Jonathan Kahana makes opening comments at the VE18 Business Meeting. (photo: J. Zwarich)

“Visible Evidence 2012 and beyond, organizational and administrative challenges,” was the listed agenda on the VE18 program for the Visible Evidence Business Meeting, held at lunchtime on Friday, August 12^th on the 6^th floor of the Tisch School of the Arts.  “Come with your questions, gripes, suggestions and proposals,” the listing continued.  “No experience necessary; all welcome.” Between 25 and 30 attendees with falafel lunches in tow heeded the call, filling all chairs and some floor space around the conference table in room 652 by 1:00pm when VE18 director Jonathan Kahana opened the meeting.

PROCESS

After brief thank yous and remarks about the process of organizing VE18, Kahana expressed concern about the reinvention of the administrative wheel that must occur with each VE conference. He bemoaned the lack of an objective, freestanding, process by which the conference could establish a minimum level of continuity and a more secure flow of financial support (suggesting, for example, that the new and successful—and quite useful— VE website should be either handed off to the next organizing team, or left in charge of the current designers and authors, to be continued through VE19 and beyond).  He also indicated that for all the success of its 300+ registration, VE18 had close to 10 percent of participants dropout— some who had already paid registration fees and many in the last two or three weeks before the conference. He implied that this was largely due to travel funding issues at home institutions (particularly in the UK and Australia, which together accounted for a disproportionately high number of withdrawals). Kahana closed his opening points by raising the issue of the dearth of graduate student travel funding, a perennial problem. Alisa Lebow, director of VE17 in Istanbul, expressed her complete agreement with the graduate funding issue.

Brian Winston challenged Kahana’s call for increased organization of the process of conference administration. He stated, ”I have a sort of emotional response to this, ” and joked that such a move would be an imposition of  “neoliberal stuff” by  “you youngsters.” Winston suggested that the ad hoc nature of these business meetings has worked well thus far and implied that the current informal consensus process was more democratic and more in the spirit of the original Visible Evidence idea. He expressed concern about “the loss of autonomy that comes with a more permanent structure.”

Kahana suggested that even small funding continuities can have an effect, and asked if Josh Malitsky would speak at some point during the meeting about the website and about the funding of design work at VE18.

Attendees chatted over falafel plates before the meeting began. (photo: J. Zwarich)

On the topic of funding continuities, Michael Renov suggested that perhaps certain institutions could pledge continued monies for organizational and “community” labor, like website maintenance. Lebow expressed concern that this arrangement might produce a sense of ownership over the conference by whomever supplies the funding, and Catherine Summerhayes worried that the arrangement couldn’t be sustained over many years.

Winston interjected, suggesting that the issue of how to run the conference and how to run the website were two distinct issues. Kahana disagreed, stating that he felt they are “one in the same.”  Winston repeated that the issue of actually running the conference is different, stating “we’ve been here before. If there are enough folks in the room to want to undertake running the conference, then we’ve got it taken care of.” Kahana responded, on the issue of the democratic spirit of such proceedings: “but what is the process?”  Summerhayes commented that the idea of the business lunch as a way of organizing seemed to work fine thus far.  Kahana replied that the current process feels a bit too insular, implying that it seems to exclude folks who aren’t within the core group of past conference organizers as well as others who can’t make the meeting.  Winston stated that he disagreed. Lebow interjected that although she was not against making it more organized, she does think it has worked well thus far and she doesn’t want a committee making decisions.  This comment spurred further back and forth, some of it heated (the terms “Stalinist” and “Commissariat” were tossed around, though clearly not without affectionate sarcasm) between those at the meeting who spoke out in support of a degree of increased organization and those who felt changes to the current informal process weren’t necessary.

Summerhayes intervened to suggest that the topic of discussion move on to future conference sites and proposed that VE19 be held in Canberra Australia over three days (instead of the usual 4): Dec 19-21, 2012.

CONFERENCE LOCATIONS FOR 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015

Renov responded by broaching the topic of spacing between winter and summer.

The question of the merits/drawbacks of a one day reduction in the duration of the conference was raised.

Tom Waugh made a pitch for New Delhi in December 2014 on behalf of a broadly-international group, including Shohini Ghosh (India; present), Neepa Majumdar (USA; present) Anuja Jain (USA; present); and several others from the UK and elsewhere.

