By late 1964 Harold Wilson’s newly elected Labour Government had already broken its election manifesto to unilaterally disarm Britain, and was in fact developing a full-scale nuclear weapons programme, in spite of wide-spread public protest. There was a marked reluctance by the British TV at the time to discuss the arms race, and there was especially silence on the effects of nuclear weapons - about which the large majority of the public had absolutely no information. I therefore proposed to the BBC that - using one small corner of Kent in southeastern England to represent a microcosm - I make a film showing the possible effects, during an outbreak of war between NATO and the USSR, of a nuclear strike on Britain.
At that precise moment the BBC was undergoing a power struggle, a ‘night of the long knives’ - someone very senior had been fired, someone else had quit in support, and Huw Wheldon was pushed two notches up the Corporation’s hierarchical ladder to the position of Controller of BBC 2. He was no longer the Head of the Documentary Film Department, and, at the worst possible time, his personal backing was suddenly gone. The BBC read the script of ‘The War Game’, reluctantly agreed to give me a budget, but warned that the film might not be completed. This warning was a result of the British Home Office (in charge of Civil Defence, into which the government was pouring great amounts of money and propaganda) having telephoned the BBC to inquire why I was making a film on this subject. As part of my research, I had sent a letter to the Home Office inquiring how many hospital beds, etc. the Civil Defence would be able to provide following an all-out nuclear strike on the UK, and this had naturally prompted their query to the BBC.
The filming took place in early 1965, in the Kent towns of Tonsbridge, Gravesend, Chatham and Dover. Once again the cast was almost entirely made up of amateurs, found via a series of public meetings throughout Kent some months earlier. Much of the filming, including the scenes of the firestorm, was done in a disused military barracks in Dover. The crew included cinematographer Peter Bartlett, sound recordist Derek Williams, make-up artist Lilian Munro, action co-ordinator Derek Ware, set designers Tony Cornell and Anne Davey, costumer Vanessa Clarke, and editor Michael Bradsell. I repeated the “you-are-there” style of newsreel immediacy. My purpose, as in ‘Culloden’, was to involve ‘ordinary people’ in an extended study of their own history - only this time the subject involved potentially imminent events, for the threat of full-scale nuclear war was a very real one at that time. There was, however, an important stylistic difference in this film. Interwoven among scenes of ‘reality’ were stylized interviews with a series of ‘establishment figures’ - an Anglican Bishop, a nuclear strategist, etc. The outrageous statements by some of these people (including the Bishop) - in favour of nuclear weapons, even nuclear war - were actually based on genuine quotations. Other interviews with a doctor, a psychiatrist, etc. were more sobre, and gave details of the effects of nuclear weapons on the human body and mind. In this film I was interested in breaking the illusion of media-produced ‘reality’. My question was - “Where is ‘reality’? ... in the madness of statements by these artificially-lit establishment figures quoting the official doctrine of the day, or in the madness of the staged and fictional scenes from the rest of my film, which presented the consequences of their utterances?”- and to that end I consistently inter-cut said interviews. Obviously beyond and above the question of form was my concern to use the film to help people break the silence in the media on the nuclear arms race.
The BBC panicked when they first saw the film, and sought government consultation re showing it. They subsequently denied this, but the sad fact remains that the BBC violated their own Charter of Independence, and on September 24, 1965, secretly showed ‘The War Game’ to senior members of the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Post Office (in charge of telecommunications), a representative of the Military Chiefs of Staff, and Sir Burke Trend, Secretary to Harold Wilson’s Cabinet. Approximately six weeks later, the BBC announced that they were not going to broadcast the film on TV - and denied that their decision had anything to do with the secret screening to the government. To this day, the BBC formally deny that the banning of ‘The War Game’ was due to pressure by the government, but a review of now available documents reveals that there was (is) much more to this affair than was admitted publicly.
What is even less known publicly, are the measures the BBC then took to marginalize me as a filmmaker, both within and outside my profession. At the height of the scandal, with questions being asked in Parliament re whether the Government had in fact pressured the independent TV company, many of the public wrote to the BBC asking them to show the film. In December 1965, two days before Christmas, the BBC took the unprecedented step of publishing an open letter to the public, the first paragraph of which implied that ‘The War Game’ had been banned as an artistic failure! Their exact - and very sneaky words - were as follows: “There was an element of experiment in this project, as in much broadcast production. Such programme experiments sometimes fail and have to be put on one side at some stage in production, even though money has been spent on them. They are, nevertheless, a necessary part of the development of broadcasting, and such failures as may occur are the price we must expect to pay if new forms and subjects are to be brought within the compass of television.” (The startling hypocrisy of this statement was highlighted by the BBC’s eagerness a few months later to collect the Academy Award for Best Documentary - for ‘The War Game’.)
