MoC Forthcoming, Wishlist, and Random Speculation

[MichaelB]

If the films aren't being broadcast in the first place, I really don't see how DVR is going to be any help whatsoever.

Almost exactly thirty years ago (16 January 1982, to be exact), BBC2 showed the Czech time-travelling Nazi comedy Tomorrow I'll Wake Up And Scald Myself With Tea at 9.35pm. At that time there were just three television channels, so I imagine it had a pretty decent audience.

Now, there are God knows how many - but I find it almost impossible to imagine a film like that getting shown on any of them at all, never mind a peaktime slot like that. It's too far off the beaten track (Czech cinema has no profile outside the 1960s and a handful of auteurs like Švankmajer and Svěrák), and it doesn't have the right art-movie credentials, being essentially a very funny but often extremely silly comedy (get a load of the opening credits!).

If you already know about it, it's easy enough to get hold of an English-subtitled DVD (if you're not fazed by ordering from the Czech Republic) - but how are you going to stumble across something like this accidentally?

[knives]

The Internet apparently is a good substitute (though I've seen real obscurities on that level before particularly on the ART channel and PBS). Even outside of this forum with more typical Internet hangouts I've bumped into and learned about real obscurities like that one than I would ever have back in the day. That's still an accidental meet up that could happen to anyone not just those actively looking. I know much more about cinema with modern conveniences than I ever would have back in the '80s or whatever. It seems that there's a lot of nostalgic hang ups on how you found out about great cinema (I'm not specifically targeting anyone with that as the you is intended more for the general argument) that you're not taking in the benefits of how people today can and do.

[colinr0380]

Yes, sorry in that last post I meant "miss" as in "remember fondy" and not "miss" as in "cannot record when they are on"!

Wasn't there some sort of change in legislation in the last few years that meant that British TV channels could not show any film that had not already received a BBFC certification for home viewing? I guess that this wouldn't affect whether material classified for that purpose could be shown (i.e. world cinema classics), but would impact on rarities or films with a cinema classification but not a video certificate being able to be screened?

Now, there are God knows how many - but I find it almost impossible to imagine a film like that getting shown on any of them at all, never mind a peaktime slot like that. It's too far off the beaten track (Czech cinema has no profile outside the 1960s and a handful of auteurs like Švankmajer and Svěrák), and it doesn't have the right art-movie credentials, being essentially a very funny but often extremely silly comedy (get a load of the opening credits!).

Although Mark Cousins is at this very moment extolling the virtues of Hungarian and Czech cinema in his Story of Film episode. A shame no films are being shown to tie in with this though - it looks as if the Film4 tie-in film this week is Black God, White Devil.

[TMDaines]

The Internet apparently is a good substitute (though I've seen real obscurities on that level before particularly on the ART channel and PBS). Even outside of this forum with more typical Internet hangouts I've bumped into and learned about real obscurities like that one than I would ever have back in the day. That's still an accidental meet up that could happen to anyone not just those actively looking. I know much more about cinema with modern conveniences than I ever would have back in the '80s or whatever. It seems that there's a lot of nostalgic hang ups on how you found out about great cinema (I'm not specifically targeting anyone with that as the you is intended more for the general argument) that you're not taking in the benefits of how people today can and do.

You're still missing the point. The Internet provides far greater access to a far greater range of material than anything else before but you still have to go looking for it and no web portal still has anything like the reach and impact that the major TV channels did in the day (and still do infact). None. There can be forums dedicated to films, people can tweet about them all day and you have the option of streaming them from a dozen different websites but ultimately its nothing compared to having the films broadcast by one of the biggest TV channels.

[MichaelB]

You're still missing the point. The Internet provides far greater access to a far greater range of material than anything else before but you still have to go looking for it and no web portal still has anything like the reach and impact that the major TV channels did in the day (and still do infact). None. There can be forums dedicated to films, people can tweet about them all day and you have the option of streaming them from a dozen different websites but ultimately its nothing compared to having the films broadcast by one of the biggest TV channels.

