You don't need to tell me that some people out there take film rather seriously. Sometimes ridiculously seriously – "film for film's sake, art for art's sake!" Fortunately, and as far as I'm aware, Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis only fall into the former category. Nonetheless, in a conversation with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now! that followed the release of the Leap Manifesto and the documentary This Changes Everything, Klein, Lewis and Gonzalez pretty much trip over each other while extolling the amazing things that film can (supposedly) do:
Hehe. Although I’d like to take credit for that, and is the kind of thing I’d normally do, it was actually a total fluke. I suppose I’m getting a bit rusty, although perhaps the osmosis is still working it’s charm. (And if you didn’t, you can left-click the image and it’ll zoom out – but wait for the page to complete loading first.)
Interesting that an ex film student is advocating for no more films, and hasn’t watched TV or films in 10 years? And a millennial advocating the dissolution of one of the mediums that they usually appreciated, you Allan are exceptional for your age group!
Now if we can just cure the gullibility when it comes to those laying out bait in front of you related to the physical sciences…
Well I’ll be. I didn’t see that one coming. And to be technical I think I missed out on being counted as a millennial by two years, so I’m less exceptional that you think.
And about those physical sciences… I’m working on it!
As a natural-born communicator, Allan Christensen is unlikely on behalf of the climate just to tend his nine bean rows in silence. Having foresworn high-carbon media such as film and TV (thereby covering some of the same ground as Jerry Mander’s Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, published almost 40 years ago), he takes to the high-carbon internet to promote a book that may appear, according to him, sometime around 2020. We can be impressed by Christensen’s decision to sacrifice a promising career (which he publicizes via a photo showing him standing proudly beside a fancy camera which he smashed voluntarily), but we can also recognize that ethical narcissism is not an affliction restricted to a leftist coterie of Toronto-based activist poseurs.
Believe me, starting up this blog was by no means at the top of my to-do list. Coming off of a five-year hiatus from the Internet (which you can read about in my first post to this blog) I was extremely reluctant to do so (and did it all by accident actually, but that’s another story). That being said, I do write by hand (which later gets transferred to a computer – at a library, since I don’t own a computer). My (shelved for now) manuscript, also written by hand, then got typed out on a typewriter, then eventually transferred to a computer. I do edits on top of print outs, not on the computer. RE of the Doomstead Diner had to twist my arm for a month or two to get me to do the one and only podcast I’ve ever done. Curmudgeonly I am.
So yes, I do work with a carbon-intensive medium, although as simply as I can I believe. That being said, being involved with the written word rather than moving images I am now involved in a form of communication that is very simple and which can exist without high-tech, something film and television can’t claim. As you can read in part 3, I did try following in Wendell Berry’s footsteps and writing only under sunlight, but I’m such a slow and shoddy writer that I had to give that up. What can you do? Like much nowadays, unless you want to restrict yourself to communicating solely with your neighbours (as I mentioned) one is resigned to participating in this madness (“original sin, round two”). And no, I’m certainly not going to be a pushover and keep my mouth shut while sheepishly hilling beans. Dream on.
And apologies if I confusingly gave the impression that that’s a picture of me. I thought it was obvious enough that the guy (Avi Lewis) is the same as the guy in two previous images (one in which he’s wearing the exact same t-shirt). I’ll add in a few words to make that more clear. Not to lump in Lewis in the “ethical narcissist” cadre, I might add.