At about the same time, the BBC further attempted to deliberately blacken my name: the BBC evening news announced that I had deliberately used trip wires hidden in the heather to make my actors fall during the filming of ‘Culloden’ [!!] I believe that the context was that of an accusation by ‘Equity’, the British actors’ union (who were angry that I had used non-professional actors). This accusation was stated in solemn tones by the BBC news reader, in the midst of other world-news items. There was no attempt by the BBC itself to refute this accusation. I immediately called the newsroom, and asked if they had verified these facts by checking with the cast in Scotland? There was dead silence. I then told the senior news producer that if the BBC did not immediately retract this lie, I would come down the following day and dismantle the TV Centre, brick by brick. The BBC announced a retraction the following evening.
These episodes expose the primitive and almost desperate extent to which TV organizations will go to defend their hierarchical power regarding what the public sees. Specifically - including in respect to what later happened with ‘Edvard Munch’ and ‘La Commune’ - the usage of the rationale of ‘artistic failure’, which TV organizations are fully prepared to use in order to suppress or marginalize films which they do not want the public to see. This has been a recurring motif in the suppression of my own work. In the words of one senior official who was explaining to me in the autumn of 1965 how difficult it was for the BBC to show ‘The War Game’: “Let’s face it, Peter, your film is less than a masterpiece ...” - the identical ‘logic’ used by La Sept ARTE in France, to suppress ‘La Commune’ in 2000.
Following their decision to ban ‘The War Game’, and despite - or perhaps because of - growing public outcry, the BBC organized a series of private screenings at the British Film Institute’s National Film Theatre during a week in February, 1966. Invited to see the film were carefully selected representatives of the British Establishment, members of the armed forces and Civil Defence, parliamentarians, and defence and military affairs correspondents; film journalists were not allowed into the cinema. Also not allowed were the public, who were denied entry by a phalanx of BBC security guards standing elbow to elbow in a long line in front of the cinema. The BBC undoubtedly hoped to use these unabashedly elitist screenings in order to consolidate its decision to ban ‘The War Game’, by gaining the approval of its colleagues in the Establishment. Evidently this they did - even among sufficient numbers of the press. Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, Director General of the BBC, subsequently rejected a request by Mrs. Renee Short (Labour Member of Parliament), that the BBC should arrange a public screening of the film, on the grounds that the weight of press opinion was against the public showing of ‘The War Game’. I also read a letter from Hugh Greene (which I presumably should not have seen) confirming that their intention was to banish the film to a vault after the screenings at the NFT; I recall a phrase to the effect that, “we will have fulfilled our obligation to show the film”.
The role of the British press in this affair was very mixed, with military and defence journalists condemning ‘The War Game’ for its ‘ban-the-Bomb propaganda’, and a number of film and TV journalists stating that the film should be shown. Some journalists wrote that the film should be seen as widely as possible, others that it should be seen only in controlled circumstances such as private film societies, and others that it should be suppressed altogether. Overall, Sir Hugh Carleton Greene was right about the weight of press opinion: The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Mirror, Daily Sketch, Sun and London evening papers all supported the ban, and although the Sunday papers brought the percentage in favour of the BBC down, the clear majority of the mainstream press were for suppressing ‘The War Game’.
1970. The war in Vietnam is escalating. President Nixon has decided on a secret bombing campaign of Cambodia. There is massive public protest in the United States and elsewhere. Nixon declares a state of national emergency, and - we presuppose in the film - activates the 1950 Internal Security Act (the McCarran Act), which authorizes Federal authorities, without reference to Congress, to detain persons judged to be “a risk to internal security”.