Absolutely. The reason I brought up Tomorrow I'll Wake Up And Scald Myself With Tea is that the circumstances of what I believe was its only British screening (it may have had festival exposure, but it was never released commercially) meant that countless thousands of people would have encountered it completely accidentally - they'd channel-hop (not a lengthy process given that there were only three), exclaim "what the fuck is this?" and might well be hooked. (There are several fond reminiscences posted in the comments section under my review!)

Although potential access to films has increased unimaginably since then, and I obviously think that's a thoroughly good thing, it's been paralleled by a marked decline in the willingness of major terrestrial television channels to take similar programming risks. As already mentioned, BBC2 and Channel 4 no longer show anything not in English (or, come to that, in black and white), and while BBC4's track record is better, it strongly favours established arthouse successes - you're not going to chance upon a mainstream German or Hungarian title any more in a way that you could thirty years ago. Even twenty years ago BBC2 celebrated the end of Communism with a Czech New Wave season of both films and context-setting documentaries, which is how I saw many of the major classics for the first time - that's impossible to imagine now.

[knives]

That's unfortunate for you and naturally I don't know anything about the face of British television, but here in America I catch accidentally a whole lot. For instance sometimes when I bored and there's nothing on I'll go to the on demand thing and scroll the free movie section and they'll usually have a few oddities there and I'm sure people who look that stuff up more regularly would be able to expand on the level of oddities that I can't. Even sidestepping modern tech though in favour of how you guys found things one night about a month ago as I was scrolling through the channels I stopped on PBS because to my shock they were showing A woman's Face, the original Swedish version. admittedly that's not to the level of your example, but it still shows that foreign black and white films are still shown on television. The ART channel does even more with my discovering of Diva for instance coming from it (that's actually one of their least obscure things but that's how I discovered the channel so it is memorable to me). That doesn't even get into TCM who while specializing in studio era Hollywood films does come up with several obscurities of all breeds. I think it was no more than a month ago for example when they showed a lot of rare Gabin films not to mention recent showing of Le Schpountz, Pabst's Kameradschaft, and others I've probably missed. The amount of channels available does make bumping into these things less likely of course, but people still channel hop and bumping into any of those events isn't impossible.

[GaryC]

Wasn't there some sort of change in legislation in the last few years that meant that British TV channels could not show any film that had not already received a BBFC certification for home viewing? I guess that this wouldn't affect whether material classified for that purpose could be shown (i.e. world cinema classics), but would impact on rarities or films with a cinema classification but not a video certificate being able to be screened?

That's not legislation but Ofcom policy, which all the commercial channels follow - a film should be shown in the form which has a BBFC homeviewing certificate, where one exists. If it doesn't, then normal taste and decency principles apply. Also, a film which has been rejected by the BBFC must not be shown (as far as I know that includes rejections from the 70s or earlier which still apply as the film has not been resubmitted). That is presumably why Film Four have occasionally submitted films to the BBFC - to unban The Trip and to pass uncut versions of Crimes of Passion, Spetters and Taxi zum Klo.

As far as I'm aware, the BBC doesn't follow this policy and simply follows its own policies on suitability etc. It showed a film without a BBFC certificate only last weekend - the Australian film My Year Without Sex. There's nothing in that film that couldn't be shown on TV, as it carries an Australian M rating, but it hasn't been submitted to the BBFC as it hasn't been picked up for any kind of British commercial release.

I remember that showing of Tomorrow I'll Wake Up and Scald Myself With Tea. The film has an entry in the Nicholls/Clute SF Encyclopedia (online-only third edition launched in beta version this month - here) precisely because of that TV screening.

[colinr0380]

As far as I'm aware, the BBC doesn't follow this policy and simply follows its own policies on suitability etc. It showed a film without a BBFC certificate only last weekend - the Australian film My Year Without Sex. There's nothing in that film that couldn't be shown on TV, as it carries an Australian M rating, but it hasn't been submitted to the BBFC as it hasn't been picked up for any kind of British commercial release.

That's great news and I'm glad that there is no specific policy which prevents the schedulers from doing that - so I suppose it is still all coming down to trying to get schedulers to be a little more adventurous with their choices, which is probably difficult now that we're living in the Age of Austerity (I like to sing the phrase to the tune of Age of Aquarius!) and the channels are getting more conservative in what they will show (It is rather upsetting that there appears to be a prejudice against black and white films being screened as well).

