On Raymond Williams and on Karl Marx

Raymond Williams was an important and influential writer, commentator and political activist in the 1960s and 1970s. He paid particular attention to the press, media and the printed word. He was not strictly a Marxist though he was clearly influenced by the ideas of Marx and Engels and contributed to Marxist oriented journals such as ‘New Left Review’. He wrote little on cinema, the primary focus of this blog, but his writings on culture are an important aid in studying the moving image medians.

I am also a subscriber to ‘Media North’, the newsletter of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom (North) whose content is very much influenced by Williams’ ideas. So I was pleased to read the article by Paul Richards celebrating the contribution of Raymond Williams. The article, in the December 2021 issue, was a ‘lightly edited’ version of an article originally written for and published on the Raymond Williams Foundation Website; ‘Raymond Williams and the popular Press’. I checked out the original article and I found it was more than ‘lightly edited’, being shorter and missing some important comment. However I thought that both versions seem to have simplified Williams’ writings and to misunderstand what Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote about Capitalism, culture, the media and economic life.

It is worth picking out the sentences that I found seriously in error and making some comments;

“Williams developed his thinking beyond the traditional Marxist perspective that the mass media was a crude tool of the ruling class, designed to create a ‘false consciousness’ amongst the masses.” [Missing from the shorter version].

Neither Marx nor Engels thought that the dominance of the ruling class was crude. As for ‘false consciousness’, I refer to this in Concepts and The Political Economy of the Olympics;

“I personally avoid the term. Karl Marx never used it. Engels did use it but in a letter discussing a book by Franz Mehring. It seems the term came into more general use in the 1920s, i.e. after the failure of any revolutions outside Russia. One problem for me is the patronising tone implied by the term: intellectuals chiding the working class because they have not yet got the message. But it also suggests a different sense to the term ideology than that found in the substantial works of Marx and Engels.”

If one reads the example of Marx’s discussion of ‘a fair days labour for a fair day’s pay’ in ‘Capital’, Volume 1 it is clear that dominance is a very sophisticated operation.

“Crucially, Williams came to view communications, including the media, as a productive force in its own right, rather than just a reflection or product of society, in a process he coined as ‘cultural materialism’. He contested the orthodox Marxist idea that culture was merely a flimsy ‘superstructure’ built on the sound foundations of the ‘substructure’ of the means of production.”

The error here appears to be that the writer thinks that Marx and Engels use ‘force of production’ to describe technology; in fact it is clear in Capital that the social relations between people are also a force of production.  And Marx and Engels write about base and superstructure, not ‘flimsy superstructure’ and  ‘substructure’. Engels in his speech at Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery gave a summation of their analysis:

” Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.”

If the article offers serious misreading of the ideas of Marx and Engels it also offers a simplistic description of Williams’ ideas on the famous duo.  In ‘Culture and Society, 1780 to 1950’ Williams devotes a whole chapter to ‘Marxism and Culture’, In this he quotes the famous passage by Marx in the ‘Preface to the ‘Critique of Political Economy’, (1859), which  includes;

‘The mode of production in material life determines the general character of social, political and spiritual processes of life.”

Williams spends five pages discussing Marx’s ideas and analysis. He then offers ten pages on more recent followers of Marx, mainly writings in the 1930s. Many of these are long forgotten. And he ends with five pages with his comments on these Marxist ideas; this includes the contribution of Vladimir Lenin. Note that Lenin and the Bolshevik leaders reinterpreted some of Marx’s ideas; ways  in which I think Marx would have critically reviewed . In all three sections Williams is careful to point out that the object of Marx’s study, capitalism, and the study itself, is far too complex for simple conclusions. Indeed he also quotes from Frederick Engels ‘Selected Correspondence’  which opens;

“According to the materialist conception of history, the determining element in history is ultimately the production and reproduction in real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted.”

Quite a few of the writers referenced by Williams in this chapter clearly paid no heed to Engels’ statement. And it is one to which Paul Richards should have paid careful attention. It is not clear in the article what he means by culture? In ‘Keywords’ (1976) Williams spends four pages on the various meanings of this term. One meaning is ‘all possible life’ which includes production and its means.

Marx’s argument is that under capitalism  human being produce communications as commodities, that is for their exchange value and consequently surplus value and profits;  this is what  determines what they embody, the interests of that mode production; and indeed of the class that controls that mode of production.

In fact, at the end of his article, Richards point out Rupert Murdock; a regular target of Media North. Murdoch is just one of the most successful capitalists owning and controlling the means of production for newspapers, television and film.  What determines the problem with his media empire is not his personality but his role as a member of the capitalist class.  Marx and Engels, if writing today, would have no problem in examining and propounding how Murdoch is an exemplar of the capitalist production of communications.

It is worth adding that ‘Media North’ not only regularly criticise Murdoch and his outlets but also defend the BBC from his and others attacks. This is fair comment. The BBC offers, especially in its new coverage, content and presentations not found in much of the other media. I would add though that Al Jazeera in recent years has provided a higher quality than the BBC. What needs to be stated about both of them are that they are part of the capitalist media. The BBC depends on Government regulation and finance; whilst it has some independence it is not an autonomous body. There is a  recent article in the February edition of US-based ‘Monthly Review’ by Florian Zollman & T, J. Coles, ‘Anatomy of a Propaganda Campaign Jeremy Corbyn’s Political Assassination’. The article concentrates of the mainstream press. However, the authors make the point that television, including the BBC, tended to follow and amplify the press coverage. This was notably true of the fraudulent campaign around ‘supposed anti-Semitism’. The only exceptions were Al Jazeera and, occasionally, RT; the latter is ‘currently not available’.

Where Paul Richards is more accurate on Williams is in his comment regarding Williams’ alternative to the Marxist position;

” He saw it in more complex and nuanced terms, and believed it could be regulated, reformed and democratised within his own lifetime, rather than in some future post-revolutionary utopia. As such, Raymond Williams informed and inspired activists in his own times, and bequeaths his ideas and frameworks to subsequent generations.”

Marx and Engels were quite clear that the people could not reform capitalism; that it need to be abolished and replaced by a superior social system. Defensive action to protect and assist working class activism was one thing; but to argue that this was a solution misled the working class. At one point Richards uses the word ‘utopia’ in relation to Marx’s analysis. He should read ‘Capital’, at least volume one; it is not about utopias but the rigorous analysis of the current mode of production and the social relations immanent within it that provide a base for a better society.

