Submitted by Hans Lucas on 14 September 2008 - 1:52pm.
In response to Christina F's comment on the empowerment of cheap digital film making technology and others like it.
The fact of the matter is that whilst cheap digital technology has empowered people to produce their own images and narratives to a point, they remain highly personal and undistributed and pose no threat to the film making industry proper. The idea that a new wave of democratic digital film makers is just waiting in the wings to usurp the national cinema industries is a poor assessment and one I have been listening to and reading about ever since Super 8mm made it into people's homes. You might make a film on video with your friends but that is all you will do. Access to funding and more importantly distribution and exhibition are as protected by the hegemonic mainstream as they ever were. And how will "poor" film makers compete with the behemoth PR campaigns and agencies that accompany even the most "independent" of cinema? As industrial capitalism continues to concentrate wealth and influence into an ever decreasing small number of hands those on the outside will be forever kept there.
Digital film making changes nothing
In response to Christina F's comment on the empowerment of cheap digital film making technology and others like it.
The fact of the matter is that whilst cheap digital technology has empowered people to produce their own images and narratives to a point, they remain highly personal and undistributed and pose no threat to the film making industry proper. The idea that a new wave of democratic digital film makers is just waiting in the wings to usurp the national cinema industries is a poor assessment and one I have been listening to and reading about ever since Super 8mm made it into people's homes. You might make a film on video with your friends but that is all you will do. Access to funding and more importantly distribution and exhibition are as protected by the hegemonic mainstream as they ever were. And how will "poor" film makers compete with the behemoth PR campaigns and agencies that accompany even the most "independent" of cinema? As industrial capitalism continues to concentrate wealth and influence into an ever decreasing small number of hands those on the outside will be forever kept there.