[Jonathan S]

The prejudice against black & white films on UK TV started at least a decade ago of course, but just when you think it might actually be true that they no longer show them on the main channels they surprise you - four on BBC2 this weekend, three on Channel 4 in the afternoons next week. But the real problem is that the conservative choices apply just as much to older films now as modern ones. Three of the BBC2 b&w films are well-known British World War 2 movies (and so is one of C4's). Some weeks it's hard to find a pre-1960 film, even on Film Four, that isn't a war movie or a western - why the obsession with these genres? It has gone on for years. I wonder if there's a 1950s western that hasn't been shown on UK TV over the last few years.

There are certainly plenty older titles on UK TV that don't have DVD releases here, but those that don't nearly always are part of the RKO or Republic library for both of which I believe the BBC own permanent UK TV rights (they seem to license the Republics to C4). So the same titles are endlessly repeated. (The hundreds of more obscure RKOs seem to be ditched in the 1990s, possibly after the BBC film library flood.) We no longer get the 1930s & 40s oddities that were still popping up in the middle of the night up to around 2000. I presume they stopped transmitting actual film prints - as they did in earlier decades, when you could see the physical splices to accommodate ads and films occasionally broke during the broadcast or were shown in the wrong reel order. So a digital requirement placed another obstacle to getting more obscure films on TV. Besides the perceived need for colour, there is now also an increasing preference for widescreen films, and when HD broadcasting takes over I guess that only films considered good enough for that - technically and in terms of ratings - will get an airing.

While it's true that film buffs can now search the internet for rarities in the same way I used to search TV listings (it hardly seems worth the bother now), TV surely still has an important part to play in giving people their first, accidental exposure to older, "foreign" or non-mainstream films. I've met children who've never heard of Laurel & Hardy, because they haven't been shown on TV here for a decade. Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd are even less likely to be known by the youngest generation.

My primary concern for the disappearance of older films is of course the very opposite from the one that started this whole discussion! - yet I think that all lesser-known films, regardless of their age, are actually in danger from more or less the same forces.

[htshell]

I'm catching up on this fascinating conversation in between films at a film festival, which is ironic given this statement....

Stuff like theatrical screenings don't really matter anymore.

And, I think this statement is related...

Of course, part of the problem is that people like me who spent the 80s and 90s going to at least one independent cinema several times a week have cut back their cinemagoing to once a month (if that), and are getting everything via DVD, Blu-ray and downloads. I actually have far better access to an infinitely greater range of titles now than I did a quarter of a century ago, but I'm also very conscious of the fact that my cinephilia was nurtured through media that largely no longer exist - namely, repertory cinemas and much more adventurous programming on mainstream television (especially Channel 4 in its early days).

I'm 26 and spend a lot of my time at repertory theaters and screenings. I don't think the role of the cinema or the repertory programmer is dead at all. I've made specific trips to NYC (which are time-consuming not to mention costly) to see retrospectives of Jerzy Skolimowski and Nick Zedd, NYFF's Views from the Avant-Garde and both new and obscure films that I might not be able to see in my city otherwise. I think the experience of seeing something in a theater, especially when there is a filmmaker or other qualified person in attendance to offer more context and information, is extremely relevant. Not to mention there is that the entire film industry is a delicate balance. If "theatrical screenings don't matter much anymore" and that revenue-source dries up, will distributors be able to restore older films or distribute newer films? Definitely not. We'd see less films than we do now making the rounds.

Like I said, I'm still working my way through this discussion but I'm off to see one film now and another at 10PM... in a theater.

[MichaelB]

I can't speak for NYC, but the London repertory scene is the merest shadow of what it was 20-30 years ago. Not that I have time to go to the cinema much these days (I have to factor in babysitting on top of far higher ticket prices), but even if I did there's demonstrably less to choose from - versus far more to choose from at home.

Obviously, I'd prefer to see everything on the big screen, preferably in pristine 35mm prints, but I'm enough of a realist to know which way the wind's blowing.