In a desert zone in southwestern California, not far from the tents where a civilian tribunal are passing sentence on Group 638, Group 637 (mostly university students) find themselves in the Bear Mountain National Punishment Park, and discover the rules of the ‘game’ they are forced to undergo as part of the alternative they have chosen in lieu of confinement in a penitentiary. Group 637 have been promised liberty if they evade pursuing law enforcement officers and reach the American flag posted 53 miles away across the mountains, within three days. Meanwhile, in the tribunal tent, Group 638 - assumed guilty before tried - endeavour in vain to argue their case for resisting the war in Vietnam. While they argue, amidst harassment by the members of the tribunal, the exhausted Group 637 - dehydrated by exposure to temperatures of 110 degrees Fahrenheit - have voted to split into three subgroups: those for a forced escape out of the Park, those who have given up, and those who are determined to reach the flag ...
‘Punishment Park’ was filmed in August 1970, in the San Bernadino desert, about 100 kms from Los Angeles. The cast, as usual, was a mix of mainly non-professional and young professional actors, mostly from Los Angeles and environs. The members of the tribunal were all portrayed by citizens of Los Angeles - a trade union officer, a dentist, a housewife ... Producer - Susan Martin; principal camera operator - Joan Churchill; sound recordist - Mike Moore; set director - David Hancock; editors - Peter Watkins and Terry Hodel; percussion music by Paul Motian.
In 1979 an important article on ‘Punishment Park’ appeared in the American film press - in ‘Film Criticism’, Edinboro, Pa, USA, spring 1979. Scott MacDonald, an American film teacher and historian, who has specialized in documenting the work of major alternative American filmmakers, and has a number of important books to his credit, wrote about ‘Punishment Park’, Larry Gottheim's ‘Horizons’, J. J. Murphy's ‘Print Generation’, and Anthony McCall's ‘Line Describing a Cone’ :-
‘A careful examination of many recent films, in fact, makes clear that there is even a danger in our traditional attempts to force viewers to respond in a single fashion, for a number of important filmmakers have taken the potential variety of audience response into account and have created films which cannot be fully understood or appreciated without the alteration or elimination of "ideal" audience habits. Peter Watkins’ Punishment Park, Larry Gottheim's Horizons, J. J. Murphy's Print Generation, Anthony McCall's Line Describing a Cone, and other films require new audiences made up of individuals who cannot be satisfied simply to sit quietly, who must develop and activate themselves before any meaningful response to the filmmakers' efforts is possible.
I have seen a great many audiences respond to Watkins' Punishment Park, and few films of my acquaintance have provoked such emotional reactions in viewers with such consistency. Made in 1970, Punishment Park attempted to dramatize the essential polarities underlying American political and social life which had been revealed by the events of the late sixties. The film takes place in the future in a hypothetical camp for radical political activists where the federal government is attempting to kill two birds with one stone: to eliminate political opposition to governmental policies and to train police and national guardsmen to handle future active resistance to these policies. During the film Watkins develops a complex strategy of intercutting in order to reveal events taking place in a tribunal where one group of radicals is "tried", found guilty, and given the "option" of several years in a federal penitentiary or a few days in Punishment Park, and events taking place out in Punishment Park itself, where those radicals sentenced during a previous trial are given three days to reach an American flag set up on a hill some fifty miles across the California desert. Throughout the film Watkins is unrelenting in his revelation of the hysterical charges and counter-charges being made in the tribunal (some of them directly inspired by the trial of the Chicago Seven) and of the brutality with which the police track down those in Punishment Park in order to kill them or return them to federal prison.