 

 

‘From Méliès to New Media’: the problem of the facsimiles in the digital age.

Al in ‘Detour’

Detour (Producer Releasing Corporation, 1945 ) was directed Edgar Ulmer and is generally labelled a film noir though it is also in some sense a road movie. The basic plot offers us Al ( Tom Neal) who is hitch-hiking to California to join his girl-friend Sue (Claudia Drake). Along the way he first meets Charles Haskell (Edmund MacDonald) who gives him a lift  and then Vera (Ann Savage), who turns out to be the femme fatale. He is also drawn into a world of chaos and criminality from which, as a ‘victim hero” he fails to emerge in safety. As is common in film noirs Al recounts this story in flashback and in the confessional mode.  The film has an excellent discussion in an analysis by Andrew Britton in ‘The Movie Book of Film Noir’, edited by Ian Cameron (Studio Vista 1992). There is also an excellent discussion of the genre in the Introduction by Michael Walker, including defining the ‘victim hero’.

Detour is one of the titles discussed in ’From Méliès to New Media’ by Wendy Haslem, published by Intellect 2019. I reviewed this book for the Media Education Journal and found it challenging. At times I felt like Al who, in his narration, constantly asks why this is happening in this way; why are his assumptions so frequently frustrated? I felt rather in that situation after struggling through this volume page by page. Finally I had figured out who had said or written what and, importantly, what I thought this signified. Signifiers are important here as this is a book informed by ‘signs’.

I did complete a review for MEJ but at just over a 1,000 words there was not the space to address in detail all the theory and analysis in the book. But by the end I was convinced that there was some misconstruction in the critical discussion. Hence this longer article where I wish to subject some of the assumptions and arguments made to detailed criticism.

This is an academic work replete with uncommon terms and concepts and with frequent references to authors who have a reputation for difficulty. Predominantly those quoted can be categorised as proposing THEORY; the upper case letters denote a particular emphasis on the theoretical. The author  relies on the discipline called semiotics. I have had earlier occasions to grapple with the discourse of this, notably in the pages of the journal ‘Screen’. I have a working  understanding of the language and concepts involved but since I do not use them in my criticism I frequently have to revisit sources of explanation.

The central concept that informs the book is a term from Semiotics.

“[film] has been understood to have a direct relationship to the concept of indexicality. To understand the index …we need to return to the literary origin of this concept. Writing on semiotics in 1931, Charles Sanders Pierce described the associative power of the index as, ‘like  a pronoun demonstrative or relative, [it] forces the attention to a particular object intended without describing it’.” (Pages 14 and 15).

This tricky passage does not quite give the sense of the index. The author uses  the index as a sign that does which points to or offers evidence of the intended object. One example in a quotation from Pierce offers;

“the pole star … to show us which way is north.” (page 15).

This demonstrates for me the limitation of the uses of index. You need to know the function of the pole star in order to realise that it gives evidence of the direction of north and this itself assumes some knowledge of astronomy. When we come to examples offered of the indexical in certain films I will point out such limitations.

The book uses a number of examples of 35mm film prints transferred to digital. The author raises the question as to whether the indexical characteristics of a film transfer to a digital version. The complication is that film is ‘material’ whilst digital is ‘immaterial’. This distinction offers a problematic usage of ‘material’. I can see that photo-chemical film is tangible in a way that digital images are not. But both forms rely on light and sound which are actually also material. They involved either radiation or waves which have material properties though they are not tangible to human senses.  From the audience point  of view both film and digital files would seem to be immaterial. What they present is a stream of light projected onto a screen where it forms  moving images and the sound is projected into the auditorium seemingly invisibly. This is part of the mainstream film industry presentations which seeks to avoid drawing the attention of viewers to the paraphernalia of presentation; just as film-makers in the mainstream avoid drawing attention to the techniques that present plot and character. Occasionally in the latter case  a technique is empathized for effect. And there have been infrequent attempts by  non-mainstream film workers to subvert the dominant mode, but with little impact.

One of my major problems with the author’s approach is that there is a tendency to downplay the distinction between photo-chemical film and digital files. This is fairly common in film writing and comment. The industry has tended to obfuscate the differences for commercial reasons. When the subject is addressed the hype tends to overstate the quality of digital in relation to film. The author does actually detail the differences between photo-chemical film’s random silver halide grains and digital uniform non-random pixels. But much of the book assumes a fair equivalence between the two median. At one point  digital versions are described as ‘spectral simulations’. There are a number of quotations from Paulo Cherchi Usai but not the argument in ‘Silent Cinema’, [Third edition, 2019] that digitized versions of photo-chemical films are not copies but facsimiles. Usai does recognise that digital versions provided a site for investigation but bearing in mind that the two are separate and distinct. For me photochemical film and digital moving images are incommensurable.

The Introduction Chapter 1 bears the title; ‘Cigarette Burns and Bullet Holes; Celluloid Cues in Digital Cinema’. This title follows on from a description of watching  Detour. The writer opens with

“Not so long ago whilst on the tram on my way home from work I began watching the 1945 celluloid print of Edgar G. Ulmer’s B film noir Detour downloaded and configured for my mobile screen.” [page 5].  Then adds,” I watched the chemical, celluloid material form of Detour on a tiny digital screen that was rotated so that it measured eleven centimetres in width and almost six centimetres in height.” [page 6}.

The writer does not specify the source format or the viewing equipment.  The writer does acknowledge differences quoting Thomas Elsaesser that this is

“doing the same thing with different means.” (page 6)

But such a comment does not really address the problem. The pixels [of what quality?] compressed into a small electronic display are somewhat removed from a large projected image composed of the random halide grains. An oddity is the description is that

“the original screen ratio of 1.37:1 was unfurled using an anamorphic lens in theatrical exhibition.” [page 6}.

Anamorphic lens were not in use in mainstream production or exhibition in the 1940s. They came into use with the advent of wide-screen processes like CinemaScope in the 1950s. The sentence seems confused; perhaps, given the dimensions of the screen, the version is not in academy but some other ratio? The term ‘anamorphic’ appears in descriptions of digital technology but the process varies from format to format and in many cases is an electronic as opposed to a lens process.

Al and Vera in ‘Detour’

A little further on there is a comment and quotation from Laura Mulvey; [see critique of her theorizing].

