# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For an imperfect cinema

by Julio García Espinosa,
translated by Julianne Burton

from Jump Cut, no. 20, 1979, pp. 24-26
copyright Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1979, 2005

This translation, based on the original essay as published in number 66/67 of Cine cubano, is substantially different from the other English-language version published in the summer 1971 issue of the now defunct British film magazine Afterimage, where various sentences and paragraphs were omitted with no acknowledgment of the deletions.

**********

Nowadays, perfect cinema - technically and artistically masterful - is almost always reactionary cinema. The major temptation facing Cuban cinema at this time - when it is achieving its objective of becoming a cinema of quality, one which is culturally meaningful within the revolutionary process - is precisely that of transforming itself into a perfect cinema.

The "boom" of Latin American cinema - with Brazil and Cuba in the forefront, according to the applause and approval of the European intelligentsia - is similar, in the present moment, to the one of which the Latin American novel had previously been the exclusive benefactor. Why do they applaud us? There is no doubt that a certain standard of quality has been reached. Doubtless, there is a certain political opportunism, a certain mutual instrumentality. But without doubt there is also something more. Why should we worry about their accolades? Isn't the goal of public recognition a part of the rules of the artistic game? When it comes to artistic culture, isn't European recognition equivalent to worldwide recognition? Doesn't it serve art and our peoples as well when works produced by underdeveloped nations obtain such recognition?

Although it may seem curious, it is necessary to clarify the fact that this disquiet is not solely motivated by ethical concerns. As a matter of fact, the motivation is for the most part aesthetic, if indeed it is possible to draw such an arbitrary dividing line between both terms. When we ask ourselves why it is we who are the film directors and not the others, that is to say, the spectators, the question does not stem from an exclusively ethical concern. We know that we are filmmakers because we have been part of a minority which has had the time and the circumstances needed to develop, within itself, an artistic culture; and because the material resources of film technology are limited and therefore available to some, not to all. But what happens if the future holds the universalization of college level instruction, if economic and social development reduce the hours in the work day, if the evolution of film technology (there are already signs in evidence) makes it possible that this technology ceases being the privilege of a small few? What happens if the development of videotape solves the problem of inevitably limited laboratory capacity, if television systems with their potential for "projecting" independently of the central studio renders the ad infinitum construction of movie theaters suddenly superfluous?

What happens then is not only an act of social justice - the possibility for everyone to make films - but also a fact of extreme importance for artistic culture: the possibility of recovering, without any kinds of complexes or guilt feelings, the true meaning of artistic activity. Then we will be able to understand that art is one of mankind's "impartial" or "uncommitted" activities [via actívidad desinteresada]. That art is not work, and that the artist is not in the strict sense a worker. The feeling that this is so, and the impossibility of translating it into practice, constitutes the agony and at the same time the "pharisee-ism" of all contemporary art.

In fact, the two tendencies exist: those who pretend to produce cinema as an "uncommitted activity and those who pretend to justify it as a "committed" activity. Both find themselves in a blind alley.

Anyone engaged in an artistic activity asks himself at a given moment what the meaning is of whatever he is doing. The simple fact that this anxiety arises demonstrates that factors exist to motivate it - factors which, in turn, indicate that art does not develop freely. Those who persist in denying art a specific meaning feel the moral weight of their egoism. Those who, on the other hand, pretend to attribute one to it, buy off their bad conscience with social generosity. It makes no difference that the mediators (critics, theoreticians, etc.) try to justify certain cases. For the contemporary artist, the mediator is like an aspirin, a tranquilizer. As with a pill, the artist only temporarily gets rid of the headache. The sure thing, however, is that art, like a capricious little devil, continues to show its face sporadically in no matter which tendency.

No doubt it is easier to define art by what it is not than by what it is, assuming that one can talk about closed definitions not just for art but for any of life's activities. The spirit of contradiction permeates everything now. Nothing, and nobody lets himself be imprisoned in a picture frame, no matter how gilded. It is possible that art gives us a vision of society or of human nature and that, at the same time, it cannot be defined as a vision of society or of human nature. It is possible that a certain narcissism of consciousness - in recognizing in oneself a little historical, sociological, psychological, philosophical consciousness - is implicit in aesthetic pleasure, and at the same time that this sensation is not sufficient in itself to explain aesthetic pleasure.

Is it not much closer to the nature of art to conceive of it as having its own cognitive power? In other words, by saying that art is not the "illustration" of ideas, which can also be expressed through philosophy, sociology, psychology. Every artist's desire to express the inexpressible is nothing more than the desire to express the vision of a theme in terms that are inexpressible through other than artistic means. Perhaps the cognitive power of art is like the power of a game for a child. Perhaps aesthetic pleasure lies in sensing the functionality (without a specific goal) of our intelligence and our own sensitivity. Art can stimulate, in general, the creative function of man. It can function as constant stimulus toward adopting an attitude of change with regard to life. But, as opposed to science, it enriches us in such a way that its results are not specific and cannot be applied to anything in particular. It is for this reason that we can call it an "impartial" or "uncommitted" activity, and can say that art is not strictly speaking a "job," and that the artist is perhaps the least intellectual of all intellectuals.

Why then does the artist feel the need to justify himself as a "worker," as an "intellectual," as a "professional," as a disciplined and organized man, like any other individual who performs a productive task? Why does he feel the need to exaggerate the importance of his activity? Why does he feel the need to have critics (mediators) to justify him, to defend him, to interpret him? Why does he speak proudly of "my critics"? Why does he find it necessary to make transcendental declarations, as if he were the true interpreter of society and of mankind? Why does he pretend to consider himself critic and conscience of society when (although these objectives can be implicit or even explicit in certain circumstances) in a truly revolutionary society all of us - that is to say, the people as a whole - should exercise those functions? And why, on the other hand, does the artist see himself forced to limit these objectives, these attitudes, these characteristics? Why does he at the same time set up these limitations as necessary to prevent his work from being transformed into a tract or a sociological essay? What is behind such pharisee-ism? Why protect oneself and seek recognition as a (revolutionary, it must be understood) political and scientific worker, yet not be prepared to run the same risks.

The problem is a complex one. Basically, it is neither a matter of opportunism nor cowardice. A true artist is prepared to run any risk as long as he is certain that his work will not cease to be an artistic expression. The only risk which he will not accept is that of endangering the artistic quality of his work.

There are also those who accept and defend the "impartial" function of art. These people claim to be more consistent. They opt for the bitterness of a closed world in the hope that tomorrow history will justify them. But the fact is that even today not everyone can enjoy the Mona Lisa. These people should have fewer contradictions; they should be less alienated. But in fact it is not so, even though such an attitude gives them the possibility of an alibi which is more productive on a personal level. In general they sense the sterility of their "purity" or they dedicate themselves to waging corrosive battles, but always on the defensive. They can even, in a reverse operation, reject their interest in finding tranquility, harmony, and a certain compensation in the work of art, expressing instead disequilibrium, chaos, and uncertainty, which also becomes the objective of "impartial" art.

What is it, then, which makes it impossible to practice art as an "impartial" activity? Why is this particular situation today more sensitive than ever? From the beginning of the world as we know it, that is to say, since the world was divided into classes, this situation has been latent. If it has grown sharper today it is precisely because today the possibility of transcending it is coming into view. Not through a prise de conscience, not through the expressed determination of any particular artist, but because reality itself has begun to reveal symptoms (not at all utopian) which indicate that "in the future there will no longer be painters, a rather men who, among other things, dedicate themselves to painting" (Marx).

There can be no "impartial" or "uncommitted" art, there can be no new and genuine qualitative jump in art, unless the concept and the reality of the "elite" is done away with once and for all. Three factors incline us toward optimism: the development of science, the social presence of the masses, and the revolutionary potential in the contemporary world. All three are without hierarchical order, all three are interrelated.

Why is science feared? Why are people afraid that art might be crushed under obvious productivity and utility of science? Why this inferiority complex? It is true that today we read a good essay with much greater pleasure than a novel. Why do we keep repeating then, horrified, that the world is becoming more mercenary, more utilitarian, more materialistic? Is it not really marvelous that the development of science, sociology, anthropology, and psychology is contributing to the "purification" of art? The appearance, thanks to science, of expressive media like photography and film made a greater "purification" of painting and theatre possible (without invalidating them artistically in the least). Doesn't modern day science render anachronistic so much "artistic" analysis of the human soul? Doesn't contemporary science allow us to free ourselves from so many fraudulent films, concealed behind what has been called the world of poetry? With the advance of science, art has nothing to lose; on the contrary, it has a whole world to gain. What, then, are we so afraid of? Science strips art bare, and it seems that it is not easy to go naked through the streets.

The real tragedy of the contemporary artist lies in the impossibility of practicing art as a minority activity. It is said - and correctly - that art cannot exercise its attraction without the cooperation of the subject. But what can be done so that the audience stops being an object and transforms itself into the subject?

The development of science, of technology, and of the most advanced social theory and practice has made possible as never before the active presence in the masses in social life. In the realm of artistic life, there are more spectators now than at any other moment in history. This is the first stage in the abolition of "elites." The task currently at hand is to find out if the conditions which will enable spectators to transform themselves into agents - not merely more active spectators, but genuine co-authors - are beginning to exist. The task at hand is to ask ourselves whether art is really an activity restricted to specialists, whether it is, through extra-human design, the option of a chosen few or a possibility for everyone.

How can we trust the perspectives and possibilities of art simply to the education of the people as a mass of spectators? Taste as defined by high culture, once it is "overdone," is normally passed on to the rest of society as leftovers to be devoured and ruminated over by those who were not invited to the feast. This eternal spiral has today become a vicious circle as well. "Camp" and its attitude toward everything outdated is an attempt to rescue these leftovers and to lessen the distance between high culture and the people. But the difference lies in the fact that camp rescues it as an aesthetic value, while for the people the values involved continue to be ethical ones.

Must the revolutionary present and the revolutionary future inevitably have "its" artists and "its" intellectuals, just as the bourgeoisie had "theirs"? Surely the truly revolutionary position, from now on, is to contribute to overcoming these elitist concepts and practices, rather than pursuing ad eternum the "artistic quality" of the work. The new outlook for artistic culture is no longer that everyone must share the taste of a few, but that all can be creators of that culture. Art has always been a universal necessity; what it has not been is an option for all under equal conditions. Parallel to refined art, popular art has had a simultaneous but independent existence.

Popular art has absolutely nothing to do with what is called mass art. Popular art needs and consequently tends to develop the personal, individual taste of a people. On the other hand, mass art (or art for the masses) requires the people to have no taste. It will only be genuine when it is actually the masses who create it, since at present it is art produced by a few for the masses. Grotowski says that today's theater should be a minority art form because mass art can be achieved through cinema. This is not true. Perhaps film is the most elitist of all the contemporary arts. Film today, no matter where, is made by a small minority for the masses. Perhaps film will be the art form which takes the longest time to reach the hands of the masses, when we understand mass art as popular art, art created by the masses. Currently, as Hauser points out, mass art is art produced by a minority in order to satisfy the demand of a public reduced to the sole role of spectator and consumer.

Popular art has always been created by the least learned sector of society, yet this "uncultured" sector has managed to conserve profoundly cultured characteristics of art. One of the most important of these is the fact that the creators are at the same time the spectators and vice versa. Between those who produce and those who consume, no sharp line of demarcation exists. Cultivated art, in our era, has also attained this situation. Modern art's great dose of freedom is nothing more than the conquest of a new interlocutor: the artist himself. For this reason, it is useless to strain oneself struggling for the substitution of the masses as a new and potential spectator for the bourgeoisie. This situation, maintained by popular art, adopted by cultivated art, must be dissolved and become the heritage of all. This and no other must be the great objective of an authentically revolutionary artistic culture.

Popular art preserved another even more important cultural characteristic: It is carried out as but another life activity. With cultivated art, the reverse is true. It is pursued as a unique, specific activity, as a personal achievement. This is the cruel price of having had to maintain artistic activity at the expense of its inexistence among the people. Hasn't the attempt to realize himself on the edge of society proved to be too painful a restriction for the artist and for art itself? To posit art as a sect, as a society within society, as the promised land where we can fleetingly fulfill ourselves for a brief instant - doesn't this create the illusion that self-realization on the level of consciousness also implies self-realization on the level of existence? Isn't this patently obvious in contemporary circumstances? The essential lesson of popular art is that it is carried out as a life activity: man must not fulfill himself as an artist but fully; the artist must not seek fulfillment as an artist but as a human being.

In the modern world, principally in developed capitalist nations and in those countries engaged in a revolutionary process, there are alarming symptoms, obvious signs of an imminent change. The possibilities for overcoming this traditional disassociation are beginning to arise. These symptoms are not a product of consciousness but of reality itself. A large part of the struggle waged in modern art has been, in fact, to "democratize" art. What other goal is entailed in combating the limitations of taste, museum art, and the demarcation lines between the creator and the public? What is considered beauty today, and where is it found? On Campbell's soup labels, in a garbage can lid, in gadgets? Even the eternal value of a work of art is today being questioned. What else could be the meaning of those sculptures, seen in recent exhibitions, made of blocks of ice, which melt away while the public looks at them? Isn't this - more than the disappearance of art - the attempt to make the spectator disappear? Don't those painters who entrust a portion of the execution of their work to just anyone, rather than to their disciples, exhibit an eagerness to jump over the barricade of "elitist" art? Doesn't the same attitude exist among composers whose works allow their performers ample liberty?

There's a widespread tendency in modern art to make the spectator participate ever more fully. If he participates to a greater and greater degree, where will the process end up? Isn't the logical outcome - or shouldn't it in fact be - that he will cease being a spectator altogether? This simultaneously represents a tendency toward collectivism and toward individualism. Once we admit the possibility of universal participation, aren't we also admitting the individual creative potential which we all have? Isn't Grotowski mistaken when he asserts that today's theater should be dedicated to an elite? Isn't it rather the reverse: that the theater of poverty in fact requires the highest refinement? It is the theater which has no need for secondary values: costumes, scenery, make-up, even a stage. Isn't this an indication that material conditions are reduced to a minimum and that, from this point of view, the possibility of making theater is within everyone's reach? And doesn't the fact that the theater has an increasingly smaller public mean that conditions are beginning to ripen for it to transform itself into a true mass theater? Perhaps the tragedy of the theater lies in the fact that it has reached this point in its evolution too soon.

When we look toward Europe, we wring our hands. We see that the old culture is totally incapable of providing answers to the problems of art. The fact is that Europe can no longer respond in a traditional manner but at the same time finds it equally difficult to respond in a manner that is radically new. Europe is no longer capable of giving the world a new "ism"; neither is it in a position to put an end to "isms" once and for all. So we think that our moment has come, that at last the underdeveloped can deck themselves out as "men of culture." Here lies our greatest danger and our greatest temptation. This accounts for the opportunism of some on our continent. For, given our technical and scientific backwardness and given the scanty presence of the masses in social life, our continent is still capable of responding in a traditional manner, by reaffirming the concept and the practice of elite art. Perhaps in this case the real motive for the European applause which some of our literary and cinematic works have won is none other than a certain nostalgia which we inspire. After all, the European has no other Europe to which to turn.

The third factor, the revolution - which is the most important of all - is perhaps present in our country as nowhere else. This is our only true chance. The revolution is what provides all other alternatives, what can supply an entirely new response, what enables us to do away once and for all with elitist concepts and practices in art. The revolution and the ongoing revolutionary process are the only factors which make the total and free presence of the masses possible. And this will mean the definitive disappearance of the rigid division of labor and of a society divided into sectors and classes. For us, then, the revolution is the highest expression of culture because it will abolish artistic culture as a fragmentary human activity.

Current responses to this inevitable future, this uncontestable prospect, can be as numerous as the countries on our continent. Because characteristics and achieved levels are not the same, each art form, every artistic manifestation, must find its own expression. What should be the response of the Cuban cinema in particular? Paradoxically, we think it will be a new poetics, not a new cultural policy. A poetics whose true goal will be to commit suicide, to disappear as such. We know, however, that in fact other artistic conceptions will continue to exist among us, just like small rural landholdings and religion continue to exist.

On the level of cultural policy we are faced with a serious problem: the film school. Is it right to continue developing a handful of film specialists? It seems inevitable for the present, but what will be the eternal quarry that we continue to mine: the students in Arts and Letters at the University? But shouldn't we begin to consider right now whether that school should have a limited lifespan? What end do we pursue there - a reserve corps of future artists? Or a specialized future public? We should be asking ourselves whether we can do something now to abolish this division between artistic and scientific culture.

What constitutes in fact the true prestige of artistic culture, and how did it come about that this prestige was allowed to appropriate the whole concept of culture? Perhaps it is based on the enormous prestige which the spirit has always enjoyed at the expense of the body. Hasn't artistic culture always been seen as the spiritual part of society while scientific culture is seen as its body? The traditional rejection of the body, of material life, is due in part to the concept that things of the spirit are more elevated, more elegant, serious and profound. Can't we, here and now, begin doing something to put an end to this artificial distinction? We should understand from here on in that the body and the things of the body are also elegant, and that material life is beautiful as well. We should understand that, in fact, the soul is contained in the body just as the spirit is contained in material life, just as - to speak in strictly artistic terms - the essence is contained in the surface and the content in the form.

We should endeavor to see that our future students, and therefore our future filmmakers, will themselves be scientists, sociologists, physicians, economists, agricultural engineers, etc., without of course ceasing to be filmmakers. And, at the same time, we should have the same aim for our most outstanding workers, the workers who achieve the best results in terms of political and intellectual formation. We cannot develop the taste of the masses as long as the division between the two cultures continues to exist, nor as long as the masses are not the real masters of the means of artistic production. The revolution has liberated us as an artistic sector. It is only logical that we contribute to the liberation of the private means of artistic production.

A new poetics for the cinema will, above all, be a "partisan" and "committed" poetics, a "committed" art, a consciously and resolutely "committed" cinema - that is to say, an "imperfect" cinema. An "impartial" or "uncommitted" (cinema), as a complete aesthetic activity, will only be possible when it is the people who make art. But today art must assimilate its quota of work so that work can assimilate its quota of art.

The motto of this imperfect cinema (which there's no need to invent, since it already exists) is, as Glauber Rocha would say, "We are not interested in the problems of neurosis; we are interested in the problems of lucidity." Art no longer has use for the neurotic and his problems, although the neurotic continues to need art - as a concerned object, a relief, an alibi or, as Freud would say, as a sublimation of his problems. A neurotic can produce art, but art has no reason to produce neurotics. It has been traditionally believed that the concerns of art were not to be found in the sane but in the sick, not in the normal but in the abnormal, not in those who struggle but in those who weep, not in lucid minds but in neurotic ones. Imperfect cinema is changing this way of
seeing the question. We have more faith in the sick man than in the healthy one because his truth is purged by suffering. However, there is no need for suffering to be synonymous with artistic elegance. There is still a trend in modern art - undoubtedly related to Christian tradition - which identifies seriousness with suffering. The specter of Marguerite Gautier still haunts artistic endeavor in our day. Only in the person who suffers do we perceive elegance, gravity, even beauty; only in him do we recognize the possibility of authenticity, seriousness, sincerity. Imperfect cinema must put an end to this tradition.

Imperfect cinema finds a new audience in those who struggle, and it finds its themes in their problems. For imperfect cinema, "lucid" people are the ones who think and feel and exist in a world which they can change. In spite of all the problems and difficulties, they are convinced that they can transform it in a revolutionary way. Imperfect cinema therefore has no need to struggle to create an "audience." On the contrary, it can be said that at present a greater audience exists for this kind of cinema than there are filmmakers able to supply that audience.

What does this new interlocutor require of us - an art full of moral examples worthy of imitation? No. Man is more of a creator than an innovator. Besides, he should be the one to give us moral examples. He might ask us for a fuller, more complete work, aimed - in a separate or coordinated fashion - at the intelligence, the emotions, the powers of intuition.

Should he ask us for a cinema of denunciation? Yes and no. No, if the denunciation is directed toward the others, if it is conceived that those who are not struggling might sympathize with us and increase their awareness. Yes, if the denunciation acts as information, as testimony, as another combat weapon for those engaged in the struggle. Why denounce imperialism to show one more time that it is evil? What's the use if those now fighting are fighting primarily against imperialism? We can denounce imperialism but should strive to do it as a way of proposing concrete battles. A film which denounces those who struggle against the evil deeds of an official who must be executed would be an excellent example of this kind of film-denunciation.

We maintain that imperfect cinema must above all show the process which generates the problems. It is thus the opposite of a cinema principally dedicated to celebrating results, the opposite of a self-sufficient and contemplative cinema, the opposite of a cinema which "beautifully illustrates" ideas or concepts which we already possess. (The narcissistic posture has nothing to do with those who struggle.) To show a process is not exactly equivalent to analyzing it. To analyze, in the traditional sense of the word, always implies a closed prior judgment. To analyze a problem is to show the problem (not the process) permeated with judgments which the analysis itself generates a priori. To analyze is to block off from the outset any possibility for analysis on the part of the interlocutor.

To show the process of a problem, on the other hand, is to submit it to judgment without pronouncing the verdict. There is a style of news reporting which puts more emphasis on the commentary than on the news item. There is another kind of reporting which presents the news and evaluates it through the arrangement of the item on the page or by its position in the paper. To show the process of a problem is like showing the very development of the news item, without commentary; it is like showing the multi-faceted evolution of a piece of information without evaluating it. The subjective element is the selection of the problem, conditioned as it is by the interest of the audience - which is the subject. The objective element is showing the process which is the object.

Imperfect cinema is an answer, but it is also a question which will discover its own answers in the course of its development. Imperfect cinema can make use of the documentary or the fictional mode, or both. It can use whatever genre, or all genres. It can use cinema as a pluralistic art form or as a specialized form of expression. These questions are indifferent to it, since they do not represent its real alternatives or problems, and much less its real goals. These are not the battles or polemics it is interested in sparking.

Imperfect cinema can also be enjoyable, both for the maker and for its new audience. Those who struggle do not struggle on the edge of life, but in the midst of it. Struggle is life and vice versa. One does not stuggle in order to live "later on." The struggle requires organization - the organization of life. Even in the most extreme phase, that of total and direct war, the organization of life is equivalent to the organization of the struggle. And in life, as in the struggle, there is everything, including enjoyment. Imperfect cinema can enjoy itself despite everything that conspires to negate enjoyment.

Imperfect cinema rejects exhibitionism in both (literal) senses of the word, the narcissistic and the commercial (getting shown in established theaters and circuits). It should be remembered that the death of the star-system turned out to be a positive thing for art. There is no reason to doubt that the disappearance of the director as star will fail to offer similar prospects. Imperfect cinema must start work now, in cooperation with sociologists, revolutionary leaders, psychologists, economists, etc. Furthermore, imperfect cinema rejects whatever services criticism has to offer and considers the function of mediators and intermediaries anachronistic.

Imperfect cinema is no longer interested in quality or technique. It can be created equally well with a Mitchell or with an 8mm camera, in a studio or in a guerrilla camp in the middle of the jungle. Imperfect cinema is no longer interested in predetermined taste, and much less in "good taste." It is not quality which it seeks in an artist's work. The only thing it is interested in is how an artist responds to the following question: What are you doing in order to overcome the barrier of the "cultured" elite audience which up to now has conditioned the form of your work?

The filmmaker who subscribes to this new poetics should not have personal self-realization as his object. From now on he should also have another activity. He should place his role as revolutionary or aspiring revolutionary above all else. In a word, he should try to fulfill himself as a man and not just as an artist, that its essential goal as a new poetics is to disappear. It is no longer a matter of replacing one school with another, one "ism" with another, poetry with anti-poetry, but of truly letting a thousand different flowers bloom. The future lies with folk art. But let us no longer display folk art with demagogic pride, with a celebrative air. Let us exhibit it instead as a cruel denunciation, as a painful testimony to the level at which the peoples of the world have been forced to limit their artistic creativity. The future, without doubt, will be with folk art, but then there will be no need to call it that, because nobody and nothing will any longer be able to again paralyze the creative spirit of the people.

Art will not disappear into nothingness; it will disappear into everything.

Havana, December 7, 1969

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
For an imperfect cinema by Julio García Espinosa, trans. by Julianne Burton

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For an imperfect cinema by Julio García Espinosa, translated by Julianne Burton from Jump Cut, no. 20, 1979, pp. 24-26 copyright Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1979, 2005 This translation, based on the original essay as published in number 66/67 of Cine cubano, is substantially different from the other English-language version published in the summer 1971 issue of the now defunct British film magazine Afterimage, where various sentences and paragraphs were omitted with no acknowledgment of the deletions.

# data[].attributes.headline
Fair Use, Copyright, Creative Commons and Public Domain

# data[].attributes.subject
Fair Use, Copyright, Creative Commons and Public Domain

# data[].attributes.body
This project will require you to do research and to build your own catalogue of source material that you can use to construct animated video essays. Increasing numbers of artists work with found material, predominantly from the internet but from other sources too (scans of books, photographs and film).

When using found imagery in your own work there are moral and legal issues to consider. The two most important rules are:

Credit your sources and never pass off someone’s work as if it is your own.

Ask permission to use content where possible.

It is essential to credit any sources that you use. This can be done in the end credits of your piece, but is preferably done as an overlay of text on the screen as the quoted video appears.

Allan Warburton’s two video lectures are a good example of this. They are also a
useful introduction to the context in which animation artists are working today:
● Alan Warburton, Spectacle, Speculation, Spam (2016) :
http://alanwarburton.co.uk/spectacle-speculation-spam/
● Alan Warburton, Goodbye Uncanny Valley (2017):
http://alanwarburton.co.uk/goodbye-uncanny-valley/

Another option is to use material freely but to restrict the viewership of your work through using a password. Vimeo has a guide on how to do this:
https://help.vimeo.com/hc/en-us/articles/224817847-Privacy-settings-overview

Fair Use
If you think about copyright as a series of restrictions, fair use is a set of exceptions. Fair use is a fundamental part of the copyright bargain.
Copyright does not give owners unlimited control over their content.
Fair use is a set of factors and considerations that determine which things can be done without the permission of the copyright holder.

A search engine such as Google allows you to search for images particularly labelled for non-commercial reuse with modification. Remember to double-check the usage rights on any image or series of images that you use.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A presentation I made for the Edge of Frame Weekend seminar at The Whitechapel gallery in East London, December 2016. Artists, curators and academics were asked to explore where experimental animation practice sits in relation to independent animation, visual art, histories and institutions. Rather than presenting papers, we were challenged to cite up to three works that illustrated our case.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Spectacle, Speculation, Spam - Alan Warburton

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A presentation I made for the Edge of Frame Weekend seminar at The Whitechapel gallery in East London, December 2016. Artists, curators and academics were asked to explore where experimental animation practice sits in relation to independent animation, visual art, histories and institutions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
among the "Ten Most Anticipated Games of the Year" "Excellent and completely out there." "A Slow Year takes zen inspiration a step further, with four interactive haiku." Winner of the Virtuoso and Vanguard awards A Slow Year is a collection of four games, one for each season, about the experience of observing things.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With ruminations on drawing, colour and caricature, on the political meaning of fairy-tales, talking animals and human beings as machines, Hollywood Flatlands brings to light the links between animation, avant-garde art and modernist criticism.Focusing on the work of aesthetic and political revolutionaries of the inter-war period, Esther Leslie reveals how the animation of commodities can be studied as a journey into modernity in cinema.

# data[].attributes.body
link no longer available

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For an imperfect cinema

by Julio García Espinosa,
translated by Julianne Burton

from Jump Cut, no. 20, 1979, pp. 24-26
copyright Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1979, 2005

This translation, based on the original essay as published in number 66/67 of Cine cubano, is substantially different from the other English-language version published in the summer 1971 issue of the now defunct British film magazine Afterimage, where various sentences and paragraphs were omitted with no acknowledgment of the deletions.

**********

Nowadays, perfect cinema - technically and artistically masterful - is almost always reactionary cinema. The major temptation facing Cuban cinema at this time - when it is achieving its objective of becoming a cinema of quality, one which is culturally meaningful within the revolutionary process - is precisely that of transforming itself into a perfect cinema.

The "boom" of Latin American cinema - with Brazil and Cuba in the forefront, according to the applause and approval of the European intelligentsia - is similar, in the present moment, to the one of which the Latin American novel had previously been the exclusive benefactor. Why do they applaud us? There is no doubt that a certain standard of quality has been reached. Doubtless, there is a certain political opportunism, a certain mutual instrumentality. But without doubt there is also something more. Why should we worry about their accolades? Isn't the goal of public recognition a part of the rules of the artistic game? When it comes to artistic culture, isn't European recognition equivalent to worldwide recognition? Doesn't it serve art and our peoples as well when works produced by underdeveloped nations obtain such recognition?

Although it may seem curious, it is necessary to clarify the fact that this disquiet is not solely motivated by ethical concerns. As a matter of fact, the motivation is for the most part aesthetic, if indeed it is possible to draw such an arbitrary dividing line between both terms. When we ask ourselves why it is we who are the film directors and not the others, that is to say, the spectators, the question does not stem from an exclusively ethical concern. We know that we are filmmakers because we have been part of a minority which has had the time and the circumstances needed to develop, within itself, an artistic culture; and because the material resources of film technology are limited and therefore available to some, not to all. But what happens if the future holds the universalization of college level instruction, if economic and social development reduce the hours in the work day, if the evolution of film technology (there are already signs in evidence) makes it possible that this technology ceases being the privilege of a small few? What happens if the development of videotape solves the problem of inevitably limited laboratory capacity, if television systems with their potential for "projecting" independently of the central studio renders the ad infinitum construction of movie theaters suddenly superfluous?

What happens then is not only an act of social justice - the possibility for everyone to make films - but also a fact of extreme importance for artistic culture: the possibility of recovering, without any kinds of complexes or guilt feelings, the true meaning of artistic activity. Then we will be able to understand that art is one of mankind's "impartial" or "uncommitted" activities [via actívidad desinteresada]. That art is not work, and that the artist is not in the strict sense a worker. The feeling that this is so, and the impossibility of translating it into practice, constitutes the agony and at the same time the "pharisee-ism" of all contemporary art.

In fact, the two tendencies exist: those who pretend to produce cinema as an "uncommitted activity and those who pretend to justify it as a "committed" activity. Both find themselves in a blind alley.

Anyone engaged in an artistic activity asks himself at a given moment what the meaning is of whatever he is doing. The simple fact that this anxiety arises demonstrates that factors exist to motivate it - factors which, in turn, indicate that art does not develop freely. Those who persist in denying art a specific meaning feel the moral weight of their egoism. Those who, on the other hand, pretend to attribute one to it, buy off their bad conscience with social generosity. It makes no difference that the mediators (critics, theoreticians, etc.) try to justify certain cases. For the contemporary artist, the mediator is like an aspirin, a tranquilizer. As with a pill, the artist only temporarily gets rid of the headache. The sure thing, however, is that art, like a capricious little devil, continues to show its face sporadically in no matter which tendency.

No doubt it is easier to define art by what it is not than by what it is, assuming that one can talk about closed definitions not just for art but for any of life's activities. The spirit of contradiction permeates everything now. Nothing, and nobody lets himself be imprisoned in a picture frame, no matter how gilded. It is possible that art gives us a vision of society or of human nature and that, at the same time, it cannot be defined as a vision of society or of human nature. It is possible that a certain narcissism of consciousness - in recognizing in oneself a little historical, sociological, psychological, philosophical consciousness - is implicit in aesthetic pleasure, and at the same time that this sensation is not sufficient in itself to explain aesthetic pleasure.

Is it not much closer to the nature of art to conceive of it as having its own cognitive power? In other words, by saying that art is not the "illustration" of ideas, which can also be expressed through philosophy, sociology, psychology. Every artist's desire to express the inexpressible is nothing more than the desire to express the vision of a theme in terms that are inexpressible through other than artistic means. Perhaps the cognitive power of art is like the power of a game for a child. Perhaps aesthetic pleasure lies in sensing the functionality (without a specific goal) of our intelligence and our own sensitivity. Art can stimulate, in general, the creative function of man. It can function as constant stimulus toward adopting an attitude of change with regard to life. But, as opposed to science, it enriches us in such a way that its results are not specific and cannot be applied to anything in particular. It is for this reason that we can call it an "impartial" or "uncommitted" activity, and can say that art is not strictly speaking a "job," and that the artist is perhaps the least intellectual of all intellectuals.

Why then does the artist feel the need to justify himself as a "worker," as an "intellectual," as a "professional," as a disciplined and organized man, like any other individual who performs a productive task? Why does he feel the need to exaggerate the importance of his activity? Why does he feel the need to have critics (mediators) to justify him, to defend him, to interpret him? Why does he speak proudly of "my critics"? Why does he find it necessary to make transcendental declarations, as if he were the true interpreter of society and of mankind? Why does he pretend to consider himself critic and conscience of society when (although these objectives can be implicit or even explicit in certain circumstances) in a truly revolutionary society all of us - that is to say, the people as a whole - should exercise those functions? And why, on the other hand, does the artist see himself forced to limit these objectives, these attitudes, these characteristics? Why does he at the same time set up these limitations as necessary to prevent his work from being transformed into a tract or a sociological essay? What is behind such pharisee-ism? Why protect oneself and seek recognition as a (revolutionary, it must be understood) political and scientific worker, yet not be prepared to run the same risks.

The problem is a complex one. Basically, it is neither a matter of opportunism nor cowardice. A true artist is prepared to run any risk as long as he is certain that his work will not cease to be an artistic expression. The only risk which he will not accept is that of endangering the artistic quality of his work.

There are also those who accept and defend the "impartial" function of art. These people claim to be more consistent. They opt for the bitterness of a closed world in the hope that tomorrow history will justify them. But the fact is that even today not everyone can enjoy the Mona Lisa. These people should have fewer contradictions; they should be less alienated. But in fact it is not so, even though such an attitude gives them the possibility of an alibi which is more productive on a personal level. In general they sense the sterility of their "purity" or they dedicate themselves to waging corrosive battles, but always on the defensive. They can even, in a reverse operation, reject their interest in finding tranquility, harmony, and a certain compensation in the work of art, expressing instead disequilibrium, chaos, and uncertainty, which also becomes the objective of "impartial" art.

What is it, then, which makes it impossible to practice art as an "impartial" activity? Why is this particular situation today more sensitive than ever? From the beginning of the world as we know it, that is to say, since the world was divided into classes, this situation has been latent. If it has grown sharper today it is precisely because today the possibility of transcending it is coming into view. Not through a prise de conscience, not through the expressed determination of any particular artist, but because reality itself has begun to reveal symptoms (not at all utopian) which indicate that "in the future there will no longer be painters, a rather men who, among other things, dedicate themselves to painting" (Marx).

There can be no "impartial" or "uncommitted" art, there can be no new and genuine qualitative jump in art, unless the concept and the reality of the "elite" is done away with once and for all. Three factors incline us toward optimism: the development of science, the social presence of the masses, and the revolutionary potential in the contemporary world. All three are without hierarchical order, all three are interrelated.

Why is science feared? Why are people afraid that art might be crushed under obvious productivity and utility of science? Why this inferiority complex? It is true that today we read a good essay with much greater pleasure than a novel. Why do we keep repeating then, horrified, that the world is becoming more mercenary, more utilitarian, more materialistic? Is it not really marvelous that the development of science, sociology, anthropology, and psychology is contributing to the "purification" of art? The appearance, thanks to science, of expressive media like photography and film made a greater "purification" of painting and theatre possible (without invalidating them artistically in the least). Doesn't modern day science render anachronistic so much "artistic" analysis of the human soul? Doesn't contemporary science allow us to free ourselves from so many fraudulent films, concealed behind what has been called the world of poetry? With the advance of science, art has nothing to lose; on the contrary, it has a whole world to gain. What, then, are we so afraid of? Science strips art bare, and it seems that it is not easy to go naked through the streets.

The real tragedy of the contemporary artist lies in the impossibility of practicing art as a minority activity. It is said - and correctly - that art cannot exercise its attraction without the cooperation of the subject. But what can be done so that the audience stops being an object and transforms itself into the subject?

The development of science, of technology, and of the most advanced social theory and practice has made possible as never before the active presence in the masses in social life. In the realm of artistic life, there are more spectators now than at any other moment in history. This is the first stage in the abolition of "elites." The task currently at hand is to find out if the conditions which will enable spectators to transform themselves into agents - not merely more active spectators, but genuine co-authors - are beginning to exist. The task at hand is to ask ourselves whether art is really an activity restricted to specialists, whether it is, through extra-human design, the option of a chosen few or a possibility for everyone.

How can we trust the perspectives and possibilities of art simply to the education of the people as a mass of spectators? Taste as defined by high culture, once it is "overdone," is normally passed on to the rest of society as leftovers to be devoured and ruminated over by those who were not invited to the feast. This eternal spiral has today become a vicious circle as well. "Camp" and its attitude toward everything outdated is an attempt to rescue these leftovers and to lessen the distance between high culture and the people. But the difference lies in the fact that camp rescues it as an aesthetic value, while for the people the values involved continue to be ethical ones.

Must the revolutionary present and the revolutionary future inevitably have "its" artists and "its" intellectuals, just as the bourgeoisie had "theirs"? Surely the truly revolutionary position, from now on, is to contribute to overcoming these elitist concepts and practices, rather than pursuing ad eternum the "artistic quality" of the work. The new outlook for artistic culture is no longer that everyone must share the taste of a few, but that all can be creators of that culture. Art has always been a universal necessity; what it has not been is an option for all under equal conditions. Parallel to refined art, popular art has had a simultaneous but independent existence.

Popular art has absolutely nothing to do with what is called mass art. Popular art needs and consequently tends to develop the personal, individual taste of a people. On the other hand, mass art (or art for the masses) requires the people to have no taste. It will only be genuine when it is actually the masses who create it, since at present it is art produced by a few for the masses. Grotowski says that today's theater should be a minority art form because mass art can be achieved through cinema. This is not true. Perhaps film is the most elitist of all the contemporary arts. Film today, no matter where, is made by a small minority for the masses. Perhaps film will be the art form which takes the longest time to reach the hands of the masses, when we understand mass art as popular art, art created by the masses. Currently, as Hauser points out, mass art is art produced by a minority in order to satisfy the demand of a public reduced to the sole role of spectator and consumer.

Popular art has always been created by the least learned sector of society, yet this "uncultured" sector has managed to conserve profoundly cultured characteristics of art. One of the most important of these is the fact that the creators are at the same time the spectators and vice versa. Between those who produce and those who consume, no sharp line of demarcation exists. Cultivated art, in our era, has also attained this situation. Modern art's great dose of freedom is nothing more than the conquest of a new interlocutor: the artist himself. For this reason, it is useless to strain oneself struggling for the substitution of the masses as a new and potential spectator for the bourgeoisie. This situation, maintained by popular art, adopted by cultivated art, must be dissolved and become the heritage of all. This and no other must be the great objective of an authentically revolutionary artistic culture.

Popular art preserved another even more important cultural characteristic: It is carried out as but another life activity. With cultivated art, the reverse is true. It is pursued as a unique, specific activity, as a personal achievement. This is the cruel price of having had to maintain artistic activity at the expense of its inexistence among the people. Hasn't the attempt to realize himself on the edge of society proved to be too painful a restriction for the artist and for art itself? To posit art as a sect, as a society within society, as the promised land where we can fleetingly fulfill ourselves for a brief instant - doesn't this create the illusion that self-realization on the level of consciousness also implies self-realization on the level of existence? Isn't this patently obvious in contemporary circumstances? The essential lesson of popular art is that it is carried out as a life activity: man must not fulfill himself as an artist but fully; the artist must not seek fulfillment as an artist but as a human being.

In the modern world, principally in developed capitalist nations and in those countries engaged in a revolutionary process, there are alarming symptoms, obvious signs of an imminent change. The possibilities for overcoming this traditional disassociation are beginning to arise. These symptoms are not a product of consciousness but of reality itself. A large part of the struggle waged in modern art has been, in fact, to "democratize" art. What other goal is entailed in combating the limitations of taste, museum art, and the demarcation lines between the creator and the public? What is considered beauty today, and where is it found? On Campbell's soup labels, in a garbage can lid, in gadgets? Even the eternal value of a work of art is today being questioned. What else could be the meaning of those sculptures, seen in recent exhibitions, made of blocks of ice, which melt away while the public looks at them? Isn't this - more than the disappearance of art - the attempt to make the spectator disappear? Don't those painters who entrust a portion of the execution of their work to just anyone, rather than to their disciples, exhibit an eagerness to jump over the barricade of "elitist" art? Doesn't the same attitude exist among composers whose works allow their performers ample liberty?

There's a widespread tendency in modern art to make the spectator participate ever more fully. If he participates to a greater and greater degree, where will the process end up? Isn't the logical outcome - or shouldn't it in fact be - that he will cease being a spectator altogether? This simultaneously represents a tendency toward collectivism and toward individualism. Once we admit the possibility of universal participation, aren't we also admitting the individual creative potential which we all have? Isn't Grotowski mistaken when he asserts that today's theater should be dedicated to an elite? Isn't it rather the reverse: that the theater of poverty in fact requires the highest refinement? It is the theater which has no need for secondary values: costumes, scenery, make-up, even a stage. Isn't this an indication that material conditions are reduced to a minimum and that, from this point of view, the possibility of making theater is within everyone's reach? And doesn't the fact that the theater has an increasingly smaller public mean that conditions are beginning to ripen for it to transform itself into a true mass theater? Perhaps the tragedy of the theater lies in the fact that it has reached this point in its evolution too soon.

When we look toward Europe, we wring our hands. We see that the old culture is totally incapable of providing answers to the problems of art. The fact is that Europe can no longer respond in a traditional manner but at the same time finds it equally difficult to respond in a manner that is radically new. Europe is no longer capable of giving the world a new "ism"; neither is it in a position to put an end to "isms" once and for all. So we think that our moment has come, that at last the underdeveloped can deck themselves out as "men of culture." Here lies our greatest danger and our greatest temptation. This accounts for the opportunism of some on our continent. For, given our technical and scientific backwardness and given the scanty presence of the masses in social life, our continent is still capable of responding in a traditional manner, by reaffirming the concept and the practice of elite art. Perhaps in this case the real motive for the European applause which some of our literary and cinematic works have won is none other than a certain nostalgia which we inspire. After all, the European has no other Europe to which to turn.

The third factor, the revolution - which is the most important of all - is perhaps present in our country as nowhere else. This is our only true chance. The revolution is what provides all other alternatives, what can supply an entirely new response, what enables us to do away once and for all with elitist concepts and practices in art. The revolution and the ongoing revolutionary process are the only factors which make the total and free presence of the masses possible. And this will mean the definitive disappearance of the rigid division of labor and of a society divided into sectors and classes. For us, then, the revolution is the highest expression of culture because it will abolish artistic culture as a fragmentary human activity.

Current responses to this inevitable future, this uncontestable prospect, can be as numerous as the countries on our continent. Because characteristics and achieved levels are not the same, each art form, every artistic manifestation, must find its own expression. What should be the response of the Cuban cinema in particular? Paradoxically, we think it will be a new poetics, not a new cultural policy. A poetics whose true goal will be to commit suicide, to disappear as such. We know, however, that in fact other artistic conceptions will continue to exist among us, just like small rural landholdings and religion continue to exist.

On the level of cultural policy we are faced with a serious problem: the film school. Is it right to continue developing a handful of film specialists? It seems inevitable for the present, but what will be the eternal quarry that we continue to mine: the students in Arts and Letters at the University? But shouldn't we begin to consider right now whether that school should have a limited lifespan? What end do we pursue there - a reserve corps of future artists? Or a specialized future public? We should be asking ourselves whether we can do something now to abolish this division between artistic and scientific culture.

What constitutes in fact the true prestige of artistic culture, and how did it come about that this prestige was allowed to appropriate the whole concept of culture? Perhaps it is based on the enormous prestige which the spirit has always enjoyed at the expense of the body. Hasn't artistic culture always been seen as the spiritual part of society while scientific culture is seen as its body? The traditional rejection of the body, of material life, is due in part to the concept that things of the spirit are more elevated, more elegant, serious and profound. Can't we, here and now, begin doing something to put an end to this artificial distinction? We should understand from here on in that the body and the things of the body are also elegant, and that material life is beautiful as well. We should understand that, in fact, the soul is contained in the body just as the spirit is contained in material life, just as - to speak in strictly artistic terms - the essence is contained in the surface and the content in the form.

We should endeavor to see that our future students, and therefore our future filmmakers, will themselves be scientists, sociologists, physicians, economists, agricultural engineers, etc., without of course ceasing to be filmmakers. And, at the same time, we should have the same aim for our most outstanding workers, the workers who achieve the best results in terms of political and intellectual formation. We cannot develop the taste of the masses as long as the division between the two cultures continues to exist, nor as long as the masses are not the real masters of the means of artistic production. The revolution has liberated us as an artistic sector. It is only logical that we contribute to the liberation of the private means of artistic production.

A new poetics for the cinema will, above all, be a "partisan" and "committed" poetics, a "committed" art, a consciously and resolutely "committed" cinema - that is to say, an "imperfect" cinema. An "impartial" or "uncommitted" (cinema), as a complete aesthetic activity, will only be possible when it is the people who make art. But today art must assimilate its quota of work so that work can assimilate its quota of art.

The motto of this imperfect cinema (which there's no need to invent, since it already exists) is, as Glauber Rocha would say, "We are not interested in the problems of neurosis; we are interested in the problems of lucidity." Art no longer has use for the neurotic and his problems, although the neurotic continues to need art - as a concerned object, a relief, an alibi or, as Freud would say, as a sublimation of his problems. A neurotic can produce art, but art has no reason to produce neurotics. It has been traditionally believed that the concerns of art were not to be found in the sane but in the sick, not in the normal but in the abnormal, not in those who struggle but in those who weep, not in lucid minds but in neurotic ones. Imperfect cinema is changing this way of
seeing the question. We have more faith in the sick man than in the healthy one because his truth is purged by suffering. However, there is no need for suffering to be synonymous with artistic elegance. There is still a trend in modern art - undoubtedly related to Christian tradition - which identifies seriousness with suffering. The specter of Marguerite Gautier still haunts artistic endeavor in our day. Only in the person who suffers do we perceive elegance, gravity, even beauty; only in him do we recognize the possibility of authenticity, seriousness, sincerity. Imperfect cinema must put an end to this tradition.

Imperfect cinema finds a new audience in those who struggle, and it finds its themes in their problems. For imperfect cinema, "lucid" people are the ones who think and feel and exist in a world which they can change. In spite of all the problems and difficulties, they are convinced that they can transform it in a revolutionary way. Imperfect cinema therefore has no need to struggle to create an "audience." On the contrary, it can be said that at present a greater audience exists for this kind of cinema than there are filmmakers able to supply that audience.

What does this new interlocutor require of us - an art full of moral examples worthy of imitation? No. Man is more of a creator than an innovator. Besides, he should be the one to give us moral examples. He might ask us for a fuller, more complete work, aimed - in a separate or coordinated fashion - at the intelligence, the emotions, the powers of intuition.

Should he ask us for a cinema of denunciation? Yes and no. No, if the denunciation is directed toward the others, if it is conceived that those who are not struggling might sympathize with us and increase their awareness. Yes, if the denunciation acts as information, as testimony, as another combat weapon for those engaged in the struggle. Why denounce imperialism to show one more time that it is evil? What's the use if those now fighting are fighting primarily against imperialism? We can denounce imperialism but should strive to do it as a way of proposing concrete battles. A film which denounces those who struggle against the evil deeds of an official who must be executed would be an excellent example of this kind of film-denunciation.

We maintain that imperfect cinema must above all show the process which generates the problems. It is thus the opposite of a cinema principally dedicated to celebrating results, the opposite of a self-sufficient and contemplative cinema, the opposite of a cinema which "beautifully illustrates" ideas or concepts which we already possess. (The narcissistic posture has nothing to do with those who struggle.) To show a process is not exactly equivalent to analyzing it. To analyze, in the traditional sense of the word, always implies a closed prior judgment. To analyze a problem is to show the problem (not the process) permeated with judgments which the analysis itself generates a priori. To analyze is to block off from the outset any possibility for analysis on the part of the interlocutor.

To show the process of a problem, on the other hand, is to submit it to judgment without pronouncing the verdict. There is a style of news reporting which puts more emphasis on the commentary than on the news item. There is another kind of reporting which presents the news and evaluates it through the arrangement of the item on the page or by its position in the paper. To show the process of a problem is like showing the very development of the news item, without commentary; it is like showing the multi-faceted evolution of a piece of information without evaluating it. The subjective element is the selection of the problem, conditioned as it is by the interest of the audience - which is the subject. The objective element is showing the process which is the object.

Imperfect cinema is an answer, but it is also a question which will discover its own answers in the course of its development. Imperfect cinema can make use of the documentary or the fictional mode, or both. It can use whatever genre, or all genres. It can use cinema as a pluralistic art form or as a specialized form of expression. These questions are indifferent to it, since they do not represent its real alternatives or problems, and much less its real goals. These are not the battles or polemics it is interested in sparking.

Imperfect cinema can also be enjoyable, both for the maker and for its new audience. Those who struggle do not struggle on the edge of life, but in the midst of it. Struggle is life and vice versa. One does not stuggle in order to live "later on." The struggle requires organization - the organization of life. Even in the most extreme phase, that of total and direct war, the organization of life is equivalent to the organization of the struggle. And in life, as in the struggle, there is everything, including enjoyment. Imperfect cinema can enjoy itself despite everything that conspires to negate enjoyment.

Imperfect cinema rejects exhibitionism in both (literal) senses of the word, the narcissistic and the commercial (getting shown in established theaters and circuits). It should be remembered that the death of the star-system turned out to be a positive thing for art. There is no reason to doubt that the disappearance of the director as star will fail to offer similar prospects. Imperfect cinema must start work now, in cooperation with sociologists, revolutionary leaders, psychologists, economists, etc. Furthermore, imperfect cinema rejects whatever services criticism has to offer and considers the function of mediators and intermediaries anachronistic.

Imperfect cinema is no longer interested in quality or technique. It can be created equally well with a Mitchell or with an 8mm camera, in a studio or in a guerrilla camp in the middle of the jungle. Imperfect cinema is no longer interested in predetermined taste, and much less in "good taste." It is not quality which it seeks in an artist's work. The only thing it is interested in is how an artist responds to the following question: What are you doing in order to overcome the barrier of the "cultured" elite audience which up to now has conditioned the form of your work?

The filmmaker who subscribes to this new poetics should not have personal self-realization as his object. From now on he should also have another activity. He should place his role as revolutionary or aspiring revolutionary above all else. In a word, he should try to fulfill himself as a man and not just as an artist, that its essential goal as a new poetics is to disappear. It is no longer a matter of replacing one school with another, one "ism" with another, poetry with anti-poetry, but of truly letting a thousand different flowers bloom. The future lies with folk art. But let us no longer display folk art with demagogic pride, with a celebrative air. Let us exhibit it instead as a cruel denunciation, as a painful testimony to the level at which the peoples of the world have been forced to limit their artistic creativity. The future, without doubt, will be with folk art, but then there will be no need to call it that, because nobody and nothing will any longer be able to again paralyze the creative spirit of the people.

Art will not disappear into nothingness; it will disappear into everything.

Havana, December 7, 1969

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
For an imperfect cinema by Julio García Espinosa, trans. by Julianne Burton

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For an imperfect cinema by Julio García Espinosa, translated by Julianne Burton from Jump Cut, no. 20, 1979, pp. 24-26 copyright Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1979, 2005 This translation, based on the original essay as published in number 66/67 of Cine cubano, is substantially different from the other English-language version published in the summer 1971 issue of the now defunct British film magazine Afterimage, where various sentences and paragraphs were omitted with no acknowledgment of the deletions.

# data[].attributes.body
Academics, like Norman M Klein and Vivian Sobchack argue that there is an important difference between analogue morphing and digital morphing. They suggest that digital morphing programmes tend to smooth out glitches and hesitations more than analogue morphing.
Klein argues that the effects of seamless computer morphing; “displays less of the mercurial, the lighting hand and traced memories.”
Klein and Sobchack also argue that analogue morphing can be used to express a ‘poetics of loss’ and anxiety about the organic disappearing into the industrial. An audience of analogue morphing is asked to think in terms of allegories of entropy and ruin, whereas digital morphing turns this sense of decay into a sense of fantasy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Convert Footage to Art (After Effects Tutorial)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Creation Art Effects (for After Effects)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I edited this promotional video using the art effects and filters from 'Creation Art Effects', an After Effects template from CreationEffects.com for CS5 and up. You can learn more at http://creationeffects.com/creation-art-effects.html.

Template Description: 
This template is an all-in-one art studio, jam-packed with effects for turning your footage into living, moving works of art - in almost any medium you can think of. There are approximately 50 unique preset looks (or “art effects”), and you can explore unlimited combinations of art mediums, art surfaces, and styles by mixing and matching elements, and by using the numerous customization controls.
 
Words fall short when describing artwork, but you can see in the demo video that these effects are completely realistic because they use authentic photo textures (over 500 high-resolution images are included). The textures change on every frame, which means you can apply the effects to images or text, as well as footage, and the resulting effect will be moving and animated. Textures include paper surfaces, canvases, pencil strokes, paint textures, fabric patterns, and more.
 
Creation Art Effects is easy to use - just drop in your footage and, if you want, use the slider controls to custom the drawing, painting, or other medium. The following is a list of mediums covered in the template:
 
Four pencil drawing effects with outline and shading, four pencil outline-only effects, three pen drawing styles, nine oil paint effects, including a Claude Monet effect and two Vincent Van Gogh effects, two watercolor paint effects, four flip book effects, custom ink bleeds and blots, 8-bit animation, building bricks (like LEGO’s), chalk on chalkboard, marker on whiteboard, two charcoal effects, claymation, colored pencil, crayon, graffiti, three halftone effects (CMYK, dots, and stripes), paper cutouts (like South Park), pastels, pop art, and two typography art effects.
 
The effects cover all kinds of styles like classical, grunge, quick sketch, collage, detailed, abstract, and more. This enormous template has endless applications and is sure to be a valuable tool in your arsenal over and over again!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Turn your footage into an animated painting, drawing, or other art medium with the Creation Art Effects template for After Effects, by Creation Effects

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Creation Film Effects - After Effects Tutorial

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Create an Old Film Look in After Effects

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Creation Film Effects is a huge collection of authentic-looking effects for making your footage look like old or damaged film in Adobe After Effects. It comes with 40 film-look presets, so you can just drop in your footage and render out a variety of looks, ranging from the earliest experimental films of the 1800's to a modern day film look.

You can also build your own film look by adding any of the 350 included effects such as dust, hair, scratches, color grading, light leaks, film burns, flickers, transitions, intros, outros, vignettes, and more. Effects can be customized with easy-to-use slider controls to get the perfect look.

Turn your footage into an old film!

...Or make your own film look with over 300 custom effects

40 OLD FILM PRESETS - A variety of customizable, old & damaqed film-looks. Just drop in your footage and render.

CUSTOM OVERLAYS - A variety of custom textures of dirt, scratches, hair, burns, mold, and more.

STOCK FOOTAGE - 28 stock footage clips (over 9 minutes) of dust and scratches, light leaks, projector flickers, perforations, film leader countdowns, and more.

TRANSITION EFFECTS - Over 50 filmic transition effects, most of which can be simply copied and pasted over the cuts in your footage.

INTROS & OUTROS - 28 stylized effects for the beginning or end of your old film.

AUDIO EFFECTS - Includes filters for the audio in your footage, as well as 17 audio clips of film projectors, cameras, crackling, and electronic hum.