Despite the obvious power and effectiveness of Punishment Park, nearly every audience I have been in has felt extremely uncomfortable during and after the film, and many individuals have expressed considerable hostility. When questioned about their objections, those who are hostile to the film generally contend that Watkins' characters are "shallow," his plot "simplistic," and his reading of the American political situation "hysterical" and "paranoid." In part these charges result from the film's obvious failure to conform to what most audiences expect of a film-viewing experience. Not only is Punishment Park a political film - a genre generally unpopular with Americans - but unlike more popular political films such as All the President's Men and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Punishment Park fails to provide handsome heroes and heroines with whom members of the audience can comfortably identify. Further, Watkins refuses to resolve the painful events taking place so as to restore order before the audience leaves the theater. Nothing is solved by the characters' stay in Punishment Park or by the trial. When a few trusting souls actually do get across the desert to the hill with the American flag, they are brutally beaten by national guardsmen; and all those found guilty at the tribunal choose to go to Punishment Park where the same events seem sure to occur all over again. The film, in other words, almost inevitably leaves the audience dissatisfied. The most fundamental contributor to the widespread audience dissatisfaction with Punishment Park, however, is the fact that, like so many of Watkins' films, Punishment Park loses a great deal of its effectiveness when it is presented in a standard theater situation where the audience arrives for the screening and leaves as soon as it is over. As far as Watkins is concerned, Punishment Park is first and foremost an attempt to create an on-going discussion of the issues raised in the film. It is only when viewed in this context that Punishment Park can be recognized as the fine film it is, for when a screening is followed by a discussion, a fascinating thing frequently happens. Certain specific questions are usually asked, and a certain kind of interaction begins to take place as a result of the questions. Probably the most frequent question is, "Are there really such places as punishment parks?". Generally, the questioner is fairly sure there are not, but needs to be reassured. Almost inevitably, someone else will say something like, "No, of course, there aren't", a third person - sometimes a member of a minority group - will jump in to say, "What the hell do you mean by ‘of course'?", and a heated argument about whether America is or is not a good place to live, and why, will be underway. In other words, when the film is followed by a discussion, the audience tends to break down into exactly the polarized divisions presented in the film; if the discussion is allowed to continue, one begins to hear the arguments enacted in Punishment Park all over again. It doesn't take long to recognize that if the people in Watkins' film are shallow, that's because Americans are, in fact, rather shallow in their political thinking.
Once group discussion has validated the film's presentation of an essential polarity of political thinking in America and of the inability of Americans to effectively resolve their basic differences, Watkins' film can be recognized as a good deal more successful than we might like to believe. True, not all of us are at all times as openly and violently polarized as the people in the film, but that's because we are not generally faced with direct attacks on our thinking or with situations of tension and danger. During those periods when we are under attack, most of us tend to respond just like the characters in the film, all of whom, it's worth remembering, were enacted by non-professionals placed in situations of stress by Watkins, who knew that by confronting average people with ideological attacks he could reveal their true feelings. That the interplay of these characters and viewpoints produces no effective results reflects the fact that we have not resolved our conflicts as to how we should function as citizens in our complex society.
Perhaps the most frequent American objection to Punishment Park involves the feeling that Watkins is not optimistic enough. Ironically, however, Watkins' solution to the problems he reveals is implicit in his handling of those in the film and those who watch it. He clearly feels that we must begin to talk out our problems and face the inadequacy of the kinds of thinking we tend to bring to them. If we cannot do this during periods when we are not directly pressured by events, as for example during our film-going experiences, we will be in sorry shape, indeed, when we come face to face with the results of our evasions.
While Punishment Park can be fully appreciated only when people change the activities they engage in after the screening, several recent films can, and in my opinion should, cause changes in audience activity during screenings. In two instances in particular - Larry Gottheim's Horizons and J. J. Murphy's Print Generation - I have found that people in an audience come to understand and appreciate what they see to the exact extent that they feel free to work together as the film is being shown. Horizons is Gottheim's magnificent feature-length exploration of the upstate New York countryside over the period of one year. The film is so full of subtle beauties of color and composition that to an extent it is easy to sit back and allow the film to flow past. Anything more than the most cursory, passive glance at Horizons, however, tends to involve the viewer with the intricacies of Gottheim's structure. Horizons is divided into four seasonal sections, each of which is made up of numerous shots grouped and separated at intervals by one-second strips of colored leader. Summer is made up of forty-seven pairs of shots, each pair separated from the next by green leader. Fall is composed of twenty-seven groups of four shots, each group separated from the next by an interval of red leader, and so on. This structure is further complicated by the fact that during each season the individual shots within each group are organized so that they "rhyme" visually. In Fall, for example, each group rhymes a, b, b, a, that is, shots 1 and 4 and 2 and 3 have a visual factor (or factors) in common. In some instances these rhymes are quite obvious; in others they are extremely subtle, so subtle, in fact, that once the viewer is engaged in recognizing the rhymes, he feels compelled to search each image carefully in order to see and remember each detail. Other complicating factors offer the viewer further challenges. Within each season the groups of shots are arranged in a careful and suggestive order, and throughout all four seasons specific images or kinds of shots are repeated until they become motifs which are meaningful on several levels. Horizons can be fascinating to watch, even if one is alone in a theater. When an audience is present, however, the film can be an exhilarating experience, at least to the extent that individuals feel free to share their observations and insights while the film is in progress. When I have shown Horizons to groups in the normal way, assuming that silence should reign during the