“The intersection of different historical moments and the illusion of oppositional contemporaneities is outlined by Laura\ Mulvey who writes, ‘[i]n this dialogue between old and new, past and present, the opposition between film and new technologies begins to break down and the new modes of spectator illuminate aspects of cinema that, like the still frame, have been hidden from view’.” [page 16].

I would query how a screen 11 centimetres by 6 centimetres relates to a theatrical space upwards of 4 by 6 meters. And just how this opposition breaks down is unclear. The author’s example for this development are the cue marks that appear at each reel change in a 35mm projection; [hence the chapter title]. Apparently these were visible whilst viewing the 11 by 6 centimetres screen; impressive eye sight. And, if using wide-screen FHA then the image was not in 1.37:1. If cropped , presumably the cue marks would be missing as they sit in the top left hand corner of the frame. But most people watching a small screen, even if they spot the cure marks, are unlikely to know their function. Audiences may well presume they are signs of the damaged condition of old films. And there is a problem with the supposition that using modern digital techniques, including stopping, winding or rewinding the moving image tells us about the linear projection  of 35mm film in its theatrical setting.

Later in the chapter the author discusses different responses to the question of the differences between film and digital files; returning to the issues of indexical and immaterial. Whilst maintaining the sense of these medium as indexical they are  both termed ‘ material’. The presentation is complex, and I thought, complicated. The writing uses the term ‘spectral’ to describe traces of original film in new digital files. These spectral traces are the basis, it is opined, for a new history of film through digital versions. I still find this argument fails to recognise just how different are the differences; and it is a matter of investigation whether the digital does indeed offer ‘new histories’.

The first section in the book is titled ‘Early Cinema: Colour and Spectrality’ with Chapter 2 on ‘Applied Colour: Chromatic Frankenstein’s Monster’; more on the ‘monster’ later. The text for study in this chapter is an early and seminal film, Le Voyage dans la Lune / A Trip to the Moon, produced by a key pioneer in film history George Méliès . In fact, the author is discussing just one version of this much produced film; that created by the French company Lobster Films, This version was constructed using different materials, but the key source was print found in 1993 in the Filmoteca de Catalunya. Using modern digital technology the team produced a colour version. The original would have been hand-painted but most surviving version are in black and white, and do differ in the ‘cut‘ on offer. The author saw this version, at Il Cinema Ritrovato in 2011. It was screened from a digital version with an added soundtrack of musical accompaniment. The author was both amazed and thrilled with this version.

I was also at the Festival but skipped the screening in the Piazza Maggiore because I always prioritize 35mm prints at the Festival. I did see the same version later at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto where we had separate screenings from digital files and from a 35mm print. The latter was copied from the digital version. I did prefer the latter, mainly because it had  a piano accompaniment. I was not happy about the visual sheen of the versions though the colour recreation was impressive. I thought the music on digital files was anachronistic. I was not amazed or thrilled. Whilst the techniques used are impressive it does feel exactly like a facsimile of the original. Because of the state of the source material traces of damage over time and use remain in the digital version. The author sees these as traces of the original and therefore indexical signs of that in the digital files. What is not discussed here are the additions not in the original or the source material. Because of the limitations of digital specifications most digital projectors do not project at a lower frame rate than 24 fps. But the Méliès  would have [on average as screening varied] projected at 14 fps. This means inserting extra frames, in this case probably 10 a second; the technique  is called step-printing. And even the 35mm print was copied from the digital master and projected at 24 fps. When I attended my early silent festivals in the 1990s frame rates, along with aspect ratios and colouring  were common topics of debates. Now one rarely hears discussion of frame rates. In addition, frame rates could vary in screenings for effect; this is not possible in digital projection though a dedicated projectionist could do so on 35mm. [A pleasure one can experience in some of the screening presented by Kevin Brownlow]. So of what are these frames an indexical sign of? Presumably digital techniques, though they re only occasionally visible to viewers with effects like ‘ghosting’, caused by the additional frames. This is not a topic seriously discussed in the book.

‘Le Voyage dans la Lune’

The author is right to be impressed with the project and result; which has been accompanied by a volume with many illustrations and information from Lobster Films. The work in producing this title is impressive and involves state-of-the art digital technology. But it remains a facsimile. And the book is curiously opaque on at least one aspect: the achievement of 24 fps is described as ‘time-converted’. Something I find like a mystification.

The author offers a long discussion on both the celluloid original and copies of the Méliès  title and the new digital version. The latter provides much technical information on the process of handling, reworking and transferring the frames of the 1998 film. As the chapter title suggests there is particular attention to the process involving colour; which is one of the aspects that the Lobster version offers. The writer concedes that this is a simulation rather than a copy. And it is in part a recreation, which is where the sense of a ‘Frankenstein monster’ appears.

One aside in a discussion of the famous argument by Walter Benjamin that ‘originals; have an aura lacking in reproductions. I have never really been convinced by this argument. It strikes me that the ;’aura’ [like beauty] is in the mind of the beholder. And John Berger’s ‘Ways of Seeing’ (1972) critiqued some of the impositions on art works caused by ideas in the minds of beholders. Because the author sees the indexical working from the celluloid to the digital version we are offered quotations arguing that both the original mechanical reproduction’ and its transfer in digital files both retain such an ‘aura’.

There is much close reading and research apparent in this chapter but what escapes my eye is why a digital version should be seen as ‘forcing’ new readings. The chapter seems to merge the reading of the celluloid original and the digital transfer; as a facsimile I think that they remain separate.

With Chapter 3 we encounter ‘The Serpentine Dance Films: ‘Dream Visions that change ten thousand times a minute’. You might call the ‘serpentine dance’ a genre. The Edison company produced Annabelle’s Dance in 1895. It caught the public fancy  and innumerable short films, usually a single camera shot, were made of dancers, often in voluminous garments that waved over the screen. What made these dancers a particular experience was the use of colour which went though transformations as the dancer and her veils moved. The author provides extensive  information on the invention and development of this ‘international rage’ and its creator, Loie Fuller. The author, as with the Méliès , is especially interested in the use of colour. The chapter concludes with a discussion of music videos inspired by the early cinematic versions. This exploration is fascinating but, as with the Méliès , the celluloid and digital seem to remain distinct.

