The Belgrade Manifesto

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The Belgrade Manifesto was initiated by two American Filmmakers, Nora Hoppe and Jon Sanders, at the Belgrade Festival of Auteur film. Nora Hoppe has lived and worked in Europe, and is currently based in Berlin, and Jon Sanders made a Western in Canada(Painted Angels 1999) and lives in London. The manifesto highlights important issues that has been plaguing the film industry world over; due to the globalization of Hollywood marketed images and visuals. So spread the word, and sign up, in support of the Manifesto.




An excerpt from the manifesto:-

“I am convinced that if you start by saying ‘I'm going to destroy everything, I'm going to be modern’, then you won't be modern. You can be modern, and must want to be so, because you must contribute something, but you can be modern only by humbly following your predecessors.”

— Jean Renoir



There is a crisis in cinema today, a deep malaise, a feeling of artistic exhaustion, of pointlessness. The evolution of cinematic language that is so vital to the continued well-being and relevance of the medium has pretty much come to a standstill. Good films are getting fewer, the informed and knowledgeable audience that is so important for their success has shrunk. The older generation don't go to the cinema any more because so many films are for young people, and the young people today have little idea of cinema's capacity for depth, excitement and complexity. The critics, who should be guiding and educating that audience, are mostly inadequate, and the distribution structures no longer work.



The growth of the globalised market and of Hollywood's extraordinary success in exploiting it, despite the fact that the films are getting worse, has not only depleted the alternative markets but, more disturbingly, has undermined alternative approaches to production by acting as a virus - its methods and philosophy are either taken on directly or internalised. Nobody pays attention to form, without which, as our predecessors understood, nothing worthwhile can possibly develop. The “story” is given exaggerated importance; the study of its crude mechanics has become an industry in itself with consultants and experts in every financing agency and production house, part of an ever growing and unproductive bureaucracy whose purpose is to sniff out the trends and fads of the day and to select and develop (and distort) productions in accordance with those predictions.



Read the Full Manifesto on the official website: http://www.belgrademanifesto.com.


PS: It's very important that, ”We Indians" wake up and, support good Cinema- and not just talk about it.



Thanks to Harry, as I came to know about the Manifesto at his indispensable blog.

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