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LOVE AMONG THE RUINS: A REPORT FROM FLICKERINGS 2006
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There is no foreign land; it is the traveller only that is foreign, and now
and again, by a flash of recollection, lights up the contrasts of the earth.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
Last year at Flickerings (which is, BTW, the title of one
of my favorite French New Wave films), following a screening of yet another
obscure foreign film (so called), some high-school -aged kid who had
obviously not seen very many (so called) obscure foreign films staggered up
to me, shell-shocked. He didn't even seem to be able to formulate the
question he wanted to ask. "How did you.. know to do this?" I was wrapping
a microphone cable, which I do with flair, but I didn't think he meant that.
"This?" "This..." He gestured to take in the whole room — a dirty old
barn with scattered folding chairs and birds nesting in the wooden rafters.
"This," he murmured again, blurting out, finally, "Show all these movies and
then talk about them afterward?" Ahhh, it all became suddenly clear. He'd had
an epiphany. He'd had an experience with a movie that he'd never heard
of, from a country he'd never even considered as making movies, and —
most important — that he didn't realize was possible with a film
until tonight. And it had messed him up — he looked exhausted,
like his head had been turned inside-out. He'd come to Cornerstone Festival
and his world had been rocked in a way he couldn't have expected. He might
never be able to look at movies or movie-watching the same way ever again.
With a little luck, Flickerings might have ruined him for life. Not
everybody has so dramatic a reaction to our little
film-festival-within-a-music-festival, but I suppose that's the goal. When
it happens, it's the kind of thing that makes you wonder if programming those
obscure foreign films in that dirty old barn wasn't such a crazy idea after
all...
Of course, the obscure part can be a bit of self-indulgence, I get that. The
other side of that coin is the reality that the best programs emerge from
film encounters that have been the most personally meaningful among those of
us presenting the films. I've been wrestling with Roberto Rossellini for a
few years now. I can't get these films out of my head. I want to watch them
over and over, and I've assembled more than one group screening just so I
could have somebody to talk with the films about. Why aren't more Christians
talking about Rossellini and his films, especially on this centennial year of
his birth? Well, for one thing, the films aren't the easiest to find. Like
everything connected to the director, his film estate and ongoing
distribution have been in a confused uproar (though rumor has it that some
restorations and retrospectives are finally in the works). Rossellini seemed
to thrive on chaos, driving his actors and funders crazy with his erratic,
improvisational creating. And in the process, he somehow tuned in to
frequencies that most films actually drown out with their carefully-crafted
plots, well-rounded characters, classically-structured stories and
utilitarian camera work.
As for plot, C. S. Lewis argues that it's proper function is as a net to
catch Something Else; Rossellini spent his career trying to catch that
Something Else. To focus on the plot means being pretty much done with a work
once you know how it ends. To chase after the Something Else means it will
always be there waiting for you. To learn to listen for the Something Else
beyond conventional story and character means we viewers have to exercise
muscles of perception most films don't even require of us; the really
interesting thing for me is how those same muscles of perception can be
involved, not just in watching films, but in our capacity to listen and see
in general: in our relations with others, the world around us, and even with
God. The glimpses I've had of what you might call a more poetic or wholistic
way of seeing has inspired me to keep building up those muscles: for suddenly
I realize how much I've been missing, in films and life.
So if I can convince a few other people to wrestle with Rossellini with me,
even for awhile, so much the better. And for a long weekend in early July at
Flickerings 2006, a bunch of us did just that. We had a relatively huge
turnout for the opening film, Germany: Year Zero. There wasn't much
else going on yet at Cornerstone Festival,
and that film is among the most conventional and/or accessible of
Rossellini's works. It's a dark film: the Good Friday required for any
subsequent Resurrection. One person asked afterward how the film had been
originally received — not well, actually, and mainly because audiences
weren't yet ready to think sympathetically about Germans in 1947. The bigger
picture, of course, which I tried to emphasize, is that we've all experienced
some kind of devastation or ruin in our lives — maybe a divorce, a
death, a loss of ideals or faith, the great change we've all experienced
living in the post-Modern or post-9/11 era: we can't even begin to name the
age we live in except by the rubble of the one behind. To make a personal
connection with Rossellini's postwar search, starting in the rubble, can
offer new directions for our own path in this post-everything world of today.