Section II commences with ‘Luminescence, Montage and frame ratios’ Within this Chapter 4 deals with Memory and Noir: Neon Contrasts’. The opening title discussed is Blade Runner: 2049 (2017), a production that originated not on photo-chemical film but on the digital codex format. So the issues here are different from those relating to the earlier study texts. We then get Memento (2000) which did originate on 35mm, produced in 2.39:1. In The Mood for Love  (2000) follows, also in 35mm but in the much narrower ratio of 1.66:1. Then Drive (2011), another digital wide screen title using the SXS Pro format. So the discussion is dealing with differing formats. This ends with ‘Fifth Night’ which is a gallery presentation where 35mm has been transferred to a digital format.

The author discusses how these titles inform understanding of earlier noir films including what are commonly seen as ‘classic noir’. I do think the inclusion of In the Mood for Love is problematic. The film does use some techniques common to the noir cycles, including chiaroscuro. But in other senses this sort of ‘Brief Encounter’ story is far removed from the criminality which is endemic in noir. People do endlessly debate what constitutes film noir; I think the opening chapter of the ‘The Movie Book of Film Noir’ is a model to follow.

The chapter is fairly dense, including quoting from Gilles Deleuze, an intellectual who comes only second to Jacques Lacan in the use of complicated language. On the interaction between memory and the noir experience:

“Taken more broadly as an approach to historical mapping, memory allows for a consideration of the influences and various iterations of noir, its presence and absence across time in a Deleuzian rhizomatic network rather than as an evolutionary teology.” (page 83)

Thankfully I was able to look up ‘rhizomatic’ on Wikipedia.

“theory and research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation.”

So this complicated sentence seems to opine that the genre of noir should be viewed not just in a linear fashion over time but as a toing and froing between films and film-makings and audiences. This treats the noir titles as texts rather than events. It also seems to suppose that a study in a linear form presupposes and defines end; which is not necessarily the case.  This complex arguments centre on the idea that the ‘indexicality’ of titles in a digital format evidence titles originally in 35mm. This leads to some interest research and discussion of film noir from its origins to the present. But this latter aspect does not seem to need to prompt of the digital; it could equally be prompted by 35mm, 16mm copies and analogue video facsimile of film noir.

Chapter five is titled ‘Cutting: Shock and Endurance.’ Here the writing addresses ‘montage, opening with a quotation from Sergei Eisenstein. The two key  titles discussed are Man With a Movie Camera and Eyes Without a Face. This makes the opening quotation from Eisenstein slightly odd because the former film was made by the ‘Factory of Facts’, convened by Dziga Vertov. Vertov had rather different ideas from Eisenstein on what constituted montage and they engaged [as was common in the Soviet art world] in fairly forceful argument. Equally the two titles are oddly chosen. The term montage has a range of meanings; referring to rather different formal strategies in Soviet or [for example] Surrealist film-making and in mainstream film production; and Un Chien Andalu (1929) does get a mention . You can describe the operating sequence in Eyes Without a Face as montage, but apart from fast editing, it bears little relationship to the montage used by Vertov and his comrades. The author opines that the most famous example of montage is the shower sequence in Psycho. But if you read Alfred Hitchcock discussing montage in comparison to Dziga Vertov discussing montage, differences are immediately apparent.

The chapter goes on to discuss work by the media artist Christian Marclay. He constructs ‘new films from old’. His use of film footage offers counterpoint to bring out new associations. Whilst this might seem to parallel in some sense the work of Vertov: the descriptions of his pieces suggests little political or social intent: something that is essential in the work of the’ Factory of Facts’.

Chapter 6 bears the title ‘Screens, Scale Ratio: Verticality celluloid in the Digital Age’. This chapter discusses the work of gallery artists using photo-chemical film and digital forms , notably Tacita Dean. One of her works, Film (2011) is discussed in detail. On this occasion the presentation is correctly described as using an anamorphic lens, that used in the CinemaScope format. One aspect of this presentation in the Tate Modern gallery was the ability of spectators to choose their position and standpoint and vary it; something that is far more difficult in a cinema. The author explores this as another aspect of indexicality; viewers reconsidering their viewing strategy. This is fair comment but seems to me of a different order to that repositioning that may occur with digital facsimile. The writer goes on to discuss parallel issues regarding another gallery artist, Christian Boltanski, whose work I have not seen.

Tacita dean’s ‘Film’ at the Tate Modern

Section 1211 opens with ‘Cinema Beyond the Frame’ and Chapter 7 ‘Haluucinatory Framing and Kaleidescopic Vision’. Here we read about an early film  series of genre, ‘The Phantom Ride’. Then the discussion movers on to more gallery presentations including the ‘24 hour Psycho’ and some other exhibitions which I have not seen.

With Chapter 8 we reach ‘Ephemeral Screens: The Muybridgizer’ which h is an on line digital version of the work of the early pioneer Eadweard Muybridge. All of these contain well conducted research and interesting discussion. But the author constantly returns to the key point, regarding indexicality. We have a quote from the well-known film scholar Thomas Elsaesser who asks regarding digital media:

“did it bring about  a rupture in the history of cinema that some critics have experienced as traumatic and terminal, or have we merely misunderstand the meaning of ‘index’. For those in the former camp, digitization quite literally means the end c cinema, so that there cannot possibly be a convergence. Instead in this light, an era of post-cinema has begun , with its own characteristics and certainty based on a different ontology.” (page 176)

The author then comments:

“The argument about the loss of indexicality in digital film imagines a coherent, formal evolutionary history, a dominant narrative that has framed  cinema for more than one hundred years. Such historical mapping according to a traditional understanding of indexicality and cinematic specificity reduces the definition  of films to its potential to a capture the ‘real’.” [page 176].

This is problematic in all sort of ways and demonstrates why focusing on the term ‘index’ does not address the full issue. For a start film and cinema are not synonymous, though often treated as so. Cinema is a particular forum for moving images; traditionally this has been 35mm film but it now theatrical DCPs. One has to add  the innovation of non-theatrical screenings in what are termed cinemas.

More importantly the assumption that film in cinema is accessing the real or evidencing the actual world is really dubious. Vertov and his comrades had to use montage in order for film to address the world of the spectators; Soviet citizens. Un Chien Andalu consciously drove a coach and horses through any illusions that cinema was delivering the actual world in which audiences lived. And Méliès offered this audiences fantasies, entertainment that escape, like the characters in Voyage to the Moon, from their early limitations.

