I have long felt the indie film community has needed someone to write regularly and call attention the various issues that both effect our life as filmmakers, and how film, in all its various forms, effect our life as citizens, societies, and individuals. What an awesome gift for us all that Anthony Kaufman has taken it upon himself to do this. His first post from his re-booted blog, REEL POLITIK, lays out the manifesto:
Why relaunch my blog with a specific emphasis on film and politics?
Inspired by such declarations of purpose as Dogme 95, the Oberhausen Manifesto, Dziga Vertov’s We: Variant of a Manifesto and Charles Foster Kane’s “Declaration of Principles,” I’d like to outline my reasons below in a little manifesto. I’ve always liked such proclamations. Pretentious and polemical, sure. But they’re also passionate and alive.
So here are 6 reasons for ReelPolitik’s being:
1. Because over the next 16 months, we will enter a contentious period of political skulduggery, with lies, distortions, and propaganda from both the right and the left. And filmmakers, film lovers and the film community need more places to exchange ideas, vent, and respond to the political-ideological formations of that mass entertainment machine known as the movies. As a community, we must also remember that there’s strength in numbers, and if we don’t want the country (and the world) to go to hell, we must stay politically involved.
2. Because we have lost sight of what film can do.
Read the rest here.