screening, I have found that most members of even a relatively sophisticated audience are exhausted long before the film is over. Since Horizons is silent, the silence itself becomes very oppressive. On the other hand, when I have suggested that the members of the audience feel free to exchange observations and reactions, I've found that most individuals have a very exciting time. More important, I've found that more of what is in Horizons is revealed and experienced this way. No one can see all the rhymes or the many other visual relationships created during the film in a single screening, and unless one has enough money to buy a print and screen it over and over and over, full awareness of Horizons' complexity and brilliance is an impossibility. While audience interaction does not guarantee that all details or implications of Gottheim's imagery become apparent, a good deal more of the film is seen by a good many more viewers. Thus, since nothing is gained by silence, other than the satisfaction of conforming to the pressure of a long-held cultural assumption, it seems obvious that audiences should be encouraged to participate and interact with one another. J. J. Murphy's Print Generation poses different problems for an audience, though, like Horizons, the film gains when viewers are urged to feel free to interact. Print Generation uses an exploration of the process of contact printing as a basis for forging a vision of the simple beauty and fragility of life. To make the film, Murphy made a one-minute film of sixty one-second images he had photographed during the summer of 1973. He made a contact print of the film, then a print of the print, then a print of the print of the print, and so forth. Since each generation of printing subtracted from the photographic quality of the imagery, it was inevitable that when Murphy had printed prints of prints long enough, the images would decompose altogether. Having made fifty print generations, Murphy constructed the film so that we first see the sixty images in an extremely disintegrated state, and then follow every second print generation until, halfway through the film, we see the images fully developed. During the second half of the film we move through the other generations back to the point where the film began. The sound track, though less complex than the constantly changing visuals, corroborates this basic structure, though it moves in reverse order. At the start of the film we hear a tape recording of ocean waves, then we hear a tape of that tape, and so on until the sound is in an extremely disintegrated state halfway through the film. During the second half, the process is reversed. More fully than Horizons, Print Generation tends to create activity in the audience. During early repetitions of the sixty images the viewer sees only faint dots of light, but he quickly becomes accustomed to the pace created by the repetition of one-second images and begins to realize that a limited number of images are being repeated over and over. Before long many people in the audience feel compelled to count the images in order to determine for sure exactly how many there are, and many count out loud so as to be better able to concentrate. If viewers have been encouraged to respond freely to the film, they soon become engaged in another process: that of trying to define, image by image, what the final content of each one-second shot will be. It is here that interaction can add to Print Generation, for the ambiguity of the imagery during early generations suggests a wide variety of possibilities, and the audience has a good deal of enjoyment sharing widely differing guesses. Not only does audience interaction add to the pleasure of viewing Print Generation, it helps to emphasize fundamental thematic concerns. One of the themes of Murphy's film is that many of the most important realities of our existence are simple, natural things. We may assume that the future promises exotic mysteries of many kinds, but when the time comes, we are likely to find that the best parts of our experience are the simple pleasures provided by the cycles of nature and by our friends, lovers, and family. When viewers exchange guesses about what the imagery will ultimately be, they dramatize that process of anticipation which the final appearance of the sixty images of flowers, birds, children, landscapes, and so forth undercuts. During the second half of the film, as the sixty images degenerate, Murphy demonstrates how fragile memory is. After a dozen generations or so, it becomes very difficult to recall what the long-awaited images actually were. If viewers interact and attempt to remind each other about what they remember, they dramatize Murphy's belief that memory is often as inaccurate as anticipation, that the beauties and pleasures of life can be fully apprehended, if at all, only at the moment when they are present to us. When they were making their films, Gottheim and Murphy did not consciously assume that viewers might talk during screenings. At the same time, when I have described what has happened when audiences have felt free to interact, both have expressed guarded approval, guarded necessarily, because they would want to be very sure that what I am calling audience interaction is not simply lack of attention. Unlike Gottheim and Murphy, Anthony McCall has expressed enthusiasm for the idea of audience interaction during screenings. Further, he has consciously designed films which have as their goal the creation of this interaction. In order to activate his audiences, McCall presents his films in an unusual way. Line Describing a Cone, for example, and the other films in McCall's "cone series", are not presented in a theater, and no screen is used. Instead, viewers sit or stand in an empty, pitch-dark room, where their attention is directed to the projected beam of light, not, as in standard screenings, at the imagery this beam carries. Usually, a bowl of incense has been placed on the floor prior to the running of the film so that the smoke created by the incense will make the beam of light easier to see. At the start of Line Describing a Cone a single ray of light is thrown across the room. As the minutes pass, this ray enlarges to become the curved side of a hollow cone which has the projector lens as its apex and the far wall as its base. By the end of the film this curved side has grown until a hollow cone has been completed. That the audience is meant to participate in McCall's film is evident from the beginning, for the original ray of light is only visible at extremely close range, and those sitting or standing at any distance from the ray must move in order to see it. Once begun, such participation almost automatically continues. As McCall himself says in his program notes for Line Describing a Cone:
‘No longer is one viewing position as good as any other. For this film, every viewing position presents a different aspect. The viewer, therefore, has a participatory role in apprehending the event: he or she can, indeed needs, to move around relative to the slowly emerging light-form. This is radically different from the traditional film situation, which has as its props, row upon row of seats, a giant screen and a hidden projection booth: here the viewer sits passively in one position whilst the images of the film are "brought" to them; these people can only participate vicariously.’
