Blog Post #243: Some Reflection in Four Stanzas!

Some recent experiences in my local film community have prompted me to reflect on our broader creative environment, briefly summarize the work I've produced on my own, offer some observations from my creative endeavoring and call for a new way of regarding our beloved practice of filmmaking. All in a poem inspired by Geoffrey Chaucer's couplet rhyme form:

O reprehensible oligarchy or rule by few!

Afflicting not only government but film production, too.

Studios exercise an iron grip on the film economy far and wide,

But empty auditoriums and constant flops hurt their pride.

So many expensive failures, time after time,

These massive entities, unable to turn on a dime.

Their stagnancy and decline as plain as day,

But for us many in their eroding shadow, what's our play?

We carry the untold power of our computers and phones,

But we must overcome our complexes as corporate drones.

The future can be bright for individual and nation,

Provided we seize our resolve and might of self-organization.

We must seek out theory and practice free from oligarchic reliance,

So, a quick refresher about my acts of rapt defiance:

All accomplished as sole writer, producer, director, cinematographer and editor,

16 short films and four feature films as singular progenitor.

Regarding my features, only several thousand dollars per budget each,

Sizable casts but zero crew to fashion a method within everyone's reach.

What we accomplish in this life is our invisible clothing,

Committed to our art, for toil and sweat we must not harbor loathing.

There's more: a self-published memoir constituted of 443 pages,

As with film, a passion for literacy within me also rages.

Film or book, any work can be united with altruism and social value,

Provided the spirit of transparency and generativity are alive inside you.

Long have I concerned myself with the nature of organizations and institutions around me,

As a short filmmaker in high school, film student in college and feature filmmaker in maturity.

Starting from scratch with a simple camera, tripod, family and friends,

Despite meager institutional support, I was molded by a constant struggle to reach my ends.

In film school, I learned to appreciate a community of alike talent and familiar intent,

Amid so much distraction and temptation, a steadfast determination among us to never relent.

But after film school, overt specialization threatened the virtue of individual authorship,

So many lay down their sword and let their artistic autonomy and agency slip.

Among local organizations, the passion for art and self-actualization is not improved,

To some organizers, community and camaraderie as secondary to corporate prostration is easily proved.

If science is the model, new ideas and viewpoints should be in demand rather than dismissed,

Not a view that everything we need is from the top-down provided if we merely persist.

If we love this work more than its popular and glamorous allure, let us bend it to our humble means,

We must disavow our fidelity to a number of ideas prevalent and harmful behind-the-scenes.

Omniscient perspective and its oppressive hold must be the first we spiritedly question and reject,

There are infinitely more inexpensive ways of regarding the relationship between camera and subject.

Next, consider the age of the film medium in comparison to music, literature, theatre and dance,

To assume we've reached the absolute end and zenith of the art is a sentiment of rank arrogance.

Something more basic must be addressed and it relates to a truth of our individuality,

That we both originate from nature but are also radically separate from it is an oft-neglected reality.

Corporations extend control over our lives by our naïve, primal tendency to consume rather than build,

We must wrestle with ourselves to forge and summon a broadsword from the steel we've willed.

So, let us take up arms creatively and battle myopic foes in this life-long fight which is our curse,

Everyone willing deserves the fulfillment and joy wrought from realizing their own creative universe!

Chaucer at work.