A lively debate then ensued, largely over the idea of spacing the conference at 6 month intervals, during which Patrik Sjöberg suggested that Stockholm be the site of a future VE.

Kahana interjected, expressing frustration with the random manner in which nominations were being presented, to which Winston responded by defending the current debate, implying that its format displayed a satisfactory level of organization and encouraged the free exchange of ideas.

Anu Koivunen, Kahana and one or two others then continued the Stockholm thread by proposing that the cuisine and fresh ideas for the conference will make a trip north worth the trouble, even if it was scheduled for winter (over the half-serious objections of some that Stockholm in December was not going to win many fans.) Sjöberg clarified that they are proposing Stockholm as the conference site for August 2013, not for the winter.

There was a call for any other institutions having their eye on 2013 to speak up.

Barbara Evans and Brenda Longfellow of York University suggested that they, along with the University of Toronto (represented by Kass Banning) and possibly Ryerson University (represented at VE18 by a number of scholars—none present at the meeting) would like to host the conference in Toronto in 2013. And then noted that 2014 or 2015 would be of interest too. Longfellow added, joking, that “Toronto might be a compromise because Toronto is like New York, if New York was run by the Swedes.” There was talk of York being associated with the HotDocs conference/festival in May.

Waugh then steered the discussion back to the idea of Delhi being the site of VE in August 2014, joking good-naturedly about its warmer latitude. He turned the floor over to Ghosh, who teaches at the proposed host institution, Jamia Millia Islamia University.

Ghosh suggested that they were thinking of hosting a medium sized conference, capped at 150. She mentioned that her university was set up as a counter of sorts to the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune/Mumbai, and suggested that Delhi itself can be thought of as a kind of documentary capital in India, playing host to many documentary distributors as well as an annual 10 day documentary festival held in the city’s Habitat Center. She noted that the venues afforded by her university and the Habitat Center with its Film Club would probably add up to adequate space for hosting VE, but noted that the funding still needed to be worked out. Waugh added that a group of VE attendees has formed a committee to address this. Lebow commented that the administrative and logistical issues that are limiting the conference to 150 are similar to those encountered in her work organizing VE in Istanbul and offered to talk to Ghosh about some strategies for handling such challenges. Kahana asked Summerhayes (who concurred that a smaller conference might be better suited to the means of the Canberra committee) and Ghosh whether they had considered the implications of such a reduction in the size of the conference, after seeing it grow to more than 300 participants in 2011. Both, and a number of others, agreed that some thought would have to be given to this issue.

A discussion of the issue of lack of funding for VE hosting at less-well-endowed universities then ensued.  Renov suggested that it might be possible to get institutional support on a voluntary basis, based on the ability to pay. Summerhayes wondered if there could be some kind of sponsorship arrangement, a “badging request” that would partner international organizations. Winston suggested that a modest request for such “badging” funds, as well as funds for the website, could be handled by an announcement on the listserv.

Brian Winston, Catherine Summerhayes and Jonathan Kahana continued the dialogue after the meeting adjourned. (photo: J. Zwarich)

LISTSERV

At mention of the listserv, Josh Malitsky was asked to give an update on his activities with its maintenance. He joked, “I’m running the listserv, does anyone have any complaints?”

Kahana responded, apparently also joking, that many people have complaints because they are not on the listserv. “And of course,” he noted, “those people are not here.” He expressed some concern over the consistency of the listerv over time and the manner that folks join it, suggesting that many who are new to the conference this year didn’t know the listserv existed while others assumed that conference registration already included them on the listserv.  He implied that the separation between conference registration and listserv registration also created confusion at the administrative levels about how to contact potential and actual participants in the conference, and he proposed that each conference registration list should be automatically subscribed to the listserv every year.  There was general consensus on this latter point. Some discussion then ensued about the confusion over the way the conference website was initially implemented this year, blame landing on beta kinks in the newly organized submissions system.

THE NEAR FUTURE  FOR VE

Waugh then interrupted to ask for some consensus in the room on VE moving to Canberra in the Winter, Stockholm in 2013, then Delhi and then Toronto in 2015.

It was suggested that in 6 months individuals at those locales should pass progress reports along. Kahana asked how and to whom such reports would be required and shared. He circulated a sheet on which meeting attendees could list their email address.

