![]() ![]() We deplored imperialist wars and racial violence from Johannesburg to Oakland, celebrated seriatim Cuba, Viet Nam, China, North Korea and at the end, Albania. Second, our social critique rarely extirpated the roots of the problem. Later, I will describe a current Newsreel project specifically designed not to be an independent production. This lack of accountability might seem as intrinsic to a non-profit, dissident media practice as it is endemic, the price of independence, an only serendipitous relevance. Shifting registers to the present, Newsreel simply didn’t do its market research, we developed our products in a vacuum. Gramsci used a similar botanical metaphor when he spoke of “organic intellectuals” cultivating a distinct working class culture in opposition to the ideological hegemony of the bourgeoisie. I am using radical here in its etymological rather than historical sense and I want to delineate three types of radicalism.įirst, Newsreel was out of touch with our roots, that is, the grassroots – who used our films, how they used them and what films they might have found more useful. We were never radical enough – especially, when we thought ourselves most radical. So, from this position of self-professed ignorance, what conclusions might I draw – under erasure, as you would say - from Newsreel’s unique 42 years of continuous and continuously confused political media practice? Many, of course, but they all amount to the same thing. ![]() The good news is that one can survive in a state of Socratic aporia: knowing that to know yourself is to know how little you know. This is the liberation of senescence from the dogmatism of youth, however fickle. ![]() One of the many surprises of aging is that the older you get the less you realize you understand. Maturity (and all of you are older than I in the sense that you are citizens of the 21st Century) has taught us that film is not “truth 24 fps” but an ironic record of its maker’s illusions, the projection of an unrequited desire. In Histoires du Cinema, Godard suggests the 20th Century, the century of cinema’s youth, thought of politics as a grand cinematic narrative. Soberer times may, one hopes, at least make your quest less quixotic than Newsreel’s. In this respect at least, age does not envy youth. It is always difficult to resist a chance to offer sage counsel to the young, because, as La Rochefoucault cruelly observed, “Old men give good advice because they are no longer in a position to set bad examples.” I recognize that the political landscape you face must appear very different from when I entered graduate school in 1968 – no doubt, less propitious and certainly less fun. Jeffrey Skoller, University of California, Berkeley, March 31, 2010įacing a class of students sitting where I sat forty or more years ago, cannot help but summon up a few harmless valetudinarian reflections. Remarks by Larry Daressa, graduate seminar on “Politics and Post-Modern Form,” Prof. RADICAL MEDIA PRACTICE IN THE DIGITAL AGE ![]() California Newsreel - RADICAL MEDIA PRACTICE IN THE DIGITAL AGE ![]()
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