Who Cares About Canons? Ian Christie Bologna 2013

Transcription

1 Who Cares About Canons? Ian Christie Bologna

2 Two years ago, we showed an extract from Mark Cousins 16 hour Story of Film series. And the next day, we asked: How many filmmakers can you remember from Mark s film?

3 Andrzej Wajda Roman Polanski Milos Forman Vera Chytilová Andrei Tarkovsky Alexander Sokurov Ritwik Ghatak Mani Kaul Glauber Rocha Mikhail Kalatozov

4 Why are these filmmakers important - memorable? THEY BELONG TO A CANON Def: A widely agreed list of great filmmakers, which also shapes the programming of a festival like Cinema Ritrovato (for and against )

5 But Boris Barnet is not (yet) canonic perhaps never will be, although Bologna including him in the programme might have to build his case for admission to the canon. Like Preobrezhenskaya this year? Filmmakers like Howard Hawks, John Ford, Friedrich Murnau (Nosferatu) are widely accepted as great anything by them will be of some interest to people who know about film. They re canonic (but what about Alan Dwan?

6 Canons have long been recognised in literature, but they exist in every art music, drama, painting and they have a powerful influence on what gets preserved, sold, displayed, valued. Below: Alfred Barr s modern art torpedo diagram Museum of Modern Art, 1930s

7 The idea of a canon originally comes from deciding what should be included in the Christian Bible

8 The first published film canon was probably Paul Rotha s list of 114 important films in The Film Till Now (1930) In 1952, Sight and Sound asked critics around the world to list their Ten Best films

9 Ten years later, in 1962, Sight and Sound repeated its poll. The pre-war classics were joined by new films like L avventura (1960)

10 And Citizen Kane began its rise to official best film which it has kept until the 2002 poll with Hitchcock also moving up the scale

11 Other key classics that appear regularly in the lists since 1962: Murnau s Sunrise Stroheim s Greed Renoir s La règle du jeu Fellini s 8 ½

12 The 2002 Sight & Sound Top Ten 1 Citizen Kane (Welles) 2 Vertigo (Hitchcock) 3 La règle du jeu (Renoir) 4 The Godfather I and II (Coppola) 5 Tokyo Story (Ozu) : A Space Odyssey (Kubrick) 7 Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)/Sunrise (Murnau) 9 8 ½ (Fellini) 10 Singin in the Rain (Donen)

13 Does any of this matter? Boy s stuff? Train-spotting? Showing off?

14 It matters because it shows what s valued, respected what gets preserved, published on DVD, shown in cinematheques, taught in schools and colleges IT S THE CANON (Even in the avant-garde, there s a canon, headed by Leger, Bunuel, Maya Deren)

15 But there are many polls, eg The Guardian readers poll of greatest foreign films in 2007: 1. Cinema Paradiso (Tornatore) 2. Amélie (Jeunet) 3. Seven Samurai (Kurosawa) 4. City of God (Meirelles) 5. The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo) 6. A bout de souffle (Godard) 7. Jean de Florette/Manon des Sources (Berri) 8. Bicycle Thieves (De Sica) 9. Pan s Labyrinth (del Toro 10.In the Mood for Love (Kar Wai)

16 And we can make our own canons/ten Best lists to show what we value, find out what our audiences value and extend what they know about Top Tens as tools for discovery? L: Lye s Rainbow Dance; Seventh Seal; documentarist Humphrey Jennings

17 Last year, in August, Sight and Sound published the latest canon update... Would Citizen Kane still be on top? Or would this be Hitchcock s breakthrough year? With Vertigo?

18 2012!

19 Peter von Bagh

20 Ian Christie

21 So what would be in your canon?

22 Our Bologna Top Ten for 2013 Tokyo Story [3] Metropolis [2] Passion of Joan of Arc [2] Citizen Kane [2] La Dolce Vita [2] The Godfather [2] Andrei Rublev [2] The Shawshank Redemption [2] GoodFellas [2] Blue Velvet [2] Pulp Fiction [2] Dogville [2] Separation [2]

23 And your 2013 young people s Top Ten: The Kid [4] Les Quatre-cent coups/400 blows [4] North by Northwest [[3] Freaks [2] Citizen Kane [2] Rear Window [2]] Wizard of Oz [2][2] Bicycle Thieves Singin n the Rain [2] Rebel Without a Cause [2] ET [2] Cawboy [2]

24 And the canon we chose at the 2007: Europa Cinemas Workshop The Ten Most Important European Films for Young Audiences 1. Les 400 Coups (Truffaut, 1959) 8 votes 2. Todo sobre mi madre (Almodovar, 1999) 5 votes 3. Metropolis (Lang, 1926) 4 votes each Ladri di Biciclette (De Sica, 1948) Kes (Loach, 1969) 6. Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 1926) 3 votes each, ranked by list place M (Lang, 1931) Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922) 8½ (Fellini, 1963) Kirikou et la sorcière (Ocelot, 1998) And the next two: La Haine (Kassovitz, 1995) also 3 votes each L Esquive [Games of Love and Chance] (Kechiche, 2003)

25 What should be in a European Top Ten for young people? Classics? Exciting new films? Films from small countries as well as big ones? Films that show the diversity of life in Europe? Ideally, all of these?

26 Further reading on canons: Ian Christie, The Rules of the Game, Sight and Sound, Sept 2002; Canon Fodder, Sight and Sound, Dec 1992 Jonathan Rosenbaum Movie Wars, Wallflower Press, 2002; also various essays on his website Ginette Vincendeau, The Exception and the Rule, Sight & Sound, Nov 1992 Peter Wollen, Why do some films survive and others disappear?, Sight and Sound, May 1993 Janet Staiger, The Politics of Film Canons, Cinema Journal 24.3, Spring 1985 Also books by Robert Alter, Harold Bloom, Leslie Fiedler, Robert Von Hallberg, Lawrence Levine, Frank Kermode, Jan Gorak et al.