thoughts

I know that in class on Tuesday we discussed the similarities between Industrial Britain and Man With a Movie Camera and decided that the British film was a cheaper version of the Russian film that we all loved. I think this is valid, perhaps even more so in the knowledge that British filmmakers were late in coming to view foreign avant-gardge films. I think it is also clear that the filmmaking technicalities and perhaps even the quality are lesser, which may also contribute to our attitudes that it is just a rip off. However, I do not think that it was a misguided rip off, because it is a film of different purposes. Man With a Movie Camera was a commissioned documentary meant to show everyday Russian life and was made avant-garde through subtle liberties of Vertov. Industrial Britain was a straight forward "observational" documentary meant to educated about British trades. It was not shown as an avant-garde film, but as a key film in relation to Trade Tattoo. I think that in the context of our class we were impulsive to decide that Industrial Britain was in ways "glorifying" the British worker. Perhaps we were just looking into it to hard or being to critical of it in comparison to Man With a Movie Camera and other interesting films that we have seen? I hate to have to antagonize what seemed to be like a class consensus, but there was nothing else left for me to blog about plus I chilled with Robert Flaherty yesterday and he was really really down about our class hating his film. I had to help a brother out and give him some support.