Renov suggested that the listerv could perhaps receive these and other reports.

Jennifer Zwarich urged conference organizers to think seriously about the community-building and informational potential of the website, the VE blog and other social media outlets that are a gradually replacing, in the working habits of younger scholars, the wonderfully democratic but soon-to-be-outdated listserv functionality. These other platforms might be very useful, now and down the road.

Malitsky responded by noting that his team is continuing work on moving the listserv into the next century by creating a searchable archive/forum/wiki, so the VE community can look forward to that useful resource as well.

On that note, with time overrun, the meeting concluded.

—Jennifer Zwarich

Catherine Summerhayes gives remarks during panel 11C, "Tracking Lives: Longitudinal Documentary and Autobiography." (photo: P. Sen)

Between sessions, in the 6th floor hallway. (photo: J. Zwarich)

Jonathan Kahana delivers thank-yous on the Housing Works staircase at the opening reception. (photo: J. Zwarich)

Sitting in on panel 6B. (photo: J. Zwarich)

VE18 poster welcomes attendees to NYU's Michelson Theater. (photo: J. Zwarich)

Allyson Field, Martin Berger and Michelle Kelly take questions from the audience after panel 8E, "Publics and Counterpublics." (photo: J. Zwarich)

Julia Lesage concludes her presentation as Kristen Fallica takes notes at panel 6C: "Feminist Documentaries Now and Then." (photo: J. Zwarich)

Ben Stork chats with a colleague after the close of panel 7C, "Documentary/Value." (photo: J. Zwarich)

Attendees listen under the lights at a Friday panel. (photo: J. Zwarich)

Michael Renov chats with colleagues at the Columbia reception. (photo: P. Sen)

Heather Blackmore prepares her notes before panel 10A, "Acoustemologies: Sound as Traumatic Evidence." (photo: J. Zwarich)

A crowd gathers at Anthology Film Archives to see Leandro Katz's presentation during plenary session 1. (photo: J. Zwarich)

Taking notes. (photo: P. Sen)

Florian Thalhofer and Deane Williams chat before Thursday lunch is served. (photo: J. Zwarich)

Sherry Millner and Ernie Larsen answer questions from the cinematheque audience after presenting their program of shorts "Against the Grain." (photo: J. Zwarich)

Carlos Kase continues the discussion during the Q & A session of workshop 12E, "Documentary's Haunted Spaces." (photo: J. Zwarich)

Josh Glick delivers remarks during panel 10D "Comparative Perspectives on State Power and Documentary Film." (photo: J. Zwarich)

In the lobby of NYU's Tisch building. (photo: P. Sen)

Charles Musser talks with colleagues in the Michelson theater. (photo: P. Sen)

Mariana Johnson and Sarah Keller enjoy Chuck Kleinhans' contribution to the post-panel discussion of "Documenting the Documentary: Archival Remnants." (photo: J. Zwarich)

Matthew Boese and Sasha Waters Freyer have a look at the offerings of the media table between panels. (photo: J. Zwarich)

Alisa Lebow and B. Ruby Rich discuss the future of documentary studies during workshop 1A. (photo: P. Sen)

Kass Banning presented her work Saturday on panel 7B, "Queer Politics, Camp Tactics." (photo: P. Sen)

In the dark during a cinematheque screening. (photo: J. Zwarich)

Panel chair Cynthia Chris opened Thursday's session "Sounds American: Community, Country and Conspiracy in Music, Noise and Voice." (photo: P. Sen)

Michael Renov delivers a comment from the audience. (photo: J. Zwarich)

Attendees retrieved nametags and programs at the registration table Friday morning. (photo: J. Zwarich)

Brian Winston and Gail Vanstone decide where to go next. (photo: J. Zwarich)

The plenary session 2 audience watches a clip from Portable Channel 's video archive. (photo: J. Zwarich)

Leo Goldsmith talked with colleagues at the opening reception. (photo: J. Zwarich)

Still from Toby and the Tall Corn

Shortly before the amazing Chinese food treat at the closing reception, Visible
Evidencers had been filling up the Anthology theatre for a screening of
difficult or otherwise impossible to see non-fiction masterpieces from
Anthology’s collection, selected by Anthology programmers Jed Rapfogel and
Andrew Lampert. What an incredible honor it was to be there in the presence of
two such important figures in the documentary scene, Albert Maysles and Jonas
Mekas. Preceding the screening of Ricky Leacock’s hilarious reportage on a
travelling tent theatre in the Middle West, Toby and the Tall Corn (USA,
1953), Albert Maysles talked about Leacock’s way of documenting with endless
humanness. “The one image which comes to mind about Ricky,” he remembered, “is
his gentle way of holding the camera, so you knew there’s a great deal of
empathy towards what he saw. Ricky had a look in his eyes which was completely
trustworthy. He could have done so many more films if he had the money.”

