they shoot nationhood, don't they?

Just got back from a lecture given by Rob Stone of Swansea University. About Julio Medem's Basque Ball: Skin Against the Stone (2003), a controversial documentary that aims to create a dialogue around the "Basque Situation" through the film's construction (the juxtaposition of different opinions) and its audience consumption. I have never seen it, but I want to, and I was able to understand the lecture regardless.

It's a sad thing that one of the most striking aspects of his lecture was in the Q & A section: his constant references to any conversations he's had with the prolific director. Yes, he is an expert, and his research concerns Spanish and Basque cinema, but it got to the point where I felt like he and Medem are old chums. I would have like to have asked, "And how does your relationship (is there one or am I reading too much into this?) with Medem affect your interpretation of his work?" I understand he can directly quote Medem, and he knows the context for their conversations, but I just felt that he was not acknowledging his bias (in his presentation, even), for he came to his defense a lot. But at least he admitted the film is problematic. In any case, he was just name-dropping too much, and while it might have been to show that he can answer a question based on what he has genuinely experienced through his interaction with Medem, it was distracting.

Anyway, I think the Q & A section did raise some important issues: what is national cinema? Basque cinema? Basqueness? how is auteurism manifested? what is the difference between auteurism and the critiques the director gives him/herself in the media? should documentaries overtly address/profess biases? should the medium overtly show how the film is constructed?

Stone doesn't think films should be defined by nationality because the politics are too complex. Now, I am not saying we should over-simplify things (fuck no!), but nationality is important to identity. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I should say I was surrounded by faculty and grad students in the department who study language, identity, culture, and media from a European point-of-view. Nationality is very different when you discuss European cinema in that the governments directly fund the arts, including filmmaking. Some films can be co-productions between nations, and when you have different people working on it, it's more difficult to apply a nationality. Julio Medem is complicated because he comes from the Basque Country, made this documentary because he wanted to get in touch with his Basque roots (apparently) after having lived in Madrid for so long. However, he's usually discussed as a Spanish director, and Stone thinks he should be seen as a Basque director. I find this contradictory because he was the one that said nationality shouldn't define films. Shit! I should have called him on this!

What I am trying to say is that, no, we should consider a film's nationality. It's true that there is more to a film than the nationality of its director, the auteur. But what else would we use to classify them? Genres are restrictive, too. Auteurism just excludes so many other factors and treats the director as if she works in a vacuum. These approaches to analyzing film constitute the exact reason why I don't want to go into film studies. It's too narrow. Globalization has made it more difficult to see nationality, but that's no reason to ignore its link to other films, to the filmmakers themselves. And classifications will always be implemented. It's how the mind works. We must identify something--anything--against everything else.

A nation, or a culture, is represented on film regardless of which nation or culture is attributed to it. The filmmakers might have handed these impressions to us, or we might have made up the pattern ourselves based on our previous experiences with representations of the nation or culture in question. This, to me, just makes discussing films within the context of nationhood all the more interesting. What kind of nation is produced on screen, and how is it consumed by audiences?