Cinema of the Abstract 2020 Assessment

This piece is dated to when it was penned on purpose, as we cannot hide from the great and terrible effect COVID-19 has had on society globally. This has affected us all differently, to which I am among those who still has to go to work, but there has been a drastic change existentially which is fully starting to influence how I perceived the world around myself. I still have to walk on streets in a small town where stores I was complacent about entering have now gained an aura now they are no longer open, or that the community and world around me in general is one I will to attach myself to with a greater emphasis than ever before. I am beginning in my reappreciation of the simplest of aspects of my day-to-day life that have grinded to a hault during this period.

In cinema, the pandemic has had a pronounced effect. As cinemas have had to close, we have leaned more on the reliability of streaming services and the internet more. Unfortunately the problems I have always had with them are still there, that to be able to see everything you have to amount a monthly bill that is expensive, that not everything is available globally, and that there is probably not as much online as there might be if you are still comfortable buying physical media, making these sites' use as an archive with some cases as practical as a chocolate fireguard. There have however been good things from this. MUBI in particular, and like minded sites, even if they have temporary licenses are beacons of hope. Creators and owners of motion picture work have made their work for free online even if it only temporary, to which this is a fascinating world between HBO to Trent Harris among many who have let a mad variety of curiosities available without cost. And, for every group like the Cannes Film Festival who have decided to delay themselves until everything is normal, a very egalitarian attitude has been taken by the likes of the South By Southwest festival or the BFI Flare festival to make their premieres available online through streaming services, with the potential of wider audiences for premiers that might have not done beforehand¹.

This is as important for me as, whilst I have enough to cover until next year, this scenario also brings up the fact that, whilst productions that were finished or can still be completed will be premiering over the year, if the pandemic and social lockdowns last in countries for the year, new work will eventually dry out. Unless homemade work produced in self isolation becomes popular, or at least very elaborate and spectacle Twitter creations come in existence, there will be a drought, potentially forcing people to have to watch older films unless the time is spent merely watching what Netflix and Disney Plus has. This is interesting for me, whose blog here is devoted rarely to new work, and whilst I do not have the time many others have in their mandatory confinement, the world has stopped in England and the time I have spare has started to take its effect in positive ways for all the paranoia and dread.

Namely, that many simple things have grown in meaning for me and, as someone on the autistic spectrum, the moment this finally resolves I wish to be in contact with people fully than before. Also, it means I have to re-listen, rewatch and reread the materials I own after all these years, which is for the better; the longer this lasts there is the potential for my appreciation of them to actually be a true form of it. This is of note as the idea of Cinema of the Abstract has changed; this has transformed into a natural time to come forth with this as the additional free hours can be used for this change and improve upon the blog. First, in mind to the only methodology I have on this site being a charmingly cringe worthy post early on, I intent to post up a proper and simple methodology of what "abstract" means for me and what makes something more than that. If this can be defined in one sentence, it is thus: a tribute to the moving image that stands outside the idea of a mass produced product or even the work viewed as the best by film critics. This blog is one written by someone who is always suspicious, even if a character flaw at times, of anything which gets universal acclaim and popularity, especially for how it leaves a narrow canon in existence. This is the blog that desires to see the wider and sometimes strange world of figures who lead to these various works, even those that are terrible for me and indefensible.   

There will be some slow changes over this month or so. The output has been numerous every month, but has also been unwieldy and erratic for my sometimes overbearing perfectionism. Once the pace has been improved however, the plan is to just fine tune this blog. Rather than exasperate the simple ideas in mine, it will be kept to these precise points. The abstract film reviews will be the same, as is the "Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs". I intend to bring back "A Night of a Thousand Horrors", which was a subtitle for any horror films and shows, stopped when I was just covering horror over actual abstract films; this time I also intend to track down the most obscure work, even if it is the bottom of the barrel, as part of the growing ideal of the whole blog I will get to later.

