PrintFor my Hungarian cinema class, I had hoped to write a paper on the films of Miklos Jancso, an influential New Wave director of movies like “The Red and the White.” Not wanting to shell out a large amount of cash for imported DVDs—not to mention a region-specific DVD player—I turned to Butler. Of the more than 20 films Jancso directed, Butler housed only three. Paper topic denied.
There have been many changes in the film industry of late—YouTube filmmakers, on-demand movies, Netflix via the Internet. Many have spoken about how filmmakers and companies should adapt to the new age, but what about those in academia? After all, a film studies community connected by the Web could pioneer stronger research. Fortunately, the digital age has given those in academia a reason for hope.
Consider The Auteurs (theauteurs.com), a new Web site that has risen in popularity over the last year, founded by Efe Cakarel, Kamer Altinova, and Halim Cillov. Cillov, a graduate of the MA program at Columbia in modern European studies, explains in an e-mail the genesis of the Web site: “Efe Cakarel was stuck in Tokyo with nothing but his laptop and an Internet connection, and he wanted to watch a movie. Specifically he wanted to watch Wong Kar-wai’s ‘In the Mood for Love,’ and was shocked to find that not only could he not watch that film online, but also there were hardly any great films available to watch online.”
The Auteurs now offers a number of art films and classics, available either individually or with a monthly subscription. The films are preserved in the best way possible, with subtitles, the correct aspect ratios, and perfect streaming quality. After watching the films, members can then discuss them by posting reviews, engaging in debates, or simply recommending other titles to watch.
The Auteurs is a fun Web site for anyone who loves cinema, but what if there were a site specifically designed for academic institutions? Research in today’s film community is limited by the scarcity of classic films from around the globe. Too many films are available only in their original countries, and access to the best prints of films is even more limited. Often, only scholars from those countries are aware certain cinematic gems even exist.
Imagine a Web site where you could watch any classic movie. Trying to find a good print of Jancso’s directorial debut “The Bells Have Gone to Rome”? Just pull up it up and click play. You could also throw in a discussion forum, links to academic articles about a film’s production and critical reception, or clips that show examples of specific filmmaking techniques. And it would all be controlled by a cooperative of academic film intuitions across the globe.
As wonderful as that idea may sound, its conception is easier than its implementation. Annette Insdorf, director of Columbia’s undergraduate film studies program, worries about many of the potential logistical problems, some of which cropped up when she attempted to get digital copies of films for her students in her senior seminar. “As I learned from our media librarian at Butler, digital access to film content exists, but because of copyright, licensing, etc., adapting it to curricular needs is quite a challenge,” she says.
The Auteurs has had similar difficulties, as many film companies have been unwilling to license their material. “Speaking from the point of view of someone who has spent the last two years trying—and usually succeeding—to convince a very conservative industry to put their [films] online, it has been a continual uphill struggle,” Cillov says. While Disney and Universal can screen their films online for a small fee, a small Romanian company might not have that same luxury. Universities would have to transfer their old prints to digital copies—a process much easier said than done.
And Insdorf brings up another major problem: most students would watch films for class on their MacBooks, but “a film like ‘2001’ really should be seen on a large screen with an audience, replicating the ‘theatrical’ experience that fulfills Stanley Kubrick’s original vision.”
But if academics could simply access, say, the great Iranian films of the 1950s without scouring the Earth for a pirated dubbed VHS, the Internet seems almost a necessity more than a commodity in promoting the film academic community. The Auteurs has already been in contact with a number of universities, hoping to give students access to the films in their online database. Cillov, in fact, finds students to be some of their best members: “Film students are among the most active and passionate members of our community, and we not only want to give them a social platform to meet and discuss cinema, but also a VOD [video on-demand] platform to assist in their studies.”
If The Auteurs continues to be a success, can an academic film site also become reality, despite the setbacks? It’s tough to say. But both would help engineer a truly global film community—a place to study the cinematic masters like Jancso or Kubrick. The Auteurs already shows that there is a community willing to examine movies critically, beyond discussions of how cool a film’s special effects are. And film historians can now geek out on the Internet as well.