This volume is full of interesting and well-researched material on aspects of film history, cinema history and the new digital technologies that are replacing the traditional. One of the overarching arguments of the book is that this work has been motivated by digital viewings. However, it appears that such research and discussion could have been motivated by viewing on different formats, or indeed, from readings. I did wonder if this was developed from a post-graduate thesis. The THEORY in the volume appears to overlay the research and discussion; something that follows from academic requirements to reference writers, views, research and recognised studies.

There is also a major lacunae which is an important feature of digital which is the necessity of compression. Essentially once a image enters the digital process it experiences a range of compression. This is the term used though it not strictly accurate. Compression implies that when uncompressed the object merges again as the image compressed in the anamorphic process emerges on screen in its full wide format. But digital compression actually removes pixels.  The sophisticated techniques involved in digital compensate when the screening or viewing commences. But it does not replace the pixels removed. The process uses algorithms which [apparently] remove redundant data; this might be information not considered essential to the image and data that is repeated and can be duplicated in projection. Because it is not as dense  in terms of data the sound does not require the same level of compression.

This is not a new issue. The 35mm system involved copies of the originals negative and masters take from this. The more times a title was copied the increased loss of quality in the image. Thus there were prints described as ‘dupes’ where the contrast and definition, even the colour palette, were noticeably reduced. But the original, unless lost, remained for preservation and restoration. A digital master has already suffered compression. And, I have not found comment on this; since digital requires transferring of data as systems become redundant, what happens to the compressed data?

It is also worth noting that the range of digital formats means that the levels of compression vary considerably; increasing as the format capacity reduces. A DVD can house 4.7 gigabytes: High Definition Television and streaming services exceed this standard: but Blue-Ray exceed the live transmission systems offering 25 gigabytes of storage. When we reach theatrical standards a 2K DCP offers between 70 and a 100 gigabytes: whilst a 4K DCP can reach 300 gigabytes. Added to this it is far simpler to copy highly compressed data to higher-quality systems; the final result is only as good as the original source. Unfortunately the volume does not provide what size or standard the digital versions of Detour offered.

And there is an important feature that is common to photo-chemical film and to analogue facsimiles and digital facsimiles; this that they are all commodities. What determines the production of these titles and audience access to these is their exchange value. This applies across cinema and the moving image industries. Even the Soviet film-makers, working in a phase of socialist transition, were caught up in commodity exchange. To a degree they relied on commodities for production and even if the audiences in the Worker Clubs were not paying  a price for such products, for the Soviet Un ion they were frequently a vehicle  outside the Union and earning much need foreign exchange. In the similar fashion surrealist film-makers may not have relied  on audiences paying a price for their work but he funding from the affluent relied on the profits that arose from commodity production.

In his volume ‘ Minding Movies: Observations on the Art, Craft, and Business of Filmmaking’ (2011)  David Bordwell, whilst not really engaging with commodity production as such, details how the production of digital cinema aims at restoring or increasing the profits [surplus value] from industry products and, moreover, how it has been used by the oligopoly  that dominate the industry. In the era of photo-chemical film and, now in the era of digital forms, what mainly determines the production, form and content of film and its facsimiles is the commodity form and the necessity of producing surplus value.

This is the capitalist world in which Al, Se and Vera struggle to find a place. As Andrew Britton comments;

“Ulmer’s road is not a refuge for exiles from a culture in which America’s ideals have been degraded, but a place where the real logic of advanced capitalist society is ac ted out by characters who have completely internalised its values, and whose interaction exemplifies the grotesque deformation of all human relationships by the principles of the market.”

This explains whilst it is increasingly difficult to see 35mm titles. In fact, whilst, as mentioned in Bordwell’s study, there is continuing presentation and restoration of photo-chemical film, it is increasingly the case that the archival product in digital rather than filmic. This is despite the fact that digital storage costs more than filmic storage and that the former’s shelf life is about only 10% of that of 35mm film, nitrate or safety. It also explains why the theatrical DCP, commonly in Britain, at what is termed 2K, is not an equivalent to 35mm prints. And it is debatable where the 4K  DCP, relatively rare, is equivalent either.

Usai’s use of ‘facsimile is a more accurate description of the digital version than copy and more useful than the term ‘simulation’; the latter might work better for gallery presentations or for a work like Hugo (2011) which renders version of Méliès titles into 3D. It is not always a matter of choice for viewers which they can see and hear. So digital facsimiles are of definite use for audiences and individuals. But it is not the same. A student can clearly write an essay of Leonardo da Vinci without visiting the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa. And it will cheaper and easier; no crowds on a computer screen. But even if you do not subscribe to Benjamin’s ‘aura’, the texture of the image is not the same. This applies just as well to films and digital files. I have seen several hundred titles transferred from 35mm to digital files. In only a few cases does the viewing seem equivalent to the original. The Scandinavian archives have a very high standard. One title I have seen in both formats is the 1924 Kean. One notable difference is the tinting on the 35mm print, which has been carefully recreated on a restoration by the Cinémathèque with assistance from the Czech archive; whilst t on the digital version the tinting is over saturated.

The books offers interesting material and, at time, sharp comment. But the overarching values accept uncritically the transformation of cinematic film by theatrical [and indeed non-theatrical] digital formats. With a film shot digitally, like Blade Runner 2049, this is fine with its own aesthetic. But when the transfer is of works like those by Edward Ulmer and Georges Méliès I find the result problematic. I felt the author was, like Al, an ‘unreliable narrator’. It paralleled the way that Andrew Britton describes Al’s narration;

“Al’s commentary, however, though it is not hypocritical – he plainly believes every word of it – is profoundly self-deceived and systematically unreliable.

“The whole meaning of Detour depends on the fact that Al is incapable of providing the impartial account of the action which convention leads us to expect in first-person narrative, and when we examine the film’s detail, we discover that his commentary has a status quite different….”

In detour Haskell first offers a lift to Al: later, Al offers a lift to Vera: all three characters find their expectations frustrated by events. I often feel like that when I watch a digital facsimile of an earlier film. So, I borrow and reword with an acknowledgement to Groucho Marx;

‘Every time someone switches on a digital facsimile I can [hopefully] go into another auditorium and watch a 35mm print.’

 

‘Modern Ghost Melodramas’

This is a new book by Michael Walker and published by the Amsterdam University Press. Michael’s previous book was ‘Hitchcock’s Motifs’ [also Amsterdam University Press, 2005 ). That book presented a study of an auteur through the motifs that form part of his distinctive themes and style. This new book presents genre study and, to a degree, discusses the motifs that contribute to the common features across a range of films.