Not realizing what he’s getting himself into, Albert made sure the audience
remembered that this documentary movement of the 1960s really began in France and
not in the U.S. One screening later, Jonas Mekas went on stage, and made it clear
to everyone: “cinema verite did not begin in France, but here in the U.S. The
French adapted Direct Cinema and admitted that it came in spite of what was
happening in NYC.” Tell ‘em like it is. Mekas then screened his Film Magazine
of the Arts (USA, 1963), a commissioned work he was asked to do for a monthly
publication about art in NYC.

Next on the list was Robert Breer’s “Homage to Jean Tinguely’s ‘Homage to New York’” (USA,1960), an animated experiment made by another film artist who just recently passed away. As a finale, Jerry Jofen’s Rituals and Demonstrations (USA, 1977) was screened, a observation of American Jewish life which intrigued and puzzled many afterwards.

—Ohad Landesman

John Mowitt displays posters from Dziga Vertov's Enthusiasm as part of the workshop "Documentary and Political Modernism." (photo: P. Sen)

Saturday’s session 8A “Documentary and Political Modernism: Histories, Geographies, Theories” was the first in a two-day diptych devoted to the relationship of documentary and the discourse of political modernism. As co-leaders of the workshop, Joshua Malitsky and Masha Salazkina introduced the purview of Saturday’s discussions and those to come in its companion panel, 11A “Case Studies in Global Documentary and Political Modernism” on Sunday. Phil Rosen and John Mowitt joined them in leading the highly engaging and stimulating workshop before a packed audience in the Michelson Theater. One could hardly think of a more fitting venue, given the site’s namesake.

Malitsky began by orienting the conversation to the stakes of the debates pursued in film theoretical writings from the 1970s and 1980s around the theme and tendency described as political modernism, a phrase used by Fredric Jameson in the seminal Verso collection Aesthetics and Politics (1977), taken up by Sylvia Harvey in film studies in her May ’68 and Film Culture (1978) and articles for Screen, and subsequently placed under scrutiny by David Rodowick in his The Crisis of Political Modernism: Criticism and Ideology in Contemporary Film Theory (1988). The workshop emerged out of overlapping interests in how the set of problems invoked by the rubric of political modernism—most broadly, issues concerning Marxist formulations of the relationship between avant-garde/radical practice and theory, aesthetic form and political transformation, the reconsideration of the subject in modernism, the relation between and ideological effects of realism and modernism—might be re-approached and reformulated with respect to documentary in light of the complexity and expanse of reconsidered histories and geographies of cinema. Malitsky spoke of revisiting a global network of leftist artistic activities across history in scholarly work now increasingly paying attention to translations, transmissions, and migrations of makers, concepts, and interpretations.

Setting out some further points of departure, Salazkina noted that today’s broader discussion might have just have readily been scheduled to follow the next day’s panel of historical case studies. She suggested that although political modernism comes to us most saliently in film theory via Rodowick’s account of this tendency’s aim to develop a critique of illusionism in classical Hollywood cinema through meticulous textual readings, this workshop sought to expand our thinking beyond this specific object of critique and the limits of textual analysis found in Screen theory and its associated corpus of post-60s English- and French-language scholarship drawing on currents in Marxism and psychoanalytic thought. Her opening remarks set out a few more points for consideration: the privilege accorded to the visual by critics and makers in political modernism; the need for greater attention to the materialist aspects of production, distribution, and exhibition in revisiting the trajectories of political modernism from the 1920s to the 1970s; the need for reconsidering the geographies and geopolitics of knowledge production concerning political modernism by going outside the west, beyond Eurocentric (“for lack of a better word”) studies of its theoretical discourses and artistic practices, so as to reengage with Eastern European, Indian, African, and Soviet contexts; the need to take note of inclusions and exclusions of the canon, whether it be filmmakers, writers, theorists, translators, or other agents and facilitators. Does political modernism still have any robustness or efficacy for historical and theoretical thinking, she asked? Lastly, Salazkina described her current project focusing on the “network of leftist film critics” traced through institutions and discourses from the Soviet Union in the 1920s to Italy in the 1930s-50s and then to Latin America (especially Cuba, and in Argentina and Brazil, in texts on “third cinema”).

