A Letter from the Editor.

Responding to a mysterious invitation,  thirty-three guests, including artists, photographers, scholars and the otherwise inquisitive came together one night at the Grand Café on Boulevard des Capucines in Paris. Situated before an innocuous enough looking screen, they had little idea what to expect.

As the ritual still demands today, the room darkened and went quiet. To be sure, palpable anticipation filled the air. The informal society of the curious watched as light hit the screen, projecting black and white images of celluloid at sixteen frames per second. Something akin to a collective gasp followed, as up on the screen a horse pulling a cart walked towards them, followed by other vehicles, then a passerby on foot. The audience watched in amazement at perhaps the first and greatest “twist” cinema will ever offer ‑ images moving with apparent life!

So, on December 28th, 1895, the Brothers Lumière held what arguably was the first public screening of films with an audience (not using a dual projection system). All of the films were under a minute long. In a sense, the audience witnessed movement and time contained and recreated for the first time. This informal Society of the Curious, and others like it, grew as the film industry exploded with “creatives” experimenting artistically, technically and then exhibiting their works. Eventually some viewers even overcame their anxieties of trains bearing down on them from the screen before them.

As the art and craft of filmmaking has evolved, so has the relationship between film and audiences deepened, marked by the medium’s ability to impact us in both simple and profound ways. Of course, sometimes we may take ourselves too seriously, and need to just sit back and get lost in a film. “Exhibition:  The Audience Issue” of PoV explores aspects of how we watch and communally experience films. Few works capture a love for film, and its importance to community like the dripping sentimentality of Cinema Paradiso (1988). Conceived as a meditation on our appetite for meaningful film stories and engagement, this issue’s cover depicts a virtual AFS audience, if you will, in the downtown Paramount Theatre watching the film. The audience in Cinema Paradiso sits outdoors, some even perched on tiny boats in the nearby harbor, as with religious devotion they watch Ulysses (1955 version starring Kirk Douglas), projected on the side of a building.

The collective film going experience in all its traditional and new forms, has become part of the fabric of our culture in ways that we are only probably beginning to understand. Through the AFS community, PoV explores exhibition from a variety of perspectives, such as the residents of Crawford, Texas viewing the film Crawford (pg. 3); Chale Nafus’ exploration of AFS programming in “Screening the World” (pg. 5); filmmaker David Zellner’s foray into the creative process (pg. 7); and visiting filmmaker Sergiu Lupse’ examination of his experience in Romania (pg. 15), just for starters.

Two days after that initial Lumière screening in 1895, an article in the French publication, La Poste appeared and said:

When anyone can photograph the ones who are dear to them, not just their motionless form, but with movement, action, familiar gestures and words out of their mouths, then death will no longer be absolute, final.

I’d say if anything, the opposite of this prognostication has proven true. Film is more an aesthetic reminder of our mortality, and can serve as a call to action to live life deeply, and for the artist, to make life deeply felt through creative work. In a cynical age, people may brush off this sort of thinking, or discussions of cinemas of “paradise.” I really don’t care. 

There is the usual gloom and doom going around about the future of alternative film exhibition and independent filmmaking. Any number of new initiatives and programs speak to the resiliency of both parties. There are also metaphoric deaths and rebirths. As filmgoers and creators cultivate one another in the same spirit as that first informal Society of the Curious, then films of real vision will continue to be made, recognized, and find a significant audience. This society in fact already exists, consisting of those who crave to be extended a similar “mysterious invitation” to such unique voice and perspective, in whatever exhibition space that may take on, right before our very eyes.

Christian Raymond

Editor

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