This is a modern genre cycle and Michael is mainly interested in the films that work as melodrama rather than horror. The variety of films represents a genre that is found across the international film industry. He discusses over fifty films in fair detail with the primary focus on their narratives. He also tends to a psycho-analytical standpoint though he also discusses social and cultural aspects.

The style of the book is accessible and he is careful to define terms and concepts and he avoids cumbersome footnotes. He does, though, reference a range of published works on aspects of the films and the genre.

The book itself is well produced and the illustrative stills are of a high quality.

I am writing several reviews of the book and it struck me that as it is large and comlex [460 odds pages]that the details of the contents would help to give an overall sense of the book.  So I am including this below.

 

Contents

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction The Gothic Tradition Freud and Motifs
2. Three Major Predecessors

The Haunted House    The Changeling (Peter Medak, Canada, 1979)

The Malevolent Hotel The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, GB, I980)

The Avenging Ghost   |Ghost Story (John Irvin, US, 1981)

3. The Fallow Years: An Assortment of Ghosts

Bringing Back the Past           Lady in White (Frank LaLoggia, US, 1988) and

Ijintachi Tono Natsu / The Discarnates (Nobuhiko Obayashi, Japan, 1988)

Benevolent Ghosts       Ghost (Jerry Zucker, US, 1990)   Always (Steven Spielberg, US, 198  The Seductive Revenant Haunted (Lewis Gilbert, UK/ US, 1995)

Seminal Films

4. Ghosts in the City

A Ghost World     The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan, US, 1999)

Working-class Tensions  Stir of Echoes (David Koepp, US, 1999)

5. Ghosts in the Machine Ringu / Ring (Hideo Nakata, Japan, 1998) and

Ringu 2 / Ring 2 (Nakata, Japan, 1999)

6. Schoolgirl Angst Kokkuri-san / Kokkuri (Takahisa Zeze, Japan, 1997)

Memento Mori (Kim Tae-yong & Min Kyu-dong, South Korea, 1999)

7. Childhood Abuse In Dreams (Neil Jordan, US, 1998) and

The Dark (John Fawcett, UK/Germany, 2005)   The Haunting (Jan de Bont, US, 1999)

Evolution of the cycle

8. Generic Developments 1: Messages from the Dead

A Ghost Movie Thriller What Lies Beneath (Robert Zemeckis, US, 2000)

Southern Gothic The Gift (Sam Raimi, US, 2000)

Bereaved Husband Dragonfly (Tom Shadyac, US/Germany, 2002)

9. Spain and History 1: Politics and War El espinazo del Diablo / The Devil’s Backbone (Guillermo del Toro, Spain/Mexico, 2001).Tthe Others / Los Otros (Alejandro Amenabar, Spain/ US, 2001)

l0. Hollywood Reinflections The Ring (Gore Verbinski 2002) and The Ring Two (Hideo Nakata 2005)                 Male Melodrama Below (David Twohy, 2002)

11. Asian Variations Pon / Phone (Ahn Byung-ki, South Korea. 2000). Ju-on (Takashi Shimizu, Japan, 2004) and The Grudge (Takashi Shimizu, US, 2004) Chakushin Ar / One Missed Call (Takashi Miike, Japan, 2004)

I2. Generic Developments 2: Ghosts in the Woman’s Film    Honogurai mizu

No Soko Kara / Dark Water (Hideo Nakata,Japan, 2002)      Dark Water (Walter Salles, US, 2005)           Half Light (Craig Rosenberg, Germany/US, 2006) The Marsh (Jordan Barker, Canada/ US, 2006)

13. Ghosts and Institutions I: South Korea

The School The Yeogo Goedam films           – Whispering Corridors (Park Ki-hyeong 1998) Voice (Choi Equan 2005) A Blood Pledge (Lee Jong-yong 2009)

The Department Store Geoul Sokeru / Into the Mirror (Kim Sung-ho 2003)

14. Ghosts and institutions 2: The West

The Hospital    Riget/the Kingdom (4-part TV series) (Lars von Trier & Morten Arnfred, Denmark, 1994)  Fragile / Frágiles (Jaume Balaguero, Spain/UK, 2005)

The Prison Gothika (Mathieu Kassovitz, US, 2003)

15. National Variations

Hong Kong Inner Senses (LO Chi-leurig 2002)         India Bbhoot / Ghost (Ram Gopal Varma, 2003)       France Histoire de Marie et Julien (Jacques Rivette 2003)

Italy: Three Films NonTti Muovere / Don’t Move (Sergio Castellitto, Italy/Spain/

UK, 2004) L’aniore Ritorna (Sergio Rubini 2004)     Ovunque sei (Michele Placido 2004)

16. Anatomy of the Ghost Melodrama Themes and Motifs

Ryeong /The Ghost / Dead Friend (Kim Tae-kyoung, South Korea, 2004)

Narrative structure Sakesi / Retribution (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan, 2006)

17. Spain and History

2: The Franco Legacy and the Catholic Church

Lost Children El Orfanato / The Orphanage (J.A. Bayona 2006)

Unwilling Martyrs No-Do/ The Haunting / The Beckoning (Elio Quiroga 2009)

18. The Return of the British Ghost Film The Disappeared (Johnny Kevorkian, UK, 2008) Genova (Michael Winterbottom, UK/Cayman Islands, 2008)    The Awakening (Nick Murphy UK/France, 2011)

The Woman in Black  The Woman in Black (Herbert Wise, TVM, 1989)    The Woman in Black (James Watkins, UK/US/Canada/Sweden, 2011)         The Secret of Crickley Hall (Joe Ahearne 2012,3-part BBC TV mini-series)

19. Recent US developments and conclusion

Return to Haunted-house Horror

Broken Families and Mourning

 

Conclusion

Filmography

Illustrations

Bibliography

Index

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An American Tragedy, the novel and the films.

One of my potent memories from my early film going days is of Montgomery Cliff and Elizabeth Taylor entwined in a kiss in A Place in the Sun (1951). For years the sequence remained the embodiment of romantic desire for me. I was not familiar with the literary version from which the film was adapted [via a play], Theodore Dreiser’s ‘An American Tragedy’ [published in 1925]. Then more recently I saw the 1931 version of the novel [with the original title] directed by Josef von Sternberg. By this time I was also aware that a version of the novel had been planned as part of Sergei Eisenstein’s abortive attempts to make a film in Hollywood. So I read the book: I also read ‘Sister Carrie’, another  Dreiser novel adapted by Hollywood, Carrie (1952), with fine direction by William Wyler and fine performances by Jenifer Jones and Lawrence Olivier.