Joshua Malitsky’s presentation analyzed two related examples of documentary filmmaking that “can help rewrite and challenge what has defined the ‘relentless negativity’” of political modernism in artistic production and challenge “the opposition of reflexivity and illusionism.” He spoke about Esfir Shub’s compilation filmmaking and Santiago Alvarez’s chronicle documentaries, revisiting the topics of Soviet and Cuban revolutionary cinema through two less dominant models. Both Shub and Alvarez “refus[e] to disavow the role of cultural institutions and aim to rework narratives of historical meaning and social determination” in their work. According to Malitsky, in two different contexts, Shub and Alvarez developed alternative models of historical thought in documentary form and process. Reassessing debates over factography and fact in film carried out in the 1920s by Osip Brik and Shub, among others, Malitsky characterized Shub’s approach to historical compilation as one appealing to accumulative logic and scientific thought, addressing the film viewer in a way that tempered the role of narrative momentum and thereby permitted the pursuit of new connections, arrived at inductively. In Cuba, Alvarez likewise turned to play with film duration in relation to history to transform viewing experience. Malitsky elaborated on how Santiago Alvarez’s film I Am the Son of America, a three-hour-and-fifteen-minute document of Castro’s 1971 visit to Chile, challenged even Cuban citizens in the extensive duration of its “observational sequences, framed by historical montage of collectivist history,” as part of a strategy to get viewers to grasp history and see the potential for making history anew.

John Mowitt’s deftly composed paper, “Sound Evidence for Political Modernism,” marked an important intervention in raising the issue of “the status of sound in discussion of political modernism” “as it bears on the genre of documentary.” A brisk critical genealogy of key writings on political modernism shaped the structure of his remarks, as he abided by a demand for “brevity contrary to whatever my nature might be.” Opening with a passage from David Rodowick’s “The Crisis of Political Modernism” essay, Mowitt noted that there exists a need to think about how sound has been “vouched for in the very emergence of the concept of political modernism.” Citing Sylvia Harvey’s Spring 2008 lecture “May ’68 and Film Culture Revisited,” he noted that although Harvey had initially formulated her notion of political modernism in an essay on the critical recovery of Brecht in 60s and 70s political and avant-garde filmmaking, her revisitation does not engage with Brecht and, most crucially, demonstrates no interest in Brecht on radio. Mowitt pointed out that “political modernism accepts the centrality of montage” in order to grasp “the modernity of cinema,” and that this view should perhaps be critically questioned. He referred to how Adorno, among others, had already suspected montage and its centrality. Via montage, Mowitt continued, cinema and political modernism “succumb to visualism” (citing Don Ihde on visualism). Pursuing the issue of montage, Mowitt next turned to a piece by Annette Michelson, a catalogue essay entitled “The Wings of Hypothesis: On Montage and the Theory of the Interval” from Montage and Modern Life: 1919-1942, ed. Matthew Teitelbaum (MIT Books, 1992), for it usefully gathers much of what Michelson had laid out across earlier essays on Vertov, modernism, and Eisenstein. Mowitt made several points about Michelson’s “Wings of Hypothesis” and its proposal of a “grand floating signifier, the interval” “at the core of classical montage theory” and film theory’s encounter with physics. First, the premise of the interval had included sound, as is evident in Vertov’s writings. Second, montage theory rests on “a musical logic of assemblage.” And third, montage theory stresses visualism. Mowitt quoted from Vladimir Messman’s response to the 1928 Eisenstein/Pudovkin/Aleksandrov “Statement on Sound,” and he argued that there is in this essay by Michelson a “lack of originality” in the “reassertion of visualism in her analysis.” The concept of the interval is “indelibly marked as the difference between two pitches” and the interval should only be referred to in order to grasp an event in relation to the image track. For Mowitt, Michelson emphasizes “the musicological characer of montage” and this aspect of her argument “brushes back against” the text’s appeal to physics and semiosis in an interdisciplinary manner. Mowitt characterized a “further symptom of this dilemma” in Michelson’s essay by mentioning its reference to Eisenstein’s unmade film on Marx’s Capital. As Mowitt reminded everyone, Marx wrote of the speech of the commodity (“if commodities could speak”) yet he only “spoke of the content, not the sound of this voice” of the commodity.  Summarizing, Mowitt stated that political modernism has consistently been formulated in terms that privilege the visual, so that the “dubious politics of avoiding the art of sound has been vouchsafed” and the “terms of political modernism wager on the fecundity of the image.” Furthermore, “even indexicality theorists” have ignored “the difficult question of ‘is sound recording like a language,’ asked by Alan Williams” many years ago.

