![]() We have opted for a realism that imbeds its characters in the contemporary U.S. Somewhere between the tedious purity of form and content of LETTER TO JANE and the manipulative melodrama and mindless content of BILLY JACK, there is a space for a cinema emphasizing realistic character and milieu.Īs a function of this commitment to audience, we have chosen traditional dramatic and story forms for our scripts. ![]() We are suspicious of attempts to create “socialism in one movie,” doubt that we will “transcend bourgeois forms,” and even question the value many attach to the attempt. This runs counter to a strong contemporary trend in left filmmaking, Hollywood contemporary trend in left filmmaking, typified by Godard’s recent efforts, that we believe is essentially elitist and esoteric. We won't conceded popular films to Hollywood. We are not interested in making films that speak only to the already converted we want to reach as broad an audience as possible. “Political” films did not have to be the province of a Spartan elite on the one hand, nor did Popular Cinema have to remain dissociated from the U.S. It led us to a conception of feature films that meant a fusion of social content with mass form. This diversity helped provide a basic shape for our evolving aesthetic. ![]() These are some of the diverse forces that pulled us together. Working in an industry that opportunistically attempted to create an image of hipness and concern, while in reality remaining the quintessence of political perversity, created strong pressures for an alternative. On the other hand, those who worked in and around Hollywood during the late 60s, a time of apparent receptivity to counter-cultural film themes, found themselves increasingly frustrated and alienated by that experience. Accompanying an aesthetic impatience with the limits of the form itself, there was also concern about distribution, meaning not simply how many saw the film, but who. Among those who concentrated on political documentaries, such as FINALLY GOT THE NEWS (about insurgent black auto workers in Detroit), TIME OF THE LOCUST (another early antiwar film), and the previously mentioned SONS AND DAUGHTERS, there was a growing disaffection with the documentary form. Nonetheless, the “two poles” view, straddling and mini-poles not withstanding, is a useful way to look at us.Ī common intersect was frustration, political and personal. For instance, the creator of SONS AND DAUGHTERS, an early anti-war documentary, is also a CBS cameraman. These poles, of course, are not nearly as neat in reality as they appear in print. cinema: Hollywood and American Zoetrope (Francis Coppola’s San Francisco production company) on one end, and American Documentary Films and Newsreel on the other. ![]() At the most extreme, our backgrounds include the opposite poles of U.S. As freelancers in documentaries, independent features, network and educational news and public affairs, most of us had been involved in considerable day-to-day filmmaking. We are nine men and women with diverse film backgrounds. The politics of individuals span a range within that perspective, and this is reflected in the three fiction scripts we have written. Politically, our perspective is Left, broadly defined. Instead of tiptoeing around every chuckhole of form, we decided to plunge ahead with a loose narrative of our experience as a group.Ĭine Manifest came together in 1972 around a common goal-to make political, dramatic feature films-and a common conviction that a collective style of work was the best way to reach that goal. There is a tendency to write from behind the safe and faceless anonymity of the collective “we,” like a crippled halfback approaching the line behind Leo Nomellini. Somehow such efforts tend to reach a level of inspiration wedged somewhere between a travel film narration and an IRS audit notice. When asked by JUMP CUT to do an article about ourselves, we were anxious to share the experience of our two-year existence with the rest of the film community and at the same time a little apprehensive about the problems of a group writing about itself. Cine Manifest by Eugene Corr and Peter Gessner JUMP CUTĬopyright Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1974, 2004Ĭine Manifest is a collective of nine professional filmmakers/ workers living and working in San Francisco.
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