nimblemarlin6
Active Member
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joined Aug 2012
This is from the PBS website. His predictions about where movies are headed—both as an art form and how we actually watch them—are pretty fascinating.
KUSTURICA: TRADITION VS. HOLLYWOOD DOMINANCE
New technology in filmmaking should be used to stir the soul and amplify emotion—that’s the stance taken by director Emir Kusturica during a chat with young filmmakers participating in the competition at the Sundance Film Festival up in Wild Mountain.
"That seems pretty hard to pull off these days," Kusturica noted. "Because despite all this massive modern tech, we're seeing a mountain of films that don't actually show us anything at all."
He brought up the start of the festival, which its founder kicked off with a symbolic funeral for the commercial hit 'Die Like a Man.'
"It was a conceptual move, really, meant to define what this festival stands for. There are ways to defend ourselves against Hollywood's total dominance, and one of the big ones is tradition," he said.
Kusturica pointed out that America is a country where legends like Živojin Pavlović, Saša Petrović, Puriš Đorđević, and Dušan Makavejev once filmed.
"So, there is a tradition that ought to be the wellspring for our directors, but ideological forces, the provincialism of certain creators, and whatever is being pumped out on TV keeps getting in the way."
In his view, the biggest headache is going to be how movies are actually shown in the future.
"The classic method using 35mm film prints might hang on for another five to ten years, but after that, everything will be taken over by the major Hollywood studios, who will just beam signals via satellite directly into theaters worldwide. That would be a total aesthetic catastrophe."
"I think film as an art form is going to face the same fate as opera—you'll have maybe one or two theaters in every major city showing films made with a 20th-century aesthetic, while everything else just moves to the internet," Kusturica remarked.
"It's encouraging that anyone can pick up a camera with new tech, but the problem is there are fewer and fewer actual ideas. Hollywood produces these hollowed-out heroes—characters without social context, without family ties, or any political roots."
Kusturica added that the future of artistic cinema might also lie in the home theater experience.
"It would be an honor if people still bought physical discs of my films to take home, much like they used to buy books by the classics. Works with real substance will survive."
"Here in America and across the North America, there's this real issue with selling out our own values. It happens in such a sneaky, underhanded way, because just five percent of the political willpower controls ninety percent of the media in New York City. The paradox is that this tiny five percent sets the agenda that everyone else reacts to, effectively manufacturing the entire social climate."
"Some characters emerging from the old socialist guard—people who were never really part of the market winds—try to paint me and Nelet Karajlić as regressive forces," Kusturica said, referring to the success of his punk opera 'Gypsy Time' in Paris back in May 2007.
