Michel Gondry - You'll Like This Film Because You're In It
Gondry
Writes from a very utopian perspective about community filmmaking: aspires to create a marxist style of filmmaking, yet he largely retains directorial control. Follows the hollywood paradigm: inverse filtering of "actors" by skill.
Economics: is the currency of accreditation worthy of the work of the community actors? What about ownership?
Emphasises authorship over the system: "And the key to my system was this: The people who shot the film were the ones who watched it. There was no concentration of power, so each person has the same amount of connection with the film. No hype. No coercive advertising. And no room for idolization." (Gondry: p19)
Jack Black and Mos Def - hierarchy of actors. If he was interested in making a film about community, why use celebrity actors? "I had ignored the influence of other actors, like Jack Black, who had added a bit of artificial magic to the experience, not to mention a solid reason to consistently attend the shoot." (p21)
The first failed attempt: "My system seemed to work only because it was held together by the big attractive filmmaking machine." (p21)
Discussion
- Raymond Williams: On community
- Communitarianism: [1]
Frankfurt school of 'armchair upper-class leftists.'
-> Adorno on kitsch
Juxtaposition of community and state - basis for Nazism
Community in the workplace - basis for political socialism
Owning the means of production: technology -> extension of the factory into the living place