Quo Vadis, Aida, (Jasmila Žbanić)
Cinephilia [is quite different]… to DVD collecting. …You can watch 300 movies a year (all in a theater on 35mm, of course) and you will never own anything except, perhaps, an ungainly pile of torn ticket stubs. Cinephilia is instead about collecting experiences, or maybe just the memories of those experiences. [i]
It’s weeks now since the Editor asked me for a contribution to a look back at Cinephilia in 2021. Somehow, I just couldn’t get started. Had anything been worthy of elevation to the realm of Cinephilia? The essay from which my opening quote is taken has helped me – and it’s not necessarily a cheery picture. If Cinephilia is experiences, had there been standout experiences from this second year of Covid?
I’ve certainly seen lots of films during 2021. There have been some wonderful ones. They’ve come from many countries, many eras. There are films that I’d thought I’d never get to see, or to see again. The latter have included some beautiful restorations letting the film look more glorious than it has for ages. There was Quo Vadis Aida and Never Gonna Snow Again from Poland and Upper Case Print from Romania. Georgia gave us What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? Helene came from Finland. And from here at home, The Dry and Higher Ground.
But Covid was starting to stamp these films. Among the workers listed in the end credits of many new films, the role of Covid Co-Ordinator started to appear with more frequency.
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| The Dry (Robert Connolly) |
Despite the great films, it’s hard to look back at this second year of Covid with excitement or enthusiasm. The first Covid year didn’t seem as depressing, although the growing realisation of how our cinematic world was changing was often overwhelming. Festivals were cancelled. Travel was off the agenda. Meeting up over a cup of coffee became almost overwhelmingly exciting or it didn’t happen.
In 2020, streaming was one of the elements that came to our rescue. We saw organisations around the world using it so creatively. We could not go to Bologna and Cinema Ritrovato – but we could stream a lot of it at home and so feel part of it. Moreover, we could participate in more festivals around the world that we’d never been able to visit because of time or distance.
But this innovation didn’t seem as exciting in 2021 as it had the previous year. First time around we were grateful for being able to share some of the experiences of these different Festivals. Second time around, we felt more aware of what we were missing. Not all the Festivals returned online in 2022.
With those that did return, although appreciative of their offerings, we were also aware that often they were the second tier Both Melbourne and Sydney film festivals had good online offerings – but even better offerings had been lined up for the real-life cinema screenings. Some of those films may make their way here and even get cinema showings. But you felt more the loss of what we didn’t get.
Surfeit and exhaustion have been defining elements. The commercial streamers have offered us more wonderful films and series than we could hope to watch in a year. And that’s part of the problem. With so many options, why worry if you miss one title? So what if some of your friends loved it? And when you’re trying to choose what to watch one evening, and you can’t decide – perhaps it’s easier to pick up a book instead.
This has been exacerbated by the entry of new commercial streamers. I’ve got no interest in many of the offerings they’ve made available. But then you realise that one streamer has ONE film or series you’re interested in. So, a new sense of frustration is added. For example, Disney+ has a library that holds very little attraction for me but they did have the fascinating series Dopesick.Thank goodness I had a friend who was able to help me see that. Perhaps a new aspect of cinephilia will be working out access to one title on a streamer that you don’t have.
MUBI has probably been my favourite streamer over the year. But even here my jaded Cinephilia sometimes kicks in. At first it seemed exciting to have a new film every day. But then what looked like an interesting unknown film from Brazil or Mexico turns out to less than engrossing. Interesting, yes, but not really as special as you’d hoped – and you’ve prioritised it over that DVD you’ve been meaning to watch for eighteen months or more. So, a new sense of frustration rather than exhilaration. Now, I find I’m often glad when it’s something I’ve already seen, which shouldn’t be a cinephiliac emotion!
But that sense of hope that an unknown film will turn out to intensely satisfying is a cinehpilian emotion, and MUBI does deliver that from time to time. I had this with a film from Congo, Downstream to Kinshasa (Dieudo Hamadi). This documentary took me where I’ve not been, and introduced me to some wonderful, damaged people. (It’s still on MUBI, in the library, and I recommend it.)
Procession
And there were some other experiences on other streamers that lingered. Robert Greene’s Procession (Netflix) (Click here for my earlier blog post on it ) explored one aspect of the Catholic Church’s relationship with paedophilia. So did Dignity on SBS OnDemand. This drama was built around a German postwar settlement in Chile where allegations of gunrunning for Pinochet and paedophilia emerged. Then Netflix chimed in with A Sinister Cult: Colonia Dignidad.These two “Dignity” series were a fascinating double.
By year’s end we were going back to the cinema. I’ve even got a new cinema complex just down the road, that screens a lot of the films I want to see. It’s got great seats – like flying Business Class, and the screens in each cinema are a decent size. But the experience is still not quite the same. Social distancing in the cinemas isn’t an anxiety - the films I want to see are not usually heavily attended when I want to go. I have even had several exclusive screenings (e.g.Power of the Dog) and others with only three or four others.
Power of the Dog (Jane Campion)
In a postscript to the article I quoted from at the head of this piece, Dibbern writes:
I’ve been going back to the movies for a few months now, but it’s been pretty underwhelming: sitting in eerily empty and quiet theaters surrounded by eerily masked patrons has often felt as if I’ve woken up from a bad dream and found myself in a dystopian hospital ward….. It feels as if the forced time away from movie theaters created a permanent fissure in my memory.
I know what he means. I’m aware that where I would have once headed off to a screening of something or other, I’ll often think twice and three times about it It’s not that it’s often more comfortable and convenient to just switch on something to watch at home. I’m finding that I also have a different feeling to going out.
And yet one of the big things missing has that communal experience. The conversations on the stairs out of the cinema. Or over a coffee. Even just being aware of so many others reacting to the same film you’re watching.
This has been something so sadly missed from visits to out-of-town Festivals – for me, ranging from going up to Sydney for the first Cinema Reborn, or to Bologna for Cinema Ritrovato. Often the important element was not so much any particular film, but the atmosphere. The old friends. The new friends. The conversations. The meals. The atmosphere. That sense of an experience.
Cinephilia has taken a battering in 2021. May it recuperate in 2022.
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