Feb. 3rd, 2011

fpb: (Default)
A recent debate brought back one of the defining features of my teen years. Are there still little alternative movie clubs around, or have they all been gentrified out of existence? I first met them in Rome when I was not quite old enough to vote: small locals, often adapted from deserted shops or even lower-ground flats, most often in the neighbourhood of universities, with mimeographed programs promising golden age and art-house movies, East European animation, Japanese live-action films, Bergman and Battleship Potemkin, plus discussion clubs. They were the favoured meeting places of anyone who saw him or herself as an intellectual in fieri, and so, of course, I had plenty to do with them - witnessing the most spectacular verbal acrobatics to try and fit some sort of Marxist framework around aesthetic perceptions that obviously had nothing to do with it - sometimes even I could see that what was being said was rubbish. But it was worth it because the movies being shown really were first rate: I learned there to appreciate Ozu, Bergman, Antonioni, and, oddly enough, golden-age Hollywood. (I don't remember anyone quite acrobatic enough to manage to place Fred Astaire or John Wayne in a Gramscian framework, but I guess the general feeling was that you could not seriously deal with the art of cinema without them.) When I came to Oxford, there was a really brilliant there; when I moved to Brixton, there was another. And there is where I saw it turn into a regular movie theatre with all the trimmings. And when I last went to Oxford I could not find my old movie club,and I don't seem to be able to find them in Rome either. Have they all died out, or are there hidden somewhere behind some corner where I haven't yet been?

Profile

fpb: (Default)
fpb

February 2019

S M T W T F S
     12
345 6789
10111213141516
17181920212223
2425262728  

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 5th, 2025 01:55 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios