In the end, this situation came to seem, for lack of a better word, immoral: to a considerable extent, I was now exploiting the labor and creativity of media makers, and those who have sacrificed to provide them with public exposure, for my own pleasure and sense of accomplishment, for my own career, without giving back in any direct, practical sense. And so, when an opportunity arose to return to teaching and programming, I realized I needed to take advantage of it. The opportunity was offered by Hamilton College, the fine, small liberal arts college in Clinton, New York. We agreed that I would teach film history and that, as part of my job (rewarded by a course-load reduction), I would generate regular moving-image media events with an eye to crossing academic disciplinary boundaries and creating an intellectual nexus for the campus and the surrounding community. The college has more than adequate resources for such events, though there has never been an ongoing, serious attempt on this campus to do what Hamilton was now proposing. Whether I can develop an audience for the events I plan, an audience that reaches beyond the film studies classroom and beyond the college, remains to be seen. What does seem clear, even at this opening moment of the process, however, is that if the Hamilton College administration can commit to an increased presence of serious moving-image media on campus, the administrations of other colleges and universities can do the same. And even if I discover that I do not have the skills to generate the kind of audience that the wide world of cinema deserves, I am sure that the resources will remain available for others who might be more successful in using them. The first event in the series I have organized (scholar Marta Braun presenting a lecture titled “Étienne-Jules Marey: Science and Cinema Explored”) is only days away as I write, and—as all programmers reading this will know—I am awash in the details of getting the events space in efficient working order, in arranging to host Professor Braun, and in working to attract an audience to this and other scheduled events. And, again as all programmers will know, I am already thinking of the kinds of events I’ll host next year: for example, the recent popular successes of remarkable nature films—Winged Migration (2001), Deep Blue (2005), March of the Penguins (2005), Grizzly Man (2005)—suggest that there might be ways of bringing Hamilton’s science faculty and humanities faculty together, in the way Amos Vogel’s programming of science films alongside avant-garde works helped to bring Cinema 16’s diverse audience together. So far, the programming process has been both pleasurable and exhausting—even a bit frightening for someone who has been outside the fray for some years now. But it does feel wonderful to be serving the field in a more direct way, to be using what my activities as a “film historian” have taught me, in the interest of keeping a living cinema history alive.
The fifth volume of SCOTT MACDONALD’s series A Critical Cinema was published by the University of California Press in 2005; Art in Cinema: Documents toward a History of the Film Society is due out from Temple University Press in 2006. He teaches at Hamilton College.
NOTES: 1. Gene Youngblood, “Metaphysical Structuralism: The Videotapes of Bill Viola,” Millennium Film Journal, no. 20–21 (Fall/Winter 1988–89): 83. 2. Cinema 16: Documents Toward a History of the Film Society was published by Temple University Press in 2002; a companion piece, Art in Cinema: Documents…, is due out this year.
NAMAC | A CLOSER LOOK 2005
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