A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

My investment in the idea of critical cinema comes from being a teacher. Indeed, "critical cinema" is not meant as a descriptive term that distinguishes some intrinsic dimension of the particular films it is used in connection with; it's a pragmatic term meant to suggest a way of using a broad spectrum of independent films that, in general, remain one of film history's most underutilized educational resources. I cannot imagine teaching effectively without exposing students to an intertextual discourse of the broadest possible variety of film experiences, including those "avant-garde" or ''experimental" films that provide the most extensive and deepest shocks to viewers whose definition of cinema is primarily a product of commercial entertainments in the theater and on television. Of course, another practical value of including a range of independent film in film courses at all levels of formal film study (and in the many other sectors of academe that can profit from them) is the maintenance of forms of film production that remain financially marginal: the more often independent films are rentedfor whatever reasonthe more vital independent film production is likely to be.

My decision to become involved in an ongoing interview project developed from my recognition that those who are interested in using independent film as a critique of mainstream cinema and television are likely to appreciate the historical and ideological context extensive interviews with filmmakers can provide. Because "critical films" are unconventional, they almost inevitably create problems for audiences, even audiences that consider themselves open to new film experiences. And while comments by filmmakers about the particular films they make can never be the final wordas Hollis Frampton says in Volume 1, "It's obvious that there are things that spectators can know about a work, any work, that the person who made it can ever know" (p. 57)their attitudes about what they've made and their revelations of the personal, social, and theoretical contexts out of which particular works developed can be of considerable interest and use to the viewer trying to come to terms with difficult films. Further, discussions with filmmakers usually reveal the degree to which the critical edge of particular films is the result of conscious decisions by filmmakers interested in cinematically confronting the conventional and to what degree it is a projection by programmers or teachers interested in mining the intertextual potential of the films. And finally, in-depth interviews with filmmakers over several years help to develop a sense of the ongoing history of independent filmmaking and the people and institutions that sustain it.

Volume 2 of

A Critical Cinema

extends the general approach initiated in Volume 1. All the filmmakers interviewed for this volume could be categorized in terms of how fully or how minimally they invoke the conventional cinema and the system of expectations it has created, or to be

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more precisesince nearly all the filmmakers I interview make various types of filmseach film discussed in this volume could be ranged along an axis that extends from films that invoke many conventionsfilms like James Benning's

11 × 14

(1976), Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen's

Riddles of the Sphinx

(1977), Lizzie Borden's

Working Girls

(1986), and Su Friedrich's

Damned If You Don't

(1987)only to undercut the expectations they've created, to films that seem to have almost no connection with the conventional cinema, but nevertheless explore a dimension of the film experience that underlies both conventional and alternative film practice: Anthony McCall's

Line Describing a Cone

(1973), which focuses on the cone of light between projector and wall, is a good example.

My method as an interviewer has also remained the same. I have sought out filmmakers whose work challenges the conventional cinema, whose films pose problems for viewers. Whenever it has seemed both necessary and possible, I have explored all the films of a filmmaker in detail and have discussed them, one by one, in as much depth as has seemed useful. In a few recent instances, however, my interest in interviewing a filmmaker has been spurted by the accomplishments of a single film. I interviewed Anne Severson (now Alice Anne Parker) about

Near the Big Chakra

(1972) and Laura Mulvey about

Riddles of the Sphinx