[knives]

Have to agree with Michael here. I go to the theater when I can, but not counting the cult stuff that always is playing there's only one theater in the city that regularly shows older films and they tend to be safe choices like Harvey. The options aren't really here anymore.

[zedz]

I think another important factor regarding the comparative wealth of films available for downloading / purchasing on DVD / watching at home nowadays is that it's in large part the shadow of adventurous television programming and repertory (and first run) cinema screenings past. These films are available now because they were able to sustain themselves commercially to a certain extent on release. Without those opportunities for generating revenue and covering costs, the arthouse market will eventually dry up, and no amount of furious torrenting will download you a film that was never made in the first place. And this also applies, to a lesser extent, to films that have already been made, if there's no commercial incentive to restore or transfer them.

[peerpee]

*Exactly* - DING DING DINNNNG!

[MichaelB]

I think another important factor regarding the comparative wealth of films available for downloading / purchasing on DVD / watching at home nowadays is that it's in large part the shadow of adventurous television programming and repertory (and first run) cinema screenings past. These films are available now because they were able to sustain themselves commercially to a certain extent on release. Without those opportunities for generating revenue and covering costs, the arthouse market will eventually dry up, and no amount of furious torrenting will download you a film that was never made in the first place.

Very true - and of course many of the less commercial funding mechanisms have already disappeared. Miklós Jancsó recently described a conversation with someone bewailing the fact that he only made low-budget talkfests these days, instead of great sweeping epics with hundreds of extras and horses. Even if he hadn't just turned ninety (though he's still active!), there's just no way he could make something like The Round-Up or Red Psalm today even if he was a much younger man, because the production mechanisms no longer exist - in Communist Hungary, once the film was approved he could call up any number of extras (often soldiers) without worrying about having to pay for them. Post-1989, this became literally impossible - even if he could justify the presence of each individual on screen (and there's a sequence in Red Psalm with 1,500!), it's most unlikely that his producer would have been able to raise the necessary funds without being forced to make massive compromises along the way.

And this also applies, to a lesser extent, to films that have already been made, if there's no commercial incentive to restore or transfer them.

Indeed. In many cases, minor films are only going to get decent restorations if they can be packaged as part of a larger project - for instance, the BFI's Flipside, Adelphi or documentary surveys. And even the Adelphi project has been scaled back: the films are still being transferred to HD, but Blu-ray releases were abandoned after the first three discs.

[John Edmond]

And this also applies, to a lesser extent, to films that have already been made, if there's no commercial incentive to restore or transfer them.

Yes, a 1000 times yes. It's the worst thing about dealing with free advocates (think Boing Boing, and dispair). Bar some orphan works, copyright & licensing isn't the the real cost it's archiving, restoration and telecine work that's genuinely expensive. People are historically unaware, ignorant of how much is still out there without a decent digital transfer that could be circulated. They don't realise that we're living on the fumes of elder days. Just because internet culture is slightly better at extracting value from these fumes doesn't mean they're not fumes.

[kneelzod]

Having just stumbled upon this long discussion, I'm not sure if this article by Bill Mesce that appeared in SOUND ON SIGHT has been cited here already, but it seems particularly apt with regards to the dearth of older films on television. So, in case anyone here has missed it, I recommend you read, especially those too young to remember the "Movie of the Week" and "Late Show" era firsthand.

[Jonathan S]

That article paints an even bleaker future - at least in America - for older films than even I imagined. He isn't even writing about the off-the-beaten-track movies that concern me. If students haven't heard of the most famous American movies of the 1940s-70s and remain uninterested when they do get to see them, I wonder why they chose a film appreciation course at all. I felt the same in 1979 about a fellow student on my university film course who'd genuinely never heard of Hitchcock - which was even more jaw-dropping then than it would be now.

I hadn't come across the term "clutter" (as applied to TV channel packages) before, but it seems like an appropriate summation of the whole world of entertainment, arts and information today. When "everything" is (seemingly) available on tap somewhere, what incentive is there to access it now? There's always tomorrow. And how does the novice sort the worthwhile from the junk? I was first hooked on world cinema in the autumn of 1974 when BBC2 ran a series called Milestones of Film, kicking off with Clair's Le Million, which as far as I know hasn't received a UK TV screening since then! There were only three UK channels then - no video/DVD of course - and the knowledge that the films in that season were - in my orbit - rare, and that it would be several years at least before I had the chance to see any of them again, was partly what compelled me as a thirteen year-old schoolboy to struggle through my Friday night tiredness and watch them. It was now or (possibly) never - and if I'd chosen the latter I might never have become seriously interested in films at all.

