welcome to Issue 28 of our journal!

Cremaster 3

A number of articles here approach the outer limits of cinema: cinema outside the space of the movie theatre; cinema where the focus is no longer on the screen (Anthony McCall's Line Describing a Cone [1973]); cinema without film strip, projector, sound or image (Valie Export's Tapp und Tast Kino [1968]). As Export has stated in a lecture on “expanded cinema” (reprinted here) the radical goal she shared with her fellow avant-gardists of the late 1960s and early '70s was no less than the abolition of boundaries between art and life – escaping the prison of representation by including the audience within the cinematic space. Though the utopian ideals of these artists may now seem impossibly remote, we still have much to learn from their explorations of hybrid forms and technologies, which prefigure more recent challenges to the “purity” of cinema.

It isn't only the increasing acceptance of video as a kind of “virtual” film, in theatres and elsewhere, that creates difficulties for us when we come to ask nowadays what is cinema and what is not. Discussing films and videos made by a range of young, gallery-based artists over the last five years, Chris Dercon remarks in his article “Gleaning the Future from the Gallery Floor” that these are works which seek to “consume the whole of cinema…they do not distinguish between high art and low art, nor are they concerned with cinephilia”. This formulation helps account for the resistance displayed by some critics towards the work of, for example, Matthew Barney, whose Cremaster cycle (of which I've seen only one part) has been accused of simulating or gesturing towards an idea of cinematic spectacle, without paying much heed to the specifically cinematic techniques such as editing and framing which such spectacles have used in the past to create meaning.

Yet objections of this kind arguably fail to take into account the double nature of cinephilia itself. On the one hand, traditional cinephilia marshals a discriminating gaze which claims to see more than is apparent to the “ordinary” viewer, possessing a wisdom that expresses itself in systematic analysis and canonical lists that attempt to sort the wheat from the chaff. Yet there is also a kind of cinephilia which is wholly indiscriminate and unsystematic in its demand for particular, fetishised scenes and moments, for the grain of projected celluloid, or for moving images in general. Grounding itself in personal experience and subjective whim rather than expert knowledge and would-be objective judgment, it's this latter cinephilia (which may manifest itself as a love of “trash” or simply a type of childhood nostalgia) that's by far the more widespread and “normal”. Hence it's no surprise that many young artists who draw on cinema take up an attitude to the medium which is less craft-based than fundamentally uncritical – as if movies were understood as belonging more to life than to art.

Can the two standpoints be reconciled? Jim Knox implicitly addresses this problem in his discussion of Jack Stevenson's collection of essays Land of a Thousand Balconies, one of the highlights of this issue's extended book review section. Knox praises Stevenson's attention to such forms of “para-cinema” as Scopitone clips and the creative gimmickry of schlock maestro William Castle, an “expanded cinema” pioneer in his own right. Yet he also resists Stevenson's celebration of trash at the expense of art, maintaining that “the artistic traditions contemporary with cinema, from Modernism onwards, reach their apotheosis in precisely the kind of 'anti-art' that Stevenson valorises”. Another way of saying this might be that both avant-garde “anti-art” and the self-conscious cult of “trash” aim at undermining the artist's status as all-powerful creator, freeing audiences to reject conventional standards of judgment and seek out their own unknown pleasures. Yet it's hard to say whether getting rid of preconceptions about what qualifies as “cinema” or “art” should be considered an end in itself, or a first step towards the task of rebuilding a shared aesthetic from the ground up. At the least, though, it's a way of reminding ourselves that watching a movie is not simply a matter of contemplating life from a distance, but an experience as immediate and real as any other; and we have no way of knowing beforehand what criteria we should use to “judge” this experience, or how we ourselves may be affected and changed.

Special thanks for this edition go to James Leahy, Holly Aylett and Sylvia Lawson.

Jake Wilson
Co-Editor, Senses of Cinema

go to Contents, Issue 28

our mission

Senses of Cinema is an online film journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema. It has been set up to address a lack of cinephilic writing in local discourse, that is, writing sprung from the desire to think and write seriously, knowledgeably and passionately about film.

Senses of Cinema is unique in its eclecticism: it encourages articles of all styles (casual, personal, academic, critical, impressionistic and poetic - or a combination of these), analytical approaches (thematic, psychoanalytic, etc) and subject matter. The only criteria that we prescribe are that all articles are demonstrably passionate, serious, intelligent and insightful reflections and/or analyses on the topic of cinema.

Senses of Cinema promotes various divergent "voices" that speak to a wide and diverse audience. It aims to bring together a mix of writers:  established and emerging, theorists and un-published cinephiles, filmmakers and film programmers, and local and international writers.

