(P 10)
"The studios of early Hollywood are now massive corporate entities with a devastating impact on the quality of movies and on local film cultures….Internationalism and globalization are as different as volunteering to fight fascism in Spain in 1937 and outsourcing Nike production to a nonunion zone in China in 2007. Internationalism is about diverse local cultures and joining to find common humanity across borders. “my nation is cinema and my language is film” says Mexican filmmaker, Alfonso Cueron. Globalization is about worldwide homogenization. The globalization of culture has seen less attention than the globalization of economics, but it is this conflict between internationalism and globalization that, between the local and the global, that defines the difference between independents and studio. “The more local you are the more universal and international you are,” says filmmaker, Jean Pierre Lefebvre, who as a young Montreal cinephile fell in love with Italian neorealism. “What made Italian cinema universal? Because it always talked about Italian values, it showed landscapes showed food, showed people with different attitudes.” American folklorist Alan Lomax, writing in 1968, warned that “soon there will be nowhere to go and nothing worth staying home for. Our Western mass production and communication systems are inadvertently destroying the languages, traditions, cuisines and creative styles that once gave every people and every locality distinctive character-indeed their principle reason for living.”
Fashion is also taking the hit, as design by corporation tends to water down, cheapen, generify and dictate style which pushes it into a very small corner. Independent designers (artist, thinkers...rebels) need our support. Ok this might be a Kerf Project promo, but is also way more :-)
(p 16)
.....Of course, not every purely independent film is great cinema, but like Warner Bros, when it really was the Warner Brothers, independent filmmakers are more willing to take risks that today's business grad--turned-studio executives who always choose the safe route. And it is risk taking that makes possible the movie (the life, the art, the evolutionary adaptation) that shatters expectations. "
As corporations are now controlling so much of the arts, fashion, life -our very ability to imagine possibilities, is limited more and more. No risk, comfort zone and "safety" are words of stagnation. Ruled by fear, its proponents are scarcity and greed. Safe under these conditions, simulates the "safety" of death. The issue becomes moot- shoulda, coulda, woulda -Duh!
Job scarcity enabled by WTO, led to outsourcing that was helped along by the USA Propaganda Inc. (N Snow) that was paid for with our collective tax dollars, now effectively lowering wages, by raising costs on necessities! Ideas of food scarcity are made real to raise prices, allow GMOs..etc. (Frances Leppe World Hunger, 12 Food Myths, Farm Aid) The more controlled and narrow the input, the lesser the chance for great output. Remember the phrase "race to the bottom."
That is not the world I wish on my children (my granddaughters) nor yours. They and we, deserve to overcome this systemic depletion of being. The more we are encouraged to think as machines, the more robotic like products of manufactured consent, we will become. Trust me, that ain't life, that is an intellectual narrowing into a deficit subreality, the shallows-AKA a super lossy one function plug in. Say no and get out now!
As a "get out" surmises a "get in" elsewhere, we, like the independent filmmakers, need to collaborate, cooperate and build for healthy alternatives.
People are experimenting with meaningful, mindful processes, groups, arts and events. This is conscious doing. It comes in many formats, frames, models and designs. It is the freeing of that which kept "noses to the grindstones," and lives in pain.
I believe that seeking to foster the unique potential of each person will foster more potential in the whole. The sum of the parts is more than the whole, it is following the light of the expanding universe, it is in our DNA, it is our heritage.
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