An early 20th century novel, which judging by the library copy I borrowed is now little read, and two adaptations made in Hollywood more than fifty years ago sounds a little esoteric. But in its day the book was a best seller and very influential. Many critics and commentators also saw it as a compelling commentary on US society. Theodore Dreiser used a real-life murder as the basis for his plot of a young man who loves both a working girl and a rich socialite. Faced by the former’s pregnancy, he first tries abortion then killing. Dreiser maintained

“it could not happen in any other country in the world”.

That claim was illuminated by another book, Mandy Merck’s study of the novel and film versions [2007]. She comments

“the novel and its adaptations both constitute and are constituted by the convulsions of the nation state that is its protagonist and its theme”.

The book is concerned with the sociology of the protagonist’s fate, not the drama.

Merck discusses in detail the origins of Dreiser’s novel, (written whilst he worked in Hollywood), and the three film versions: one by Sergei Eisenstein, unrealised; one by Josef Von Sternberg for Paramount in 1931: and the most famous, directed by George Stevens for Paramount in 1951, A Place in the Sun. Merck points out in her introduction that she studies the authors, who include Dreiser, the directors who worked on the adaptations, and the economic authors, the Hollywood studios. She does this in an exemplary fashion, having clearly engaged in very detailed research.

So we get the development of Dreiser’s mammoth novel, running to 800 pages. Dreiser was an important contributor to a movement for realist fiction. He himself had researched the real-life love and affairs and subsequent murders that are the prime focus. He always carefully researched the places and people who fill his novels. H. L. Mencken commented,

“When he sent some character into an eating-house for a meal it was always some eating-house that he had been to himself, and the meal he described in such relentless detail was one he had eaten, digested and remembered.” (Introduction to the 1948 edition).

Another writer quoted in Merck’s volume opined,

“No one else confronted so directly the sheer intractability of American social life and institutions, or … the difficulty of breaking free from social law.” (D. Denby in 2003).

The length and complexity of this novel made for a daunting adaptation. It was one of the projects worked on by Sergei Eisenstein when he sojourned briefly in Hollywood in 1929. Dreiser’s depiction of class divisions and his sociological standpoint clearly appealed to Eisenstein. He worked up a script for a 14-reel version. Merck studies this in detail, and it promised to be an intelligent and cinematic version of the novel. Dreiser certainly gave his approval. However, it did not get past the studio bosses, presumably made nervous by moral and red-baiting would-be censors. The author’s discussion is interesting in terms of Eisenstein’s career, though I always wonder how either he or his companions seriously imagined they could make a film in Hollywood.

The Sternberg version seems mainly to have been an attempt to recoup some of the costs by the studio. Sternberg was interested in illusion and artifice rather than realism. A quote by Selznick runs,

“I don’t think he has the basic honesty, the tolerance, the understanding this subject absolutely requires, . . .”

Moreover, the imminent arrival of Hollywood system of censorship, the Hays Code, made the explicit subject of the novel difficult. On completion, Dreiser was appalled at what his original had become, and undertook legal action, but he lost.

The post-war version that was very much Stevens’ own project. But Ivan Moffat complained,

“Stevens was a romantic, so the bleak social picture painted by Dreiser took second place to the steamy love-affair between George and Angela” (the protagonist and his privileged amour).

Certainly the film’s centre was the on- (and off-) screen romance: which I vividly remember. It does also have the put-upon workmate/victim of George; a fine performance by Shelley Winters as Alice.

All four versions of the story suffered from censorship and social outrage, since the original plot contained seduction, attempted abortion, murder and official corruption. Some of those involved in the 1950s version were also caught up in the HUAC’s attack on the Industry’s ‘liberals’. Merck spends time on these various social angles and their impact on the succeeding projects, and the overall discourse of book and films.

The book develops into a compelling and informative study of Hollywood and its relationship to US society and the wider world. At the end of the book Merck notes that 2005 saw a version of the original novel at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House: and a faintly disguised borrowing in Woody Allen’s Match Point (2005, inferior). Even Jean-Luc Godard joined the act with a brief reference in Histoire(s) du cinéma (1989 – 1999)..

I certainly recommend Mandy Merck’s authoritative study. I also recommend Dreiser’s original ‘An American Tragedy’. The 800 pages do not seem so many when you get involved in the novel. Coincidentally, I have also recently re-read novels by Dreiser’s fellow realist, Upton Sinclair. So I am now resolved to read that other doyen of North American realism, Frank Norris. Hollywood famously filmed his ‘McTeague’ as Greed (1923), with equally problematic results. The director was Erich Von Stroheim, who, along with Eisenstein, was one of the filmmakers preferred by Dreiser for his own epic work.

‘Hollywood’s American Tragedies: Dreiser, Eisenstein, Sternberg, Stevens’ by Mandy Merck, Berg 2007.

Fifty Contemporary Film Directors

Edited by Yvonne Taker. Published by Routledge 2011.

A second edition, the first was titled Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers, edited by Yvonne Tasker, published by Routledge 2002.

Reviewed in the Media Education Journal 2011. The Publisher’s WebPages only give twelve of the fifty names featured in the book. So I have reproduced the whole list below, showing the changes between editions. It also seems a good opportunity to add some brief profiles of filmmakers who I thought should have been featured and weren’t.

KEN LOACH

Probably the most impressive body of work in British film since the industry petered out in the 1960s. However, to be fair, Loach is not strictly speaking an auteur. He does have a recognisable style, which is a variation on the neo-realist approach. But his work is not actually thematic: what is common across his films is a political and ideological line. [[I use ideological in the sense of uncovering the underlying and overlooked social relations in which people are involved]. British film critics are probably more resistant than most to the idea of a didactic cinema, i.e. one where the political values are overt rather than covert. I have always thought it revealing that so many critics pick Kes (1969) as their favourite or his best film. Whilst it is overtly political it can be consumed as an individual tragedy and drama; whereas so much of Loach’s work forces us to confront the issues of class and conflict.