Mowitt returned to Messman’s position in the Soviet sound debates and asked us to recall Vertov’s “laboratory for hearing” and “white screen experiments” where Vertov labored so that “sound could be welcomed back to life.” Mowitt then displayed images of two advertising posters for Vertov’s Enthusiasm (pictured above) and explained that the designs “score visual surfaces with sonic properties,” properties of sound that may be more useful than montage as such—permeation, radiation, and delocalization. In naming the “urgent task to rework the production of knowledge about cinema, documentary or not” as well as issues of subjectivity and realism, Mowitt concluded by saying that he was repeating Rodowick’s remarks on the crisis of cinema, subject, and text from “The Crisis of Political Modernism, but that he hoped he was repeating it in a “slightly different tone.”

Phil Rosen’s presentation broached the issue of the “modern” and vexed issues of temporality in political modernism and, more broadly, how it has been taken up in discussions of cinema. Drawing on Peter Osborne, Rosen laid out that the modern is a temporal category predicated on possibility, the new, the different, and a marker of historical consciousness. Modernity taken as a periodizing category means modernity’s self-consciousness about its own historicity. Modernism accordingly refers to “the aesthetic consciousness of modernity that would reject what it identifies as its part.” Noting that Marx’s draft introduction to the Grundrisse breaks off at the subject of art and the difficult question of how Greek art still gives us aesthetic pleasure in the present despite its impossibility today, Rosen stated that political modernism could be said to involve the construction of an aesthetic past in a political present. Rosen spoke of Vertov’s Kino-Eye and Three Songs of Lenin on Lenin’s death and raised the matter of how deeply such a film can affect a viewer today, later (“a film that still today could make leftists tear up”). In looking back at this canonical moment in political modernism, Rosen suggested that we might say that “Vertov’s mourning of Lenin’s death is, in a sense, our antiquity.” Is this nostalgia, or is it a model that can in any way be taken up again, Rosen asked. Rosen cited Fredric Jameson’s discussion of Kluge’s Eisenstein film, in which Jameson speaks of a “future that demands the constitution of an antiquity appropriate to it.” Rosen put forward the idea that a desire for antiquity makes us modern and that a reexamination of political modernism must grapple with “the idea of transition” in both an aesthetic and political sense. Next, Rosen elaborated on how reconsidering the Soviet 20s as “our antiquity,” the high tide of the historical avant-gardes and popular revolution, alongside the importance of documentary in that moment is key. This would move away from Rodowick’s concerns in “The Crisis of Political Modernism,” which is “only a critique of 1970s academic discourse,” offering a “limited philosophical” rather than historical discussion, “with very little to do with films and film history” in reducing matters to realism versus modernism. With regard to the familiar opposition between Eisenstein and Vertov, Rosen pointed out that it should be understood as epistemological (a new way of knowing the world through film) and agitational (how should film be formed to address an audience and move it to action). Characterizing the 1920s moment, Rosen noted that documentary can now be seen as situated at the confluence of many issues, as there was no distinction between the avant-garde and documentary production. This meant that the modernism/realism opposition was confused in actuality, so the 1970s discussions of filmmakers and film theorists got something wrong about political modernism. Finally, Rosen called for talking about political modernism in the plural, and he directed the workshop to two other lines of writing and thinking apart from Rodowick on political modernism: first, critical theory from Adorno through Jameson that advances modernism as epistemological resistance to reification; and second, Paul Willemen’s essay “An Avant-Garde for the 90s” in Looks and Frictions (originally titled “An Avant-Garde for the 80s”) that clearly distinguishes between modernism in the arts (exemplified by Clement Greenberg’s views on specificity) and the avant-garde, which embraces impure mixtures, situational and localized action.

