I just read an interview with Christian Petzold in the website of Cineaste Magazine. This is a quote from the website:
http://www.cineaste.com/articles/an-interview-with-christian-petzold.htm
“My generation was taught by all these leftist teachers whose consciousness was shaped by the events of 1968. At that time the family was seen to be the smallest cell of the state, of fascist structures, that is, as the biggest piece of shit imaginable. It was the site where discipline and training was implemented. In this context Deleuze's essay on control societies impressed me immensely when I began making films in the mid-90s, just before Deleuze's death. Deleuze argues that the extrafamiliar institutions that cropped up everywhere, those hedonistic communities, the patchwork families, the communes, and the shared apartment-living situations, which were established in direct opposition to the traditional father-mother-child neurosis—that these new forms, which were and are perceived as libratory, actually embody the modern control society, that is, are modern forms of oppression that suddenly exert their force upon people.”
I knew about Cineaste’s website from Girish’s blog:
http://www.girishshambu.com/blog/2008/06/links.html
What Petzold said reminds me of some of my most favorite films last year – CRY IN SILENCE (2006, J. G. Biggs) and MON FILS A MOI (2006, Martial Fougeron) – which deal with tyrannical parents. If I can choose a father, I would choose the father of Juno in JUNO (2007, Jason Reitman, A+). He is a flawed human being, but I think he would cause the least problem in my life. Apart from Juno’s father, I also like the father in THE SUM OF US (1994, Kevin Dowling + Geoff Burton, A-/B+) very much.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
THE “FAMILY” IS THE SMALLEST CELL OF FASCIST STRUCTURES
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I always respond late, but i like this blog so much and this post deals with my research. First, the comments of Deleuze on the society of control are interesting, since the very foundation of the social contract is derived from Rousseau's comments on the family (beginning to fall victim to the institutions of society--"man is free but everywhere he is in chains"). Today the alienated individual looks for a way to say 'we' as individuals become more alone, attempting to understand the images that represent 'us'. I really like Siriworn Kaewkan's short story ความคล้ายคลึงกันของพวกเรา on the relationship between pronouns and images. In my experience film shows the different modernities of different societies. The family is one way I've tried to show a reality of sincere connections beneath a culture of images that fragment our existence. I tried to show in the film below, that a family is never one unit, but a context of knowledge or images that extends one's existence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-0d8jlzr-4
Thank you very much, Noah, for sharing your wonderful video with us. I think your video shows the warmth of a family. And in your video there’s a scene about a festival in Hawaii which reminds me of the Loykratong festival here in Thailand, because in these festivals people put some floating things on the water. I wonder what the festival in Hawaii is about.
I’m sorry that I may not have many things to say about the family topic. I guess I’m an alienated individual. I am alone, and I’d rather live alone and die alone than living with someone I hate in my family. I have to confess that I have big problems with many Thai feature films and Thai short films, because they represent the kind of families which are very different from my family, thus I feel ‘detached’ from these Thai films and can never empathize with these Thai characters. I think many Thai films affirm family values, which is something I have never believed in. There are many Thai short documentaries about the father, mother, grandfather, grandmother of the directors. I like these films very much, though, because the directors of these films directly express their love towards their family, without preaching that “you, the audience, must love your family, too.”. However, when it comes to Thai fictional films, I feel frustrated sometimes when I think that they may try to preach that message.
:-)
Post a Comment