Moreover, Loach’s work is the result of a collective approach rather than the expression of a distinct personality. His early television work, like Cathy Come Home (1965), was strongly influenced by the producer Tony Garnett. His cinematic work relies very much on the input by the scriptwriter, for a long time the now-lamented Jim Allen and more recently Paul Laverty. I am sure that some of the more rigorous [or extreme] champions of the auteur approach regard him as a metteur en scène. That would be find if it were not the case that one can always discern a slight note of disparagement in the use of that term.  In fact, as with the marvellous films of Vittorio De Sica and Cesare Zavattini, the precision and power of the film drama arises from the meshing of different minds coming together in a common enterprise.

Loach’s films also rely very strongly on the contribution of the players before the camera. Acting is not quite the way to describe this. Whether it be a professional actress like Carol White in his early Poor Cow (1967), or semipro Ricky Tomlinson in the later Riff-Raff (1991), his films capture the language and the world of ordinary working people. And indeed ordinary working people are key to his representations. One scene I have often used in classes is the sequence in Raining Stones (1993) where Bob and Tommy attempt to sell the stolen sheep joints in a Working Men’s Club. The place, the people and the urban landscape are instantly recognisable to those that have experienced this world.

Importantly he presents not just the everyday world of the working class, but their political world. What some viewers [especially critics] often find difficult are the sequences that directly address the self-activism at moments of heightened political conflict. Land and Freedom (1995) contains the justly praised sequence where the proletarian fighters together with the indigenous villagers argue over land collectivisation. This is the political heart of the film, and many celluloid feet away from what passes for political drama in the mainstream. Loach’s political stance is inspiring but also problematic. The struggles he dramatises frequently centre on the question of betrayal: true of Land and Freedom and also of his television series Days of Hope (BBC 1975). To a degree the personal relations take precedence over the social relations in these films.

This limitation would seem in part to relate to the degree that Loach and his colleagues still use the conventions of the mainstream or of popular cinema. Essentially the films are melodramas of protest and the focus is predominantly on individuals working within the movement. Thus Loach shows only a limited influence from the work of the key political filmmaker, Sergei Eisenstein. We have identifiable personalities in Loach’s films rather than types. And we have personal motivations central to the drama. In Land and Freedom a central motif is lying: by the western governments and media: by members within the mainstream Communist movement: and by the protagonist David. All of these lies contribute to the melodramatic climax of the film, when Blanca is shot and dies. Mainstream conventions tend to defy the analytical stance needed to contexualise such events: for example the values and practices of the Communist Party, the Anarchists, the Fascists and the Imperialist powers.

This is clear in his most recent film, Route Irish (2010). In some ways the film seems to revisit the issues in Hidden Agenda (1990), which dealt with political assassinations by the British in Ireland. Here the Route Irish refers to the Iraq war and the work of mercenaries in that conflict. The new film is dominated by the personal angst of Fergus over the death of his lifelong friend Frankie. And the resolution of the film offers personal vengeance rather than a social solution. As in mainstream drama the focus is on an ‘evil’ entrepreneur and much less centrally on the British State.

If this sounds rather grim Loach and his team frequently display not only emotion but also humour. Route Irish features the recurring gag of recent films, a three-legged dog. Perhaps that is an authorial signature?

The listing:

 

Names that appear only in the first edition are in brackets: names that are added to the second edition are underlined.

 [Alison Anders by Yvonne Tasker]: Pedro Almodóvar by José Arroyo: Wes Anderson by Devin Orgeron: Aoyama Shinji by Aaron: Gregg Araki by Glyn Davis: [Jean-Jacques Beineix by Phil Powrie]: [Bernardo Bertolucci in context by Mary Wood]: Luc Besson Bard and filmmaker [by Susan Hayward], by Rosamund Maule: Kathryn Bigelow by Yvonne Tasker: Charles Burnett by Chuck Kleinhans: Tim Burton by Yvonne Tasker: James Cameron by Alexandra Keller: Jane Campion [by Justine Ashby],       by Shelley Cobb: Gurinder Chadha by Rayner Denison: Jackie Chan by Leon Hunt: The Coen Brothers by Jon Lewis: [Francis Ford Coppola by Scot Mackenzie]:       Sofia Coppola by Pam Cook: David Cronenberg by Marc O’Day: Julie Dash by Terry Moore: Guillermo del Toro by Lindsay Steenberg:  Atom Egoyan by Geoff Pevere: David Fincher by Devin Orgeron: Hal Hartley [by Lesley Deer], by Sebastian Manley:  Todd Haynes by Justin Wyatt: Peter Jackson by Paul Malcom: Jim Jarmusch [by Mark Peranson],  by Jason Wood: Neil Jordan [by Fidelma Farley], by Maria Pramaggiore: [The Kaurismäki brothers by Tytti Soila]: Aki Kaurimäki by Tytti Soila:  Abbas Kiarostami by Sharon Lin Tay: [Krzytof Kieślowski by Paul Coates]: [Diane Kurys by Carrie Tarr}: Ang Lee by Ian Haydn Smith: Spike Lee by Yvonne Tasker: David Lynch by Marc O’Day   : Michael Mann by Christopher Sharrett: Shane Meadows by Martin Fradley: Hayao Miyazaki by Rayna Denison:  Michael Moore by Diane Negra:  Mira Nair [by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster], by Sue Brennan: François Ozon by Ginette Vincendeau: Park Chan-Wook by Anne Cieko and Hunju Lee: Sally Potter by Anne Cieko: John Sayles by Mark Jancovich and James Lyons: Martin Scorsese by George S. Larke-Walsh: [Coline Serreau by Brigitte Rollet]: Steven Soderberg by Jennifer Holt:  Todd Solondz by Dean Defino: Steven Spielberg by Peter Krämer: Oliver Stone by Martin Fradley: Quentin Tarantino by Glyn White: [Tsui Hark by Julian Stringer]: [Christine Vachon, Independent film producer by Ros Jennings}: Lars Von Trier by Mette Hjort: Gus Van Sant by Harry M. Benshoff: [Wayne Wang by Scot Mackenzie]: [Peter Weir by Ros Jennings, Australian auteur / Hollywood director]; [Wim Wenders by Stan Jones]: Wong Kar-Wai [by Stan Jones],  by Julian Stringer: John Woo by Tony Williams : Zhang Yimou [by Sheldon H. Lu],  by Haomin Gong: Zhang Yuan by Zhang Zhen.