Did you notice what happened yet again last week? The appreciation for diversity in our culture was demonstrated. Or was it another vote against pure market forces as the driver of culture? Depending on how you squint, you might have recognized it as either the proof of principle that a change is going to come, or a battle cry that is starting to build towards a universal “I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore”. A downpour of bricks thrown with love towards a beast that maybe just won’t ever get it? Hope or fear? I think what I heard is that hope is here.
Maybe it is not how you look at it, but how you choose to hear it. To me it was a sonic boom, one that gained volume in San Francisco and then rocked the bedrock of Austin. If it gets any louder, I’ve gotta think it would be akin to pumping the pied piper’s tune or the siren’s song — warmed over albeit with a glaze of pure benevolence — through the world’s most awesome beat-thumpin’ sound system. I hope everyone is now ready to listen to what has been served before them. Know what I am talking about? It goes well beyond my mixed metaphors…
Where should I begin? Is it that America remains one of two industrialized nations whose government provides virtually nothing for the cinematic arts? Or is it that we work with a film business infrastructure for the funding, production, and distribution of work that is based on antiquated concepts of scarcity, control, and communal attention? Or maybe that neither our artists, entrepreneurs, audiences, or institutions have yet taken the offering of the technological/digital revolution to unleash a truly liberated film culture, freed from the monolithic demands of a market driven cultural strand?
It’s funny how easily the anger and frustration can conquer the wonder and generous. When I am praised for finding the directors I have had the gift of working with at the start of their careers, I generally respond “Diamonds are easy to spot. They shine brighter.” I have been able to work with so many talented people. There are many more that I wanted to collaborate with and I have gotten to watch some of them flourish, occasionally not until years after I first encountered them. When I think of what might have happened if I or others hadn’t been able to conspire with them, if they had been completely over looked as many actually are, I ask myself what else am I missing? How often do we miss a chance to enrich all of our lives and why? Why don’t we do something about all that missed opportunity? Can we structure something to engineer more serendipity? How can the wonder bubble up on a more regular basis?
I loved the anger and frustration I felt in my youth. The chip on my shoulder was a rocket engine attached to my tail. I was going to show THEM, hell or high-water. I changed; sharing my life and sharing my wife’s life sharpened my vision, clarified my hearing, fortified my heart. My tone changed. I can’t say I abandoned the anger or frustration but I found a different way for it to thrive, one no less motivating, no less powerful, and no less a force for change and action. Most of my anger and frustration came in reaction to the residuals of market forces: greed, privilege, selfishness, materialism, arrogance, injustice, corruption. How do we tolerate, let alone live beside such toxic particles. Yes, if you aren’t mad as hell there is clearly something the fuck wrong with you, but… that anger also blinds us from the diamonds in our path.
We have been given the tools to destroy our chains. We need to build a few ladders to lift us towards the warmth of the sun. The technological/digital evolution has removed the barriers to entry and placed runways for liftoff. Poised to run, we are still sleeping in the beds built for other. You look in the mirror but see your opposite; it ain’t you babe that you are lookin’ at — but it is you I am looking for. We need to recognize the opportunity before us. We need to hear the song that is now being sung.
I think great work comes from something far different than market forces will ever stimulate. Even when artists strive to express themselves, when they are corrupted by either the need to survive and provide for their family or the promise of power and glory, the work suffers. We need to be able to give makers a safe house to protect them from the distractions. Walking away from the anger that drove my youth to the embrace the love a family provides, is akin to what a nonprofit can offer an artist.
Last week, the incredibly powerful force that is nonprofit support for the cinema arts should have made your ears ring (and your pulse race). When artists are freed to allow to speak from the heart — and not the pocketbook — they create a truer, more resonate work that lifts itself high beyond the crap that we normally settle for. We deserve better. We are drowning. We need to learn to demand better. The ladder is right before us. We must start to climb. We will thrive in a world that allows the pure of heart a clear path to the podium.
Last week yet another film supported by the San Francisco Film Society won a major film festival. SHORT TERM 12 won SXSW, both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award. Okay, you already know that, but did you recognize what it meant?
When BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD got three Oscar nominations, including a best picture one despite being the lowest budgeted film ever to receive such an honor, it was another chapter in a tale begun long ago, one where part of that inciting incident that launched it’s trajectory was funding it received from our Bay Area institution. When FRUITVALE followed BEASTS’ trail, and it too won Sundance this year, it drove in fueled by funding (25%) that again eminated for the San Francisco Film Society and the incredible generosity of the Kenneth Ranin Foundation. The trifecta was completed by SHORT TERM 12 — another film that any film exec would have said had no market potential, no place in our market-driven entertainment ecosystem. Another film that would not be available for you to appreciate if it was not for nonprofit support for the arts.
All three films show us why and how we can and should live: open to the wonder, aspiring higher, generous of spirit, empathetic of others, respectful of the forces — and armed with an urgent mission of change. And all three films required funding from a not for profit to be made real to our world. We need to vote for the culture we want with our dollars, our actions, and our full intentions. We need each other to spot the diamonds and give them the opportunity to shine on and on and on. That noise you hear is not your stomach grumbling, but it is a hunger, a hunger we all have for something better — and it has now been proven on how we can be satisfied.
I have spoken before of the Bay Area cinema renaissance, but the Bay Area is not a place. It is a state of mind. You don’t need to live here beside us to be in the family. There are so many ways to join in. You can demand that some of your tax dollars go to support the arts. I hope you come to our festival. I hope you support what is happening. I hope you are ready to work to build it better together. Let’s look at the world we are living in and lift it closer to the one we desire.