……

In the ensuing discussion, a number of interesting questions, comments, and further elaborations were heard:

Alice Lovejoy said that scholars need to think about where we locate theoretical discourse since it can reside in such locations as state institutional documents, and she also asked that shifting notions of and conflicts in Marxism be considered.

John MacKay brought up the complexity of Vertov’s early and late work with respect to modernism and the modern, since its mix of parades, rituals, and hagiography “can seem so un-modern.” He also suggested how entangled questions of temporality become regarding the modern, as innovation always creates or imagines an antiquity, and concepts of revolution and alienation imply not only the new but also the release of latent potentials of the past.

In reply to MacKay’s question about some of the specific ways bringing sound back into the question of political modernism makes a difference, John Mowitt highlighted two dimensions of sound. The practical work of assembling in film is cast in one familiar trope in cinema as visual rhythm, and an account of sound could do another sort of work, remodeling how we think of sequencing and assembling. Mowitt suggested that there “may be something going on in enunciation” that has to do with “respecting the specifity of the encounter of sound and image.” He has recently been looking to the figures of permeation, radiation, and delocalization as touchstones for sound processes and their relation to the problem of subject positioning. Sound may suggest the idea of passing through bodies and structure rather than positioning them, and this would complicate how we think of subject positioning. Mowitt also reiterated his concern with the question of interdisciplinarity—what disciplines do when they interact—and with how the introduction of the interval could complicate interdisciplinarity.

Tom Waugh inquired into the relationship of political modernism in film to the relationship between the Old Left and the New Left.

Phil Rosen directed the group’s attention to the Lukacs/Brecht debates as a starting point for any discussion of the modernism/realism opposition in history.

Rachel Gabara asked about how postcolonial thought and politics bears on this discussion of political modernism. In response, Phil Rosen referred to broader debates on pluralizing modernity and modernisms in the humanities and pointed to the canonical centrality of Hour of the Furnaces. John Mowitt stated that it was important to ask what we mean by the postcolonial, and if it means a critique of Eurocentrism, then re-examining political modernism would involve challenging the ancient/modern distinction and what it represents for thinking about this historical distinction in Europe. Mowitt added that we should also think about how postcolonial cinemas, such as Ousmane Sembene’s work, involved articulations with the Soviet Union, and that such connections make us think about how the Soviet Union relates to empire and imperialism. Masha Salazkina mentioned that she has now been concerned with the details of the institutional and political infrastructures that made up a third-worldist network of exchanges and encounters—for instance, the Tashkent Film Festival in the Soviet Union.

Janet Walker stated that she would be interested to hear further discussion of the politics of place and geography—what about geography? In response, Salazkina said that the case studies being pursued in the current work of panelists today and tomorrow would hopefully encourage revising our views of political modernism by no longer only looking at canonical examples. This extends to written work as well—from the great collection of material, “we have astoundingly little on cinema that’s available in translation to North American scholars.” Salazkina emphasized the need to think about geographic sites and paths relationally. Mowitt, in turn, raised a point about how the visualism of standard geographic thinking implies the locus of the North and the West and an account of what should be paid attention to. For that reason, there’s a need to think about how geopolitical configurations are expressed in the privileging of certain discursive categories and their formation. According to Mowitt, an attention to sound offers a different perspective on how we live space and place, how sound opens up and confuses spaces (“delocalization”), something that geographers don’t pay attention to.

Susan Lord asked that the circulation and mobility be taken into account in the geographies of political modernism—how people move and who gets to move through which pathways thereby placing limits on and shaping certain activities and affiliations. She referred to her current work on the history of the 1968 World Cultural Congress held in Havana, Cuba.

Luca Caminati pressed the question of whether or how we can claim any exceptionality for documentary, and he noted that the role of documentary in state colonial projects and movements should not be left out in thinking about political modernism and documentary. Salazkina acknowledged this issue of the place of documentary and colonial histories. Rosen added that major intersections of documentary, liberalism, and the state are already there to be rexamined with Grierson’s re-alignment of documentary with the state, showing that documentary has to be seen as an arena of conflict and contested claims. The questions referred to by political modernism have instead often pointed to particular ways of aligning art with political transition/transformation or the imagining of such transformation in opposition to the state.

