Help with a paper on personal filmmaking

[LightBulbFilm]

Apologies if this in the wrong thread.

I'm writing a paper on the slow demise of personal filmmaking for my English class. It's very last minute as the professor asked me to change my papers subject a few days ago, which was originally a totally different subject.

My question to all of you is if anyone could help me out with two sources which must be books.

Could anyone throw me any quotes from any biographies by filmmakers they have read (with page numbers please) where they discuss the importance of making a film for one's self instead of for a specific demographic... Or any books that deal specifically with the topic of personal filmmaking.

Any help is appreciated.

[King Prendergast]

Here's a quote from Bertolucci about wrestling with the issue of making films purely for oneself:

"Gianni Amico, Glauber Rocha and I called our films “Miuras” or “Young Bulls”. The “Miura” is the Spanish name given in bullfights to the most dangerous, strongest and lithest bulls…. “I've made a 'Miura' film; not a single spectator will enter the theater”, and we'd go on laughing to keep from crying.

I was deliberately trying to create such “Miuras,” and yet I suffered a lot when I thought of these packed movie houses of my childhood. I often wondered what I understood back then by the word “rigor”, and I think I can say that it was principally a refusal to have anything to do with my audience, fearing to be seen or judged, a refusal to seek out an audience coupled with the fear of being ignored by them. It's like when you fall in love and you fear being rejected by the object of your love….Because of political moralism we refused ourselves the pleasure of any sensual contact between the author and his audience. This kind of pleasure struck me as belonging absolutely to right wing filmmakers.

And so, little by little, I began to give up this idea of “rigor”. I wanted to have contact, to embrace my audience."

From:
Fabien Gerard, T. Jefferson Kline and Bruce Sklarew (eds), Bernardo Bertolucci: Interviews, University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, 2000, p. 289-229.

[Person]

Has your prof gave a definition of what "personal filmmaking" is? It's an odd term when you analyse it, even though we all think we know what it entails. My view is that what it really ought to mean is, "autobiographical" or "semi-autobiographical" though that would include allegory or subjects that are deeply connected with the filmmaker's life. Or, it could mean a film of universal significance that was a gruelling labour of love. I thought about Scorsese's Italianamerican today. One of his best films, I feel - and one of the great "interview films" ever made, to boot. I love it for its honesty and good, classically Italian self-affacing humour.

And I have been re-reading Carl Jung's meta-autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections recently and that is an experience that brings home what personal creativity truly means. It means not just giving of yourself, but giving something outside of yourself to the world. And that has become very, very hard to do in this age. Everyone today acts like an individual, but if you know how to think like a Jungian, then you see how thin most individualities are. For a work of art to make a profound impact today would really take something insanely unique and powerful - and Cinema, as it currently is, I am sorry to report, isn't the ultimate medium to deliver the goods.

I, for example, want to make a series of films on: Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Jung. The one one Schopenhauer would not focus on his life, but his philosophy and would be atemporal in its narrative. Nietzsche's would focus on the man himself more. Jung's would consist of complex flitting between physical reality and psychic reality. A tough sell, but I'd drain my being to make such films. I also have the idea of a film on the "Gnostic" Jesus that would probably piss off as many atheists as Christians.

So, the problem is with commerce, not ideas. I am one of millions, I would imagine. Cinema is too entwined in commerce for "personal" labours of love to get made, even when the creative people fight like mad to get things going. But you couldn't write novels of the stories I want to tell - a screen is required. That is the power of Cinema - to show what cannot be spoken or written.

[Mr Sausage]

Lynch on Lynch, being in an interview format, is great for quotes and should suit your topic perfectly. I recall him talking at length about individual vision.

[AWA]

The recent Eric Lax book "Conversations With Woody Allen" is filled with terrific material, essential reading for anyone interested in the film making process. It is filled with many remarks from Woody about the importance of not catering to audience demands / desires and doing things for one's self because he felt so compelled.

[essrog]

Lynch on Lynch, being in an interview format, is great for quotes and should suit your topic perfectly. I recall him talking at length about individual vision.

Altman on Altman is also very good -- he has plenty of stories about butting heads with various people in order to bring his personal vision to the screen.

[dave41n]

Personal Visions: Conversations With Contemporary Film Directors by Mario Falsetto deals with the subject. A description:

In this collection of recent conversations, 18 of this generation's most creative filmmakers discuss their creative visions, their careers and the state of today's film industry.

[MichaelB]

The recent Eric Lax book "Conversations With Woody Allen" is filled with terrific material, essential reading for anyone interested in the film making process. It is filled with many remarks from Woody about the importance of not catering to audience demands / desires and doing things for one's self because he felt so compelled.

...though in his case it helped enormously that he had consistent backing throughout the first 25-odd years of his career from United Artists and then Orion (the latter being essentially the same people after they jumped ship). So he was under considerably less pressure to cater for audience demands than the vast majority of other filmmakers.

It might also be worth examining Warner Bros' relationships with Stanley Kubrick and Clint Eastwood, the Coen Brothers' with Working Title and seeing what factors both led to and sustained them.

(I'm assuming by "personal filmmaking" you're implying a commercial context? Because of course truly personal filmmaking hasn't declined at all - quite the reverse, thanks to plunging costs and easy online distribution).

[ogygia avenue]

Altman on Altman is also very good -- he has plenty of stories about butting heads with various people in order to bring his personal vision to the screen.

The Herzog book in that series is also very good for this topic.

[Alphonso]

Tarkovsky talks at length in Sculpting in Time, I believe the chapter "The Artist's Responsibility", on a similar question. About how people, especially in the west, have this idea that they live in a vacuum and can "freely" create whilst others flock around them-- not understanding that they are not free; that they live in a societal context that forms them. And that any true work of art informs and is informed by this experience, if only subtlety, that it cannot be cutoff from the greater reservoir so to speak. Thus it is impossible to be sealed-off in a sense from other audiences. That is only my interpretation though, and not the whole point of the chapter, it is best to read it in his own articulate wording. And not to be confused, he also talks about not being burdened with any sense of expectation from the audience. In this sense the idea of "personal" filmmaking as a term seems null and void, or at least I don't understand what further implications it is supposed to have.

Interestingly Tarkovksy's ostensibly most personal, Mirror, was refused being shot by his former collaborator Vadim Yusov because he thought the idea was too selfish, or individual on Tarkovsky's part-- but I believe Yusov later commented that it was Tarkovsky's best film. And of course he later got letters in the mail with comments to the semblance of "how did you manage to film my childhood?

[Bananafish]

I think Cassavetes on Cassavetes trumps them all. His filmmaking was personal in every sense of the word and anyone that stood in the way of his personal expression he called a "gangster".

He didn't care one lick for his audience, for critics or for studios. He only cared about telling the truth he saw in himself and the people around him.

[LightBulbFilm]

Thanks everyone for your help. My paper is complete. Thanks again!