Today I own more movies than I ever imagined I'd even see in my lifetime (I remember as a small boy in the 1960s going to the public library, staring at the shelves and thinking what if all these books were films!) So I'm not really concerned for myself, but I do worry for the future of the "gray ones" (the article's name for b&w films) particularly.

[Drucker]

When "everything" is (seemingly) available on tap somewhere, what incentive is there to access it now? There's always tomorrow.

Does anyone else find themselves buying everything now because you're worried it will be out of print soon and never come back? I'm always stretching my budget thin on this mindset.

[jbaart]

Absolutely, I rarely buy to watch a movie ASAP but rather to build up a nice archive that I can watch my way through during the next few decades (yes, I'm that young). This has been intensified by the advent of HD as I know I do not need to upgrade any further than Blu-ray. I can and probably will, but I don't need to whereas with VHS and DVD you could always spot the format's flaws even without knowing that something better was on the horizon. I have my doubts about some movies ever becoming legally available again in the future once their DVD version go OOP, so yes, I buy due to this indeed.

[MichaelB]

Yes, a 1000 times yes. It's the worst thing about dealing with free advocates (think Boing Boing, and dispair). Bar some orphan works, copyright & licensing isn't the the real cost it's archiving, restoration and telecine work that's genuinely expensive.

Indeed - and most people are blithely unaware of just how expensive this process is. If I remember rightly, the restoration of The Red Shoes cost half a million dollars, and while that's an extreme case, sums in the high five and low six figures are far from unusual.

But when the BFI launched a public appeal to raise a million pounds to restore nine Hitchcock silents, there was an amazing amount of ignorant naïveté posted online - some people genuinely seemed to think that the money could realistically be recouped through DVD and Blu-ray sales! I don't know about you, but I'm not entirely convinced that even beautifully-restored Blu-rays of, say, Champagne, Easy Virtue or The Farmer's Wife are exactly going to go roaring up the charts. Especially not when they'll be competing with lousy but incredibly cheap public-domain editions.

People are historically unaware, ignorant of how much is still out there without a decent digital transfer that could be circulated. They don't realise that we're living on the fumes of elder days. Just because internet culture is slightly better at extracting value from these fumes doesn't mean they're not fumes.

You also get situations whereby entire libraries were telecined to standards acceptable in the 1970s/80s but quite unacceptable now.

[Jonathan S]

When "everything" is (seemingly) available on tap somewhere, what incentive is there to access it now? There's always tomorrow.

Does anyone else find themselves buying everything now because you're worried it will be out of print soon and never come back? I'm always stretching my budget thin on this mindset.

To a certain extent, I feel that way myself and buy pretty much everything I want as soon as I feel the price is right (I've never been the sort of person who has to have something on day one, especially as I've already seen most films I buy). But, compared to the 1970s, when it seemed that there might never be another chance to see some films again in any format, I don't really worry. It's much easier to find secondhand items now, or obtain an off-air copy or something if the official release is no longer available for sale. I guess I'm different to most people on here though in that I don't demand blu-ray quality and have no interest in packaging, except in a protective sense.

[Gregory]

Nick,
Your comments in another thread about the need for more Dumont Blu-rays were emphatic (which is good to hear) so I wonder if there might be a dual-format release of La Vie de Jésus in the works. It'd be especially good to see it happen because a Criterion release of the film never materialized.

[peerpee]

'Fraid it's not sold very well, so it's not on the cards at the moment.

[jbeall]

'Fraid it's not sold very well, so it's not on the cards at the moment.

Jesus. That's a crying shame, because in addition to being a fantastic film, MoC has done such a remarkable job with the dvd release. Ah well, if I could get my school to pay for a PAL dvd I'd ask them to get a copy, but alas.