Is Cinema Dead? (Part One)

Among other thoughts boiling around in my nutshell of a brain, I have been considering the health of the film world as we now find it. In the hundred odd years of its existence, that health - and the nature of that world - have changed many times.

On the bright side, those of us who are film lovers and filmmakers must admit that at this moment we are blessed. We have the entire library of cinema at our fingertips- on dvds, online, in libraries and at art house retrospectives. Nothing is too obscure; everything can be accessed. As filmmakers, the prohibitions of costs have nearly disappeared. Digital cameras and sound recorders, portable lighting equipment, laptop editing systems and post production graphics are all available and an aspiring filmmaker can make a credible feature for a tenth of what it would cost twenty years ago - maybe even ten years ago.

And yet, yoked with these blessings are curses, not loud but deep. The dilemma of distribution – of getting one’s work seen by large groups of people – and of recouping productions costs, let alone going into profit – is ever present. This dilemma is twofold: first, as is generally acknowledged, the “system” for acquiring and distributing independent film is broken. Second, the amounts of upfront cash for distribution deals have plummeted (like all media, film has not been immune from the massive devaluation of intellectual content).

The “indie system” worked for 40 odd years, at least as far back as the “modern classic” era of the French Nouvelle Vague, the Italian Neo-Realists and then into the American indie era of the 70s and onwards. The system, as we learned it in film school was: first make a deal for theatrical domestic distribution. With this as a seal of approval, sell off foreign territories piece by piece, make other deals for television and video. This happy plan was never easy – most films were straight to video and thus never got decent foreign sales – but it worked for many projects. This system was based on several assumptions – that there was an endless appetite for new films; that foreign markets were especially interested in American films and culture; and that upfront payments on contracts were hefty enough to cover productions expenses.

Nowadays, filmmakers are faced with slim pickings. Distributors are looking for narrower and narrower ranges of content, and cash offers for internet distribution - even theatrical distribution - are often miniscule. Worse, the very blessings of contemporary filmmaking – the removal of the twin barriers of costs and equipment access – have created another curse – an endless supply of new product, most of which is dreadful. A filmmaker with a good product is faced with trying to get attention amidst a tsunami of new releases. While the Long Tail theory of endless but low level demand for a film product holds out the hope for recoupment over a long time frame, it does not really answer the question of how the filmmaker can survive without profit over that long time frame.

But these woes pale in the face of the biggest, most dire threat to filmmaking today: the ugly truth that the public appreciation for and interest in movies has receded and continues to recede. Movies just don’t much matter to popular culture anymore. Film is just one more trivial diversion amidst the onslaught of trivial diversions – celebrity misbehavior – ghastly crimes – political scandals – and the latest supermarket romantic intrigue. Filmmakers themselves get attention largely because of their behavior not their work, which makes the headlines for a week at most then drop from view.

This is a far cry from the days when a film by Fellini or Godard or Coppola or Spike Lee or Woody Allen was released – and changed the culture, changed the way we see our world, or each other. The latter three carry on but their newer films drop from sight as quickly as films from lesser known- and less skilled – peers. When real film fans talk about movies, they tend to reach back across the decades; when was the last new film that really rocked your world?

The problems with film are not systemic or financial merely. The problems may be far deeper. Modern reality itself has become cinematic and the central place film has held for so long not so much been eclipsed as it has simply disintegrated into the culture at large.

Is cinema dead?

(to be continued....)