A Vintage Year?

The viewing year is definitely ramping up. Suddenly my inbox is full of links to movies, invitations to screenings and the promise of DVD’s of this year’s hopefuls for gongs. At the same time I am continually reminded of how our relationship with the moving image is discussed and explored endlessly in the media. With the thud of heavy weekend newspapers, like a bad dream, demanding my attention, just absorbing how our media presents the moving image to us can be daunting. However, in the last week two events have given me pause to reflect on films past and films present.
21 October 2015 was a landmark date for any sci-fi cineaste as it was the day that Doc Brown set the clock on his DeLorean so he and Marty Mcfly could save his future son from imprisonment in Back to the Future II. The media was full of chatter about just how right where the predictions of director Robert Zemickis and the writer Bob Gael when they conceived the day back in 1989. The Internet piled in too. Check this out. However, the entertaining fluff around the accuracy or otherwise of futurist film-makers allowed one to reflect on how everything changes in the world of cinema.

In the Film Culture course, the subject of sequels, re-makes and franchises is explored. Back to the Future represents an attitude towards narrative that Hollywood is fast abandoning. Back in 1989 film-makers made films to appeal to a US audience. This was because the US was the primary market. Sales in the rest of the world where insignificant by comparison. For this reason, the futurist ambitions in the script and the careful working of the story to remain coherent when it comes to the science of time travel took precedence over spectacle and SFX. Today, Hollywood’s market is truly global and the content of their block-busters reflects this. Not only that, but now the means of distribution and consumption of content is multi-platform – a subject I will return to later.
For me cinema really works when it thinks local, not global. The indie scene in America is true to this and thus sits comfortable alongside the rest of world cinema which thinks the same. Zemickis has forbidden any re-make of the Back-to-the-Future franchise in his life-time for the simple reason that any remake would need an entirely different cast and Hollywood would demand a script that appealed to the wam, bam, thank you mam audience of a global market. And if you haven’t seen Zemickis’ latest movie, The Walk in 3D then you have missed an extraordinary cinematic event.
So, having got through Wednesday 21 October, the heavy thud of the Observer on Sunday was made more resonant with a terrific supplement which I would urge the reader to digest if you haven’t already. With the arrival of GMT and longer evenings, it was a joy to snuggle down in front of the fire and read Cinema Now, introduced by the ever thoughtful and demanding Mark Kermode.
The first thing I realised was just how many films I want to watch which I have missed so far this year. A terrifying number. Kermode kicked off with a go at the ne’er-do-wells who whine on about how cinema ain’t what it used to be. I get my ear bent by colleagues and fellow media professionals on this matter all the time and it is boring. We live in remarkable and exciting times for the moving image. We have more choice, more ways of seeing stuff and more ways of interacting and sharing these experiences than ever before.

Film isn’t dead. Tarantino has shot his latest movie, The Hateful Eight on 70mm and I plan to view it in a cinema that projects it in 70mm. At the other end of the scale there is a remarkable film about transgender sex workers in Hollywood, Tangerine, shot entirely on smart phones which I am looking forward to seeing. Early in November I shall be in Singapore as a judge for the Singapore Myanmar Film Festival. One of the strongest contenders for Best Film is an amazing docudrama about the life of a jade miner, shot on a smart phone. Myanmar is hosting a film festival later this year exclusively for films shot in this format. YouTube is arguably one of the most exciting places for a cineaste to spend time. Anyone who is interested in film analysis and that should include any student of the moving image check out YouTube essayists like Tony Zhou, Josh Bradley and Darren Foley. I have to thank the journalist Killian Fox for that information.
It’s been great year for documentary. Simultaneous distribution of films in cinema, on-line, on DVD and through streaming outfits is proving good news for independent film-makers. In Britain we can be proud of this output. Asif Kapadia’s Amy has broken every box-office record in the book, the challenging Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson by Julien Temple and brilliant Syrian Love Story by Seam McAllister are just three examples of how the new distribution opportunities are giving voice to some truly great film-makers.
So, let’s rejoice in the fact that we have more choice, more ways to view and more variety than ever before. However you like to watch films, just keep on dong it.