The Last Democracy

By Jennie Rose, AlterNet. Posted May 14, 2004.

"If more people met in the lobby, maybe life would be better."

For a "State of Cinema" address delivered to a well-heeled crowd at the San Francisco International Film Festival, you might expect to hear about overall trends and innovations, where to look for the next hot national cinema, industry developments or new talent. Instead, B. Ruby Rich, who spoke before a screening of Suite Habana, came prepared to talk about film festivals as microcosms of true democracy.

In her words: "I have begun to think of film festivals as the last refuge of democracy in this increasingly controlled and manacled world of ours, the last place where a true participatory discourse can prevail and where persons of deep-seated convictions and open minds can come to exchange views, surrender control, and be changed forever by what goes by on screen."

Conspicuously absent from the screening of Suite Habana, a new Cuban documentary, was its director, Fernando Perez (Life Is To Whistle). Thanks to Homeland Security policy, Perez was not allowed to enter the country to attend the US premiere of his own film. In this light, not to draw attention to the tatters of American democracy would be a whitewash.

B. Ruby Rich met with GreenCine afterwards to talk about queer cinema (it's over), Three Kings (re-release it!), the larger purpose of film festivals (to confront the other), and the American movie business (capitalism on steroids).

You say a slew of Hollywood movies released this fall have been about revenge, specifically, 21 Grams, Mystic River and Kill Bill. This troubled you; you said that they represented a kind of cinematic fundamentalism. Can you explain?

I was riffing off a piece I had written for the London paper The Guardian on films of revenge. At that time, I had put Kill Bill into that [category] and it really troubled me that all three of these films were setting people up for vigilante justice, or actually, vigilante injustice in which innocent people are going to die or the wrong person is going to get killed. It's not necessarily that all these films had this in mind, but I think that the success of the films has to do with the mood in this country at the moment. The reason they resonated with people was for that reason.

[This goes] all the way back to the time right after 9/11, when the US made such a fatal wrong turn from having the world's sympathy to earning the world's enmity with Afghanistan. In that fall and winter, when that was happening and we were going so the wrong way, In the Bedroom came out. That was an indie film seemingly about something different, but it was also about vigilante justice. In this case you could say that grief was short-circuited by anger and the desire for revenge. The way it broke out of the usual tiny market position and broke into such wide release had everything to do with the way this country is directed down this road of revenge against its better interests. And literally, like the film, is selling out its soul.

Now I think something even worse is happening with this season's releases. Not just this winter, but the recent success of Lord of the Rings, Master and Commander, Seabiscuit. [Note: Rich identifies these films as part of a whole new generation of lad movies: "You don't see women in any of these except to keep the home fires burning."] I don't think it's just nostalgia because we don't necessarily remember those events. But it's going back to the past and into mythology and fantasy in order to feed this idea of triumphalism that is not playing out that way in our real lives. It's terribly dangerous and it makes me almost feel almost physically ill to think about these films.

You say that every town should have a festival and that they should become as commonplace as the newspaper. What would that look like?

Film festivals are almost as numerous as newspapers, at least in the US. Still, I know that's a little bit fanciful to say. In fact, when you look at the demographics of a major film festival, who has the money to go, who feels welcome? But then there are all these film festivals about specific communities - Latino, Jewish, Asian American. And they are about constituting community. Even at this one [SFIFF], there might not be class diversity there, but there is an ethnic and racial diversity, because people are coming to see the films from their parts of the world and meeting each other, at least in the lobby. If more people met in the lobby, maybe life would be better.

What would the world look like? Well, back when the US was a functional democracy, there were town meetings. There were communities. There would be screenings and dialogue, and then there could be arguments in a public place like there were at my speech. I think that's great when there is open discussion.

Wait a minute. Democracy is not functionally dead on the floor. People still caucus. What about caucusing?

No, it's not completely dead. It's just in some intensive care unit somewhere and I don't trust the nurse. [laughs] I think it's a model. The main thing to me is, there has to be a way to move Americans past headline caricatures and mainstream media stereotypes. One of the few places where that happens is in films from other parts of the world. Films in other genres, films being made by people who aren't Americans themselves and can understand that the world is not some kind of reflecting mirror stashed on the United States' vanity table. That it's really, fundamentally different with different customs and that they are not crazy or evil.