FILM
- AS A -
SUBVERSIVE ART

THE FILMMAKER AS SUBVERSIVE:  ONE
THE POLITICAL
Claude Lelouch, Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut,
Louis Malle (standing), Roman Polanski, demanding the
closure of the Cannes Film Festival during the 1968 events.

THE ETERNAL SUBVERSION

In the last analysis, every work of art, to the extent that it
is original and breaks with the past instead of repeating it,
is subversive.  By using new form and content, it opposes the
old, if only by implication, serves as an eternally dynamic force
for change, and is in a permanent state of "becoming".  It is
therefore the triumph, the irony and the inevitable fate of
the subversive creator, as he succeeds, immediately to super-
sede himself; for at the moment of victory, he is already dated.

Art can never take the place of social action, and its effectiveness
may indeed be seriously impaired by restrictions imposed by
the power structure, but its task remains forever the same:
to change consciousness.  When this occurs, it is so momentous
an achievement, even with a single human being, that it
provides both justification and explanation of subversive art.

The subversive artist performs as a social being.  For if it is true
that developments in philosophy, politics, physics, and cosmology
have affected the evolution of modern art, and if the subversion
of the contemporary filmmaker is thus fed by art itself, it is also
directly related to society as a whole.  Here the artist finds himself
at odds with its unplanned and cancerous growth in the service
of the profit motive and its heedless disregard of human values.
Wherever he turns, he sees exploitation and magnificent wealth,
heart-rending poverty and colossal waste, the destruction of
races and entire countries in the name of democracy or a new
order, the denial of personal liberties on a global scale, the
corruption of power and privilege, and the growing international
trend toward totalitarianism.  He sees control of all communication
by the few and the rise of new media (television and cable TV)
that hold the technological potential of more repression.  He sees
the blighted cities, the polluted rivers and oceans, the unbridled
exploitation of natural resources, the succession of economic
crises, inflation, depressions, and ever more destructive wars,
and the rise -- as permanent and monstrous institutions --
of war economies and their intolerable burden upon society
as a whole.  He witnesses the phenomenon of manipulated
democracy and an electorate whose voting power is increasingly
denuded of meaning, since real control rests elsewhere.

All this explains why so many of the most serious international
filmmakers find themselves in varying degrees of revolt or
opposition to their respective establishments -- and also find
an affinity to the emerging third world cinema and the new pro-
democratic forces in the East.  It is here that the Czechoslavak
film renaissance of the Dubcek era assumes its profound inter-
national significance and acquires the historical weight that the
Russians, despite their destruction of this movement, have not
been able to eliminate.  There have not yet been any oppositional
films from Russia  or China; perhaps they exist, though control over
the means of film production makes this unlikely. One can only surmise
that at some date Sinyavskys and Solzhenitsyns of cinema will arise
in these countries, to join filmmakers all over the world, whose task,
by definition, constitution, and by virtue of the  repressive societies
within which they operate, must forever remain subversive.

Forever?  Forever.  For it is clear that even a post-revolutionary society,
based on the ideas the subversives hold dear, will carry within itself
new potentials of corruption, new bureaucracies, and new institutions
which, at first progressive, will degenerate into ossified structures to be
overcome in turn.  It was Marx who, when asked in an interview to
characterize the meaning of life in a single word, unhesitatingly replied:
 "Struggle".  Was it a slip of the tongue that prevented him from limiting this
definition to life "under capitalism", thus giving it the historical dimension
he gave to every other phenomenon?  Or was it not rather his realization,
so often expressed in his philosophical writings, that the essence
of  life, under all circumstances and in all societies, was eternal
change, the constant transformation of all forms and systems?

It is in this sense that the subject of this book will always
remain on the agenda, and that these pages are but a rough draft;
for the subject of this book is human freedom, and its guardians,
at all time and under all conditions, are the subversives.

THE FILMMAKER AS SUBVERSIVE:  TWO
THE ANTI-CLERICAL
Bunuel during the shooting of The Milky Way --
and the cross he has to bear.  He fights it,
but he cannot be separated from it.

THE FILMMAKER AS SUBVERSIVE:  THREE
THE SEX-REFORMING COSMOLOGIST
James Broughton directing The Golden Positions,
forever non-conventional, forever willing to learn.

THE FILMMAKER AS SUBVERSIVE:  FOUR
THE COMMUNIST
Eisenstein on location for October,
lounging on the Tsar's throne. There is a
touch of (however playful) monomania.

THE FILMMAKER AS SUBVERSIVE:  FIVE
THE ANARCHIST
Otto Muehl and His Films.  Portrait of the
artist as liberated (yet sex-bound) man,
eyes immodestly raise to the heavens.

RELATIVITY
(Ed Emshwiller, USA, 1966 )
Man neither dominates this composition nor is he
necessarily dwarfed by it; he faces the sun squarely,
questioningly, and with determination.  He, the earth
he stands on, the air he breathes, the vegetation sur-
rounding him, are one.  Significantly, Emshwiller's
visual metaphors of man's place in the universe
draw on both science and metaphysics.

ENTR'ACTE
(Rene Clair, France, 1924)
"The End" -- but not the end. The
daring destruction of the otherwise
inviolable end-title subversively dis
rupts the illusion of cinema and visually
reaffirms the openness of experience.