University of Virginia Library

Creative Community Lacks Unity, 'Persistence Of Vision'

faculty members who are still
suspicious of any work they
can't underline, appreciative
film-making and film-watching
often requires preparation,
patience and application – the
fundamental qualities of
formal educational process.

Every Chaplin film doesn't
require exegesis and
adjustment, but Franju does;
and last semester's Wilson Hall
audience who treated
Bertolucci's Before the
Revolution as if it were a last
shuffle through Cinema as Art
certainly missed more than
they saw.

All of which is not to
criticize Walter Korte, who has
almost single-handedly pushed,
created and carried the
University's present film
program, running from class to
class and project to project like
a juggler frantically trying to
keep all the pie-plates spinning.
I have attended film classes at
several schools, and Mr. Korte's
capability as a teacher is
among the best.

But even the best has limits,
and the present program is
undermined by what it lacks.
Having film history and
criticism courses without
competent instruction in
film-making is like learning to
read critically without knowing
how to write. Courses in
twentieth-century fiction and
visual arts that neglect
influence from and
transformations into movies
withdraw into a shell of
preference.

The documentary genre,
where my interests lie right
now, contains important work,
not to mention masterpieces,
by such as Fred Wiseman, John
Marshall, Chris Marker, Jim
McBride, Ricky Leacock, Ed
Pincus, the Maysles brothers
and Charlottes Zwerin, Jean
Rouch, and Allan King, but
"An American Family," at best
a period piece that consolidates
five years of documentary
work, gets all the attention.
Most students at the
University, excluding those
who have been stimulated by
Mr. Korte's courses, tend to
think of contemporary cinema
as being Godard and Fellini,
which, to my mind, often
means confusing pyrotechnics
and self-indulgence with insight
and sensitivity.

Deficiencies

Without any good galleries
or a museum, a student in
Charlottesville can either study
diminished reproductions or
visit the celebrities in
Washington. Without any good
bookstores, a student generally
chooses his reading through his
courses. Since the listening
rooms in Cabell Hall make
listening assignments literally a
physical test, and good
concerts are either packed to
capacity in Old Cabell or lost
on the courts at University
Hall, serious music students are
in a difficult position. And the
performances that the Virginia
Players give even when good,
are usually too infrequent to
be studied or too timid to be
exciting.

Apparently, though, films
are being shown every night
around the University, and
although the listings, and even
the class showings, still place a
heavy emphasis on commercial
cinema, all but ignoring
documentaries, experimental,
independent and lesser-known
foreign films, the sheer
quantity and turnout is
encouraging.

If Virginia offered
opportunities for film-making,
for individual screenings
through a film library, for
lectures by important
film-makers and critics, for
film festivals and
retrospectives, for
undergraduate classes in film
criticism for the regular
session, for coordinated
programs with the other
departments and for open and
deliberate interaction with
Charlottesville agencies, groups
and schools, a creative
community would be the least
of the benefits.

Movies may not be
accessible to most people right
now the way books or records
are accessible –i.e., one cannot
own them, live with them, and
grow with them. But they are
accessible in their intended
form (studio hack-jobs to the
contrary) unlike, say,
paintings. And new,
revolutionary developments in
super-8 sync sound equipment,
and the related medium of
video, mean that creation and
ownership of moving images
may soon be within everyone's
grasp. Elitist film-making is the
anachronistic conceit of
professionals.

Encouragement

In Boston, teenagers are
learning to shoot super-8 and
video in some schools, and one
heaven-sent TV station
(WGBH) is encouraging access
to the medium by granting
time, and in some cases
equipment, for community
groups. Auteurists
notwithstanding, film-making
and video draw people together
into a creative coalition. Unlike
photography, which is basically
a solitary art, film-making, like
editing, can synthesize diverse
elements.

Academic Shuffle

The refrain to this sort of
lyric is usually accompanied by
a sidestep known as the
academic shuffle: "when in
doubt, mumble money." Some
of the new equipment is not
that expensive, however, and
whatever profits exist from
some of the film showing could
support the activity. And
universities often live from the
fact that money manages to
turn up in the unlikeliest
pockets.

If Virginia is to grow as fast
as the educational needs of
succeeding generations of
students, increased film
offerings are inevitable. The
unity of such a program may
well depend on whether it is
characterized by the sort of
intermittent planning that too
often precedes such efforts, or
whether it is guided by, if you
will, a persistence of vision.