The Means Of Distribution

It's March already and I haven't watched nearly as many films as I'd hoped to.  Still, this isn't about quantity it's about quality.  The plan remains not to see how many films I can watch in a year but to chart exactly what I'm watching.  l want to know just how much mainstream Hollywood garbage I'm polluting my brain with and how much exposure I'm getting to the cinematic storytelling of other cultures.

January's list certainly wasn't as diverse as I'd hoped, so let's see if February has been any different.

Body of Lies
The Artist
Machete
In The Loop
Infernal Affairs
Frostbite
The Silent House (original)
Coriolanus
If A Tree Falls: The Story Of The Earth Liberation Front
Battle In Seattle
Moon
Outbreak
The Fugitive

So once again, nothing to really set the heather on fire.  However, inspired by last month's rudimentary pie and bar charts, I thought it might be interesting to start recording where I watch each film.  Afterall, surely the type of movies one watches will be governed to an extent by where and how it's possible to watch them.

I live in a small town which at one time supported several cinemas and now supports none.  My nearest screen is a 40 mile round trip away and so I've increasingly come to depend on streaming films from Lovefilm or renting their titles on disc.

I only went to the cinema once in January (to the excellent DCA) and twice in February (to the DCA and to the equally excellent New Picture House Cinema in St. Andrews).  Everything else was enjoyed from the comfort of my sofa.

Lovefilm have a broad selection on offer but a quick glance at their site reveals that the service is heavily dominated by English language titles from the last decade.

We often talk about 'the film industry' without thinking too much about what this means.  Is it not unfortunate that one of our newest and most exciting artforms has, in such a short time, been reduced to yet another 'industry' with all the connotations of mass production and dull repetitive labour for the financial benefit of a capitalist class?

Another word that many of us struggle with is 'free'.  Often applied before the word 'market' to suggest an economic system which permits paticipation by many different producers with many different products, the reality is, in this context, 'free' denotes the freedom of the strongest to annihilate the weakest.

So we see vast supermarket chains destroying town centres, industrial agriculture putting small local farmers out of business, and the film industry intellectually and culturally crippling cinema audiences.

The solution to this problem lies not within the industry itself but with experienced filmmakers and ordinary citizens (increasingly one and the same) working in their own communities, outside the conventional boundaries of the established film industry.

Film-makers working outside the mainstream are waking up to the fact that if distribution is ignored then it doesn't matter how good their films are, audiences simply won't get to see them.  With a system designed to exclude even the mildest dissent, independent producers face a mammoth task.

It may be argued that technology is the savior of the dissident but for nearly a year Western mainstream media imposed a blackout on Syrian citizen journalists.  The result has been a brutal crackdown in the country which has gone largely unquestioned by broadcasters such as the BBC and Sky News until now.

I recently watched an excellent program on Al Jazeera about Hollywood's links with the Pentagon.  The level of control enjoyed by the US Government over many films is astonishing but even more shocking is the willingness of producers to compromise their work in exchange for a few free jets.

The program reminded me just how creatively bankrupt Hollywood is and how flawed the arguements are to emulate it.  It's a massive battle but victory will come not only when the means of film production are in different hands, but the means of distribution too.