are not allowed to use the first person in writing," but it is something in the air, something that plays a role on an implicit level. For example, after I published my first book (Mirada de Mosca), I wanted it to be read by a well-known professor and researcher who teaches cinema at the University of Buenos Aires. As someone who is proud of having two degrees in Arts from that institution,[1] I was excited to discuss the book with the students. I wanted to start a debate about the way to approach the films that are labeled as New Argentine Cinema. Unfortunately, he told me that he couldn't read the book because of the use of the first person in it. Therefore, there weren't any arguments.

Once an old friend of mine at Otrocampo suggested to me: "Maybe your second book should be much more academic." And when she said academic, I understood that she was referring to the "I." Still, my second book (Los adulterios de la escucha, recently published by La Crujía) is far from any academic style. It is about films and filmmakers from different parts of the globe and from far outside Hollywood's parameters. There are critical texts and interviews. For me, no less important than the content is how it is made: mixing readings and concepts, going to several cities, asking questions, writing about and talking to directors, being fascinated and challenged by movies, investing three years....

I often have the feeling that we Argentineans tend to import theories and concepts rather than confront them. And over many years in the different places where film culture speaks Argentinean, I have many times run into an incongruity that shows up in the distance between the theories and concepts that we handle and the actual possibilities of putting those theories and concepts into practice. Many times we relate to the non-Argentinean theoreticians translated in Spanish (Aumont, Bordwell, Gaudreault, Jost, Burch) in a negative way, establishing with their works the same relationship that we establish with Hollywood movies: we identify ourselves with them, we get annoyed, we applaud them, we hate them, but we do not question them, we do not re-think them or work with them in the here and now. In the best case — and this is what I like about the character of Madame Satá — we appropriate them. In the worst, we quote them, as Tarantino does with the Asian movies.

For example, nowadays I teach at Palermo University in Buenos Aires, but in all the different universities where I have been — and it seems that there is some sort of University universal — David Bordwell, the famous cinema professor from Wisconsin, is one of the most admired and respected persons. Of course I am not saying he shouldn't be — the chance I once had to interview him was really enriching for my professional life — but I ask myself how productive it is that we repeat like tape recorders about the "limits of the institution," to mention one topic, when we are not sure at all about how this concept can work in Argentina. The institutional limit for Bordwell works as an implicit censorship for the construction of different types of meaning in a movie. Now, what concept of meaning do we work with when "the institutional" in the written production on cinema does not have a clear form or a clear space? Maybe for the English speaking world, it is far more easy to identify this: there are magazines like Film Comment, Cineaste, Framework, Film Quarterly, etc., each one specialized in an area. But what do we Argentineans mean, exactly, by "institutional limits" when we talk about them? Throughout the years (and when it comes to institutions, diachrony is a value) only one printed magazine about cinema in Argentina has been published steadily (El Amante), and even in that case the production, has been, shall we say, eclectic.

I also wonder when we talk here about "movie critics" as an undifferentiated mass that apparently has a unique function. Who exactly are "the critics"? Journalists who are published in the newspaper? On Web sites? Those who attend film festivals? People who write in university publications? Who are grouped under an organization? Who write books?

While on one hand we repeat and repeat the word "context" (and this seems to be turning into another dogma), on the other we do not know exactly what "context" means here and now, because we rarely reflect about film theory, film analysis or the concepts we use. I've heard a lot of people protecting themselves behind statements like "We do not have the economic or other kind of support to do that." Yet filmmakers didn't wait for funding to make their movies ten years ago. Many film directors thought about their expressive needs on the basis of the materials that they could count on. Thus, what is called New Argentine Cinema appeared.

I remember some years ago, in Buenos Aires, there was a debate going on (in hooligan-esque terms, I dare to say) about the New Argentine Cinema. Some said that it could not be called by that name because there had already been another "new cinema." I do not mean to say that we shouldn't take the history of cinema into consideration in understanding a particular film, but the historical question should be different: Why, 30 years after that "new cinema," does another movement appear carrying the same name? This would lead us to the analysis of amnesia, which, for sure, would be much more fruitful than debating the validity of a term in established use.

There are few occasions on which we Argentinean film critics are asked to discuss our own practice or what we have said or written about this or that. In general, the main topic is New Argentine Cinema (but now if it is dead or alive). Sometimes we tend to ignore what our colleagues are doing, or we pretend that we don't care: "everybody knows what the colleagues are doing, but nobody talks about it."

Is it everywhere like this? Are we condemned to be vampires in the shadows of the cinema?

I know what I value in theoretical/critical writing. I like all the same things that I celebrate in the works produced by new technologies, those things that make them fresh and free, that question the place of the author, and that generate, through a new form, a new meaning.

For a long time the idea was present that the true critic was the one who could build meanings according to narratology, taking into consideration the enunciation of a film. I think this theory would be acceptable for interpreting certain pieces that relate to classical parameters, within which we can read them as a totality.

	Ten Skies

But what happens with contemporary works that question the concept of enunciation itself such as Wong Kar-wai's movies, in which narrative is built by editing, or films that mix different textures and points of view like Caché (2005; Michael Haneke) or Worldly Desires (2005; Apichatpong Weerasethakul)? Or pieces that build themselves from an eccentric place? For example, if documentary is a genre in which someone watches others, what should we say about Oxhide (2003; Liu Jia Yin), a movie in which the filmmaker is also part of what is being observed? Or about Black Sun (2005; Gary Tarn), in which a filmmaker puts in images the story of Hugues de Montalembert after he became blind? Or films that support the idea that there is no unity, but plurality, like Dogme 95 films, of which Lars von Trier's The Idiots (1998) is the best example? Or works like James Benning's Ten Skies (2004), that lead us to analyze the responses of the audience and ourselves more than the piece itself?

I do not know. I just know that I am starting to wonder about these things. In the end, the main thing is to think about the relationship that we establish with different theories and concepts. In order to, as Godard said, illuminate cinema.

(Thanks to Tatiana Depetris for help with English.)

Lorena Cancela
© FIPRESCI 2006

top