In fact, Rossellini's interest in finding a new foundation upon which to
rebuild after World War II led him after "Year Zero" to an examination of the
life of St. Francis of Assisi. That should get our attention immediately,
and signals the remarkable soundness of Rossellini's instincts and vision.
For our program, we wove St. Francis into the mix in various ways, including
a seminar program and screening of Rossellini's The Flowers of St.
Francis at Flickerings' sister program, the
Imaginarium. This was a most appropriate venue for that film, for a
large part of the appeal of the saint is his holy foolishness, his winsome
recovery of a childlike perspective — and that's also a major aim of the
Imaginarium. From there, we picked up the journey back at Flickerings,
where, over the next few days we continued to work out the implications of an
instinct that led this director away from material and ideological treatment
for the wounds of Western Civilization, towards a healing of the spirit. The
overlap between Rossellini's insistence on spiritual solutions in his content
and his increasing avoidance of conventional form make watching these films a
unique opportunity for the viewers to experience simultaneous growth and even
breakthroughs, spiritual and aesthetic — and point up the mysterious
connection between art and faith.
Our other major film track at the 2006 Flickerings
featured a mini-retrospective of the work of Belgian brother filmmakers, Luc
and Jean-Pierre Dardenne. (We screened their film The Son at
Flickerings 2004.) Winners of last year's big prize at Cannes, the Dardennes
have frequently noted their debt to Roberto Rossellini and especially his
Germany: Year Zero, which they've declared their "model film." Like
Rossellini's film, the Dardennes' art is concerned with people emerging from
rubble, as well as with the tragic loss of childhood by traumatizing early
contact with death and evil. Yet for all the bleak setting and circumstance,
the Dardennes' films are hopeful, in that their young protagonists seem to
find a way out of the darkest places and take steps that leave us feeling
they've finally found a path out of the ruin of their lives. These are not
necessarily the most accessible films, either, for the Dardenne's style can
often seem abrupt and frustratingly elliptic. Yet our audiences stayed with
the films, and stayed behind afterward to grapple together with them. One of
the most gratifying things about doing Flickerings is watching as people who
may not watch such challenging films rise to the challenge and make the
connection — making comments and asking questions that show the films
have gotten under their skin, and that they'll be carrying this experience
with them when they go out the door. A taste for Something Else can become,
with a little luck and maybe some guidance now and then, a lifetime
addiction.
Doug Cummings hosted our Dardennes track, giving introductions and leading
discussions, along with contributing an opening seminar. Doug has become a
real friend and supporter of Flickerings during the past few years and we're
privileged to be able to draw upon his experience and gift for opening up
others to great films and make it a part of our vision here. (He's also not
so bad at getting the grill started for the between-movies bar-b-que. Here's
a shot of Doug at a cookout at our faithful projectionist Marek Rossi's
campsite, lighting the Official Flickerings Flame.) Doug gives me a hard
time for my frequent invoking of the authority of St. Lewis (St. Clive
Staples Lewis) but that's a name to settle debates in this particular
community — and I find I can generally come up with some quote that gets
Lewis to say anything Doug's favorite saint, André Bazin, has to say about
art and engaging with it. (In fact, I think Lewis says somewhere, "Whatever
works, go for it, Dude…" — or something like that.) Lewis's notion of
the "Something Else" in literature is virtually the same thing Bazin, an
early and ardent champion of Rossellini, looks for in film. Both had a
tremendous gift for "sympathetic imagination," the desire and ability to see
with other eyes — something akin to the openness of a St. Francis who
could call the sun, moon and stars his brothers and sisters.
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