Page 196
more accessibly and less expensively. In a very basic sense, your films are
about
film and what an artist can accomplish with it. I can't imagine them on video.
Noren:
The problem I have with video is the way it registers natural light; it's crude, insensitive, inaccurate, and barbaric. I don't know if this can be improved. The technology is fascinating and attractive in many ways. It is much easier and less expensive to work with, and the possibility of being able to inexpensively distribute many copies of a work is very exciting. As it is now, I'm lucky to have three or four prints of a film in circulation at any one time because they're so expensive. I'm not a snob about itif the light problem were solved I'd start working with it immediately, but I don't think it can be. Probably video will replace film altogether in the futurea dreadful thought, but probably true. As for transferring film to video, I've never seen an example in which the film wasn't diminished.
MacDonald:
Can you give me a sense of how often your films are rented? Years ago, when I talked with Diana Barrie, she felt that the issue of her films being seen or ignored wasn't all that important: for her, the pleasure was in making the films, and worrying about screenings was the downside of the process. If her films weren't seen, in fact, that'd be OK, so long as she could continue making work. In some senses, her films (especially her early Super-8 films) remind me of yours. Do you share her attitude?
Noren:
My films are rented fairly often, seemingly more as time passes. I have a certain following, and I certainly don't feel "ignored." I don't know if I would continue to make films if they were never seen by anyone; that's too problematic. I'm interested in echos, I like to get energy back in exchange for the energy I send out; in fact, it's a necessity.
The situation is very frustrating, to the point of despair sometimes, but then it always has been, going back twenty years or so. The audience for the kind of films we're talking about here is larger than it ever was, and there are more places for the films to be seen and more outlets for scholarly writing about the films than at any point I can remember. But still you can spend years working on a film, putting your lifeblood and best mind into it, and then when it's released, you are very fortunate if it's seen by a total of two thousand people. After it's made the circuit of the places that show this kind of work, it can sit unseen for years, no matter how well-received it was. My films are complex and intricate; there's no way they can be completely understood in a single viewing, and this is true of many films, many filmmakers. I can't count the number of times I've seen interesting work, knowing at the time that I would very likely never see it again.
The obvious answer is high quality, inexpensive copies, like books,