Given McCall's goals for Line Describing a Cone, he must be regarded as an extremely successful filmmaker. While viewers tend to be suspicious at the beginning of the film, within relatively few minutes they grow enthusiastic about the idea of the film, and many individuals become extremely active, moving from position to position to avoid missing anything. Thirty minutes is a long time for a film so simple, but this very duration can cause a further development in the audience, one which goes beyond simple appreciation of McCall's ingenuity. Often, once the original enthusiasm has worn off, individuals begin to relate more fully to one another. To a large extent this group development is necessitated by the movement of the viewers in a limited space in a largely dark room. People walking around quickly learn to be careful of those sitting and lying on the floor. Those exploring the growing cone with their hands become aware of the effects of their activities on people further from the projector. By the time the circle on the opposite wall is complete and the cone in its finished state, the viewers themselves have been drawn together into a more intimate circle. While McCall's films are abstract, their effect on an audience reflects a fundamentally political intent. For him the normal screening situation, with its rigid rows of seats and "hidden projection booth," is an implicitly totalitarian situation:
‘in film, all analytical, critical and creative attention is [usually] devoted exclusively to this thing, this product, this event, this temporal moment of the film's life, up there on the screen. We say, look there, don't look anywhere else, that's where it's all happening, that's where the struggle is; the dialectic is in your relation to that. But suppose that we see all audienceship as a special kind of passivity? "Look there" is a call to your consciousness to perceive my problems, not yours, my view of the world. In granting me an audience, the spectators surrender their personal cognizance of their world, and in granting the audience over and over again, under all kinds of circumstances inside and outside art, in schools, work, civic, and political life, they become captives to the habit of listening to others. In art, this is important precisely because the form is made exemplary, because this servitude of always being in a passive relation to action, is publicly reinforced. And almost without exception, film art maintains this unilateral broadcasting format.’
Line Describing a Cone and McCall's other films reflect a continuing attempt to draw attention to the dangerous political and social implications of our standard viewing habits. Further, by creating a context in which individual viewers can act on their own initiative and relate to one another in practical and sympathetic ways, his films function as models for effective community action which may have the potential to effect change. The four films discussed here are certainly not the only ones which profit from, or require, a change in audience activities. Many of the other films of each of the filmmakers discussed, for example, could be included in the present discussion, and other filmmakers and films -Tony Conrad (The Flicker), Hollis Frampton (Zorns Lemma), Taka Iimura (24 Frames Per Second, 1 to 60 Seconds), Robert Huot (Rolls: 1971) among them - could have been included. What is central is the realization that if we are to understand and appreciate some of our filmmakers' most impressive achievements, we must begin to develop our flexibility as viewers. Doubtless we will always search for good screening conditions and from time to time will feel compelled to silence someone who is distracting us. At the same time, to assume that silence and stillness are automatically virtues for a film viewer is to run the danger of missing the accomplishments of many fine films. We must become more aware that as film continues to evolve there will be times when we need to do more than sit silently and alone in the darkness and force others to do so. If our filmmakers are not to leave us behind, we must evolve with them.