We are particularly committed to discussing art, independent, experimental and third world cinemas (everything from Renoir to Antonioni to Solàs to Oshima to Morrissey to Jost to Friedrich to Snow, feature films as well as short films), theorising new encounters with digital technologies, and promoting writing that increases one's understanding and appreciation of cinema.

We recognise that an object as ephemeral and ethereal as cinema continues to fascinate, to provoke, to inspire, to turn on, to evolve. And it is in relation to this object that we seek to facilitate and encourage expression and appreciation.

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Want to contribute to this journal?
Click on the words above to read our guidelines for writers.

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about us

Manager - Daniel Yencken, 25, has studied Cinema Studies and Social Theory at the University of Melbourne. He is a broadcaster on SBS Radio and a co-curator of the Melbourne Filmoteca. A cinephile and lusophile, Daniel can occasionally be heard on the radio talking about cinema in Portuguese. Some of his favourite cinematic figures are Jean-Luc Godard, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Jean Vigo and Hayao Miyazaki.

You can email Daniel.

Co-Editor - Fiona A. Villella, 29, studied cinema studies at the University of Melbourne, travelled overseas for a year, dabbled in film production, and has written on film for publications like Metro, Real Time, IF, Cinema Scope, Screening the Past, and Muse. She is also co-curator of the Melbourne Filmoteca and a board member of the Melbourne Cinémathèque. Her favourite directors are Jean-Luc Godard, Nicholas Ray, John Cassavetes, Martin Scorsese, Roberto Rossellini, Claire Denis, Robert Bresson and Spike Lee. Her interests are American independent cinema, experimental film, globalisation and world peace.

You can email Fiona.

Co-Editor - Jake Wilson, 25, is a Melbourne writer. As well as contributing to Senses Of Cinema he regularly reviews new releases for the Urban Cinefile site, and studies film at La Trobe University, where in 2000 he was an editor of the student newspaper, Rabelais. In the past he has also been involved in Super-8 filmmaking and student radio. His favorite director is Orson Welles.

You can email Jake.

Great Directors Editor - Michelle Carey, 27, has studied Psychology, French and Screen Studies in Adelaide. She is a member of the Melbourne Cinémathèque Committee and is enchanted by cinema. She has a particular interest in experimental, independent, contemporary Asian and modernist European cinema.

You can email Michelle.

Web Designer / Top Tens Compiler - Cerise Howard, 32, studied film at La Trobe University and was a coordinator of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival from 2000 - 2002. A musician, a writer (at work on her first novel), and a Jill of all arts, her favourite directors include Argento, Buñuel, Tsukamoto, Keaton, Jackson, Raimi, Svankmajer, Borowczyk, Kurosawa, Polanski and Tarkovsky. And Kubrick, Bergman, Hitchcock, Scorsese, Gilliam, Bava, Almodóvar etc.

You can email Cerise.

Great Directors Web Designer / Links Compiler - Albert Fung, 23, has an honours degree in Cinema Studies. His interests in cinema are varied, but has particular interest in Asian film, documentary, non-narrative explorative forms and DIY "trash" cinema. If you have a suggestion for the links page, contact Albert.

You can email Albert.

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Senses of Cinema (ISSN 1443-4059) is published approximately bi-monthly by Senses of Cinema Inc.

Copyright 1999-2003 Senses of Cinema Inc and the contributors.

As under the Copyright Act 1968 (Australia), no part of this journal may be reproduced by any process without the written permission of the editors except for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review. These works may be read online, downloaded and copied for the above purposes but must not be copied for any other individuals or organisations. The work itself must not be published in either print or electronic form, be edited or otherwise altered or used as a teaching resource without the express permission of the author.

All views expressed in this journal are those of the authors and not the editors (unless indicated).

Senses of Cinema Inc
Cinema Studies Program
The School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology
The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia.

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Senses of Cinema acknowledges the financial assistance of the Australian Film Commission

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Senses of Cinema acknowledges the financial assistance of Film Victoria

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Senses of Cinema acknowledges the technical and administrative support of University of Melbourne, Cinema Studies Program

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Senses of Cinema acknowledges Bill Mousoulis as the Founding Editor.

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Senses of Cinema is indexed in the MLA (Modern Language Association of America) International Bibliography and is listed in the MLA Directory of Periodicals.

All Australian content in Senses of Cinema is indexed in APAIS (Australian Public Affairs Information Service) of the National Library of Australia.

All reviews of individual films published in Senses of Cinema are indexed in the Movie Review Query Engine.

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