– Paul Fileri

Deirdre Boyle (Photo by P. Sen).

The third plenary session of the conference was dedicated to films that engage with current wars: in Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, to name a few. And it was composed only of filmmakers:  “makers whose work rejects war as exciting spectacle, Hollywood melodrama or commercial entertainment,” and whose films reject these mythologies to show how regular people are caught up in the conflict and how it shatters their lives.

After Deirdre Boyle’s address, the Tishman Auditorium sunk in the dark. A trailer of short clips from various war movies was screened. It set the atmosphere for the whole panel: dedicated to practice more than theory, and emotionally charged since ongoing wars were evoked.

From left, John Greyson, Laura Poitras, James Longley and Deidre Boyle (Photo by P. Sen)

Filmmaker and theorist John Greyson showed recent work : 14,3, with rescued material from the now destroyed Iraqi film archives, and videos related to his pro-Gaza activism and campaign to boycott Israel cultural products. Audience laughed heartily at Greyson’s witty, tongue-in-cheek work.

Director and cinematographer Laura Poitras showed some clips from her recent movies My Country, My Country (2006), which follows an Iraqi doctor and his family, and The Oath, which centers around a former Osama Bin Laden’s bodyguard, in Yemen.

Filmmaker and MacArthur Grant recipient James Longley screened clips from 2 different films: a short film produced for UNICEF and a short scene from Iraq in Fragments (2006), following the young Iraqi Mohammed.  Both showed how life in these countries is different from what is depicted in mainstream media.

There was a warm round of applause for each and silence before the Q and A.  Reminded of ongoing wars by these short clips, the audience clearly marked a break before engaging in discussion.

The filmmakers were asked about techniques, ethics and relations to their subjects. James Longley said that as far as technique was concerned “we pretty much use every tool in the box,” to attain their goals (Laura Poitras warmly agreed). She also described her relationship with her subjects as ever-evolving, in which you need to trust that things will happen, and consequently, they do. Longley added that he could probably not make a film with a character he does not like (first of all because “it would be very boring” for him).

With additional screenings and discussion, the panel extended well over time. Towards the end, Deirdre Boyle surprised panelists by asking them if they had questions for the audience. It turned out they had none, and the last plenary session closed with a round of applause.

—Claire Richard

The wall at Nom Wah Tea Parlor. (photo: P. Sen)

A rainy eve can't dampen the glow. (photo: P. Sen)

Cloudy mind, crowded tea parlor. (photo: P. Sen)

Jennifer Horne and Jonathan Kahana celebrate at the end of the day. (photo: P. Sen)

Ivone Margulies has a laugh with colleagues. (photo: P. Sen)

A crowd gathers early in the evening. (photo: P. Sen)

Chair: Martin Lucas. With Kelly Anderson, Gabriella Bendiner-Viani, Lise Gantheret, Samara Smith

We are living through an unprecedented shift in our conception of space. Chair Martin Lucas compares it to the shift from byzantine conceptions to Renaissance perspective. Urban documentaries have now to deal with expanded spaces, considerably more layered and connected than ever before. This is how they can “contribute to a de-reification, a rethinking of urban place”.

The online archive : excavating memories of the place

Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani is a part of the group Buscada, which works at the intersection of urban studies, design and social sciences. With a collective of activists, teachers, individuals, they created the Triangle Fire Open Archive. The project commemorates the deadliest industrial fire in New York City, that killed 146 women textile workers in 1911. Testimonies, objects, photos are put together in an online, and ever-expanding, archive.

The webdocumentary : the place as the axis

Lise Gantheret presented Holy Mountain, a work by Canadians Hélène de Billy and Gilbert Duclos. This interactive documentary is centered on the Mount Royal, the great mountain sitting in the middle of Montréal, and explores Montrealers’ relation to the sacred. It arranges pictures, videos, sounds and animations in a non-linear fashion, and as such “rethinks the geo-poetry of the place”.

The audio walking tour : inform and engage

Anyplace Brooklyn, by Samara Smith, addresses the economic changes in downtown Brooklyn.  For two years, she explored the area of Fulton Mall, threatened by the big corporation MetroTech, and created an audio walking tour for informing and engaging people about urban development issues.

–Claire Richard