The most important aspect is that there will be more emphasis on a canon, to which it will be updated much more often, and that there will be more emphasis on the people behind and in front of the camera. Eventually a greater emphasis on an actual canon in terms of the men and women behind these films, TV series and ephemera will be built upon. This includes expending the attitude beyond cinema to its origins in the "moving image". When this is talked about in most mainstream critical publication it is only for "the Golden Age of Television", a limited usually English language period of television usually heavily promoted which is very narrow minded. Neither is this "vulgar auteuism", which I was a witness to its development on the MUBI forums (when they were still called The Auteurs website) in the late 2000s, which was admirable in its attempt to look critically at pop culture but limited itself to American action cinema. The attitude for this blog instead is to look to the many fascinating productions being made on new mediums, like YouTube, but also the work that is forgotten or ignored, even in disreputable areas. The point is not for artistic masterpieces, unless they are found, but cinema and moving images as an extension of the human society in its cultures, facets and curiosities.

Probably the most important moments to this change in attitude for myself was a) the review of the instructional video Surviving Edged Weapons (1988) but in a very serious non-ironic way, b) the review of the French porn film Liberté sexuelle (2012) by former adult actress and director Ovidie, and the trio of films covered from American practical effects creator and director Joe Castro. (HERE, HERE and HERE). These three examples would rarely be covered even in podcasts and amateur reviews about cult cinema (barring the few exceptions to be admired). This attitude is not an attack on a canon, but the reality that cinema is a vast form in itself before you even step outside of it, where even the likes of Sight & Sound magazine and professional critics can have a predictable opinion on the medium when they cover the most advertised art cinema. Considering that even an admired auteur like Raul Ruiz, who has been covered on this blog, has most of his work still unavailable is already a problematic issue with how we treat cinema and moving pictures, before you consider a lack of equality. Instead this site wishes to be where the disreputable mediums like pornography are considered, where ephemeral filmmaking is not ignored, and fascinating work can be found in homemade web videos and outsider gonzo videotapes from the past are looked are with interest. Even the unintentionally compelling work should be treated with seriousness, not with irony, but from a perspective of asking where it is from.

Art is communication, which is what I have come to consider it as, a form that creates artificial dreams but also can tell one about their creator, which presents themes and ideas but is far more interest not for politics but the world in reality and imagined form being interpreted. It allows one to enter other's minds in how they express their perspectives of the world, and even if it is less than well made or morally problematic, it can usually be far more fascinating than a merely well made and manufactured production. Originally this blog was for "abstract" cinema, but that has grown into a fascination for outsiders, artists, reprobates, figures clutching at pennies in their time periods, and my fellow viewer who found a camera to shoot something themselves. Like a combination of a dreamt exposition and amateur anthropology of the silver and digital screen, I am more concerned for what is spoken and what is between the lines. Not of hiding spoilers or chasing trends, the notion that all around me is worth studying in what the language means and where the figures in them came from.

Particularly now, as the pandemic has left me with an absence of the world before I had looked at in complacence, I have grown both a fonder appreciation for what is temporarily lost and also a desire to grow in connection to the wide world around me. One such thing is the idea many of us, when cinemas open again, will go to any film just for the pleasure of the experience of communal screenings. I will likely do this too yet, truthfully, even back when they were open the choice was inherently limited and felt behind in terms of the fascinating work I have covered both good and bad away from theatrical screens, entirely because geographically I am not in a metropolis where such media was available to me. For every good film I carefully choose, the cinemas themselves could be far more interest as a form of human culture than any of the blockbusters they were actually showing. Exceptions good (The Lighthouse (2019)) and exceptions bad but still stuck with me (Cats (2019)) have been covered over the last month, their existences but also their background history worthy of covering², but if anything this period challenges the stereotypical image in a county like mine in Lincolnshire of cinema, which is usually multiplexes and rare one-offs screenings, more so. Being forced to slow down and improve upon my work like this has increased my passion to champion the outsiders and the ignored more so.

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1) The distributors of Japanese anime have actually, arguably, been ahead of the ball for streaming as they have to rely on online distribution or physical media for the most part to get Western fans to see their licenses. The cost for every site together is still expensive, and the British do not get everything the Americans do, but between new shows premiering new episodes at the same time as in Japan to old classic work, the template the likes of Crunchyroll is something the cinema distributors should look to.

2) Cats will likely be re-reviewed one day, entirely in light to the background of the production being made available and that, to truly figure out how it came to be, looking at things like the T.S. Elliot source material and the original musical itself is worth bearing in mind. That and the phrase "jellicle cats" has been stuck in my mind since January 2020 and refuses to budge.