EASY CUSTOMIZATION - Adjust effects with easy-to-use slider controls to get the perfect look. Easily hide or turn down effects to decrease the amount of damage.

Film-Look Presets

Showcases the 40 old-film presets. Template users can reference this video to select a preset for their project.

Compatible with Adobe After Effects, versions CS6 and all later versions. A CS6 file and a CC 2019 file are included. Only the CC 2019 file has been updated with the latest upgrades. Works on both Mac and PC. No plugins required.

All comps are HD 1920x1080. For exporting in 4K, comps can simply be upscaled. Since the effects already lower the resolution of your footage with blur and grain, you can scale it up without worrying about resolution loss.

Creation Film Effects has been universalized, meaning it will work with After Effects running in any language.

Detailed instructions are found in the video tutorial, and inside the template.

Music and footage placeholders in the demo and tutorial videos are not included.

File size: 840MB. Please allow plenty of time for downloading.

Last update: Sep 19, 2019.

The Creation Film Effects template is not a plugin. It's an Adobe After Effects project file, commonly known as a "template" because the work is already done and the user needs only to insert their footage and make their own adjustments. This template is compatible with version CS6 as well as all later versions of After Effects.

The Creation Film Effects template contains copyrighted intellectual property. The sharing or online posting of project files with or for anyone other than a client is prohibited. See the Terms and Conditions for more details.

Positive and/or negative feedback is appreciated. Use the contact page to send me a message.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Creation Film Effects for Adobe After Effects

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Creation Film Effects is a huge collection of authentic-looking effects for making your footage look like old or damaged film in Adobe After Effects. It comes with 40 film-look presets, so you can just drop in your footage and render out a variety of looks, ranging from the earliest experimental films of the 1800's to a modern day film look.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Datamosh Effect - After Effects Tutorial

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Give your footage the retro look of an old, damaged VHS tape with the Creation VHS Effects After Effects template by Creation Effects.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Creation Glitch Effects for After Effects is a collection of over 200 video effects, audio effects, stock footage clips, and transitions that imitate damaged or corrupt digital video. It's perfect for creating glitch art, or for video or film editors who need authentic-looking effects and total control over their look, behavior, and timing.

For the editor in a hurry, simply drop in your HD or 4K footage and immediately export any of the 18 glitch-look presets. Or, build your own unique glitch-look by combining any of the glitch effects. Effects can be customized with convenient, easy-to-use slider controls.

Video Glitch Effects Including
Datamoshing

See video below for examples of this popular effect!

52 Video Glitch Effects

Custom glitches for your footage, such as skipping, freezing, RGB channel offset, and blocky displacement. Effects are easy to apply and totally customizable. Combine effects for a unique glitch that totally destroys your footage (or just adds a subtle kink - it's up to you!)

50 Audio Glitch Effects

Over six minutes of glitchy, ear-splitting sound effects that you can add to your glitched-up footage. Also included are custom, glitchy-sounding effects for screwing up the audio in your footage.

18 Glitch-Look Presets

Don't have time to build your own glitch-look? The 18 presets combine mutliple effects into a unique glitch-look. Control the intensity of the combined effects with a single slider control. Just drop in your footage and the presets are ready to go.

72 Glitchy Transition Effects

Dozens of glitch transitions with sound effects for the cuts in your video. Easily extend durations, adjust their intensity, or combine multiple transition FX on a single cut.

24 Stock Footage Clips

Nearly 3 minutes of loopable, 4K video files featuring digital glitch textures and analog TV static. Edit them into your video, or composite them over your footage for a quick glitch-look.

Glitch Texture Generator

If the stock footage clips don't have what you need, create your own custom glitch textures using the Glitch Texture Generator. Through customization and blending modes, endless looks can be achieved. Or, use any of the seven finished glitch texture presets.

Control the intensity of glitches & presets with a single slider control3>

Video Tutorial

Written instructions can be found throughout the template. But to get the most out of the effects, watch this video, which walks you through the entire Creation Glitch Effects template. Whether you purchased the template, or just want to learn more - this tutorial can help.

Glitch-Look Presets

Datamosh Tutorial

Compatible with Adobe After Effects, versions CS6 and all later versions (including Creative Cloud). Works with both Mac and PC. No plugins required. (CS6 users will notice a label that says "Missing" on the customization controls. This is a result of using Pseudo Effects, and it does not affect the functionality. All controls will work as intended.)

Your download will include both an HD (1920x1080) version and a 4K (4096x2160) version of the template.

The Datamosh effect in this template is a transition effect which affects approximately 5 seconds of video. The datamosh effect takes several minutes to set up, and you will need to watch the Datamosh video tutorial to use it effectively. DISCLAIMER: this is merely an effect that mimics datamoshing. It is not real datamoshing and is not a perfect reproduction. Watch the examples in the Datamosh video tutorial to see if it suits your purposes.

This template has been "Universalized", so it will work in After Effects running in any language.

All glitch effects and audio effects in the demo video are created using the template. Music, text comps, and footage placeholders from the demo video are NOT included.

Because of the included 4K stock footage, the total file size is quite large (750 MB). Please allow yourself plenty of time when downloading.

Creation Glitch Effects is not a plugin. It is an Adobe After Effects project file, commonly known as a "template" because the work is already done and the user needs only to make their own adjustments.

Creation Effects owns the copyright for all effects in this template. The sharing or online posting of project files with or for anyone other than a client is prohibited. See the Terms and Conditions for more details.

Positive and negative feedback is appreciated. Use the contact page to send me a message.

See a review of this product by Eva Productions, HERE.

If you came from the YouTube link, here is your Quicktime movie (24MB). If clicking doesn't start the download, then right-click the link and choose to save the file to your hard drive.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Creation Glitch Effects for After Effects

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Creation Glitch Effects for After Effects is a collection of over 200 video effects, audio effects, stock footage clips, and transitions that imitate damaged or corrupt digital video. It's perfect for creating glitch art, or for video or film editors who need authentic-looking effects and total control over their look, behavior, and timing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Creation Glitch Effects - After Effects Tutorial

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
VHS Tape Transition Effects (for After Effects)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Damaged VHS Tape Effect in After Effects

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Creation Title Effects (After Effects Tutorial)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Creation Title Effects is a collection of 200 custom, animated text styles for Adobe After Effects. Quickly and easily make beautiful, high-quality titles for many videos to come. Whether it's fire or ice, modern or retro, comedy or horror... there's a title effect here for every project.

Every designer uses text - it's the most common element in motion graphics, and yet there are very few dedicated tools for creating professional-looking text in After Effects - the leading motion graphics software. Creation Title Effects is a huge time-saver, offering designers quick access to killer text designs - with endless customization and animation possibilites.

Every title effect is on its own individual text layer, so editing the text is a cinch. Easily change the font to any font in your library. Text layers also allow for Text Animators to be used, so you can keyframe the tracking, fill, stroke, and other character properties.

Each layer is loaded with slider controls for customizing the title's features. Controls can be keyframed to create dynamic, animated titles. Every title includes a default animation and/or opening transition effect.

Title effects are indexed with keywords, so you can search for the effect you're looking for right inside of After Effects. You can also browse through all 200 titles in the included PDF file, or in the ' Title Effects Preview' video below.

Sometimes you need a title that looks like snow, candy, the wild west, or some other theme (this template has you covered). But sometimes designers just want normal, professional-looking text. 50 of the 200 titles are " Generic " titles, which are lighter on the themes, but still shiny and beautiful!

Included are five ready-to-render scenes. Simply drop in your logo or edit the text and quickly get a high-quality 3D animation.

This template comprises a diverse library of custom effects that can enhance your motion graphics and videos for years to come. Sure, you can copy elements from one title to another, but these effects aren't just for text... they can be used in a variety of ways by the resourceful editor. The effects include fire, sparks, smoke, slime, bullet holes, ink bleeds, dripping liquid, clouds, glitch, VHS, and old film effects.

Included are a variety of 3D-extruded titles and 3D effects. Control the orientation of just the extrusion, or flip a switch, and the 3D text will work with your camera layer.

All the bevels, shadows, and highlights on each title are controlled by a single "Light Angle" control. Flip a switch, and the light angle will be determined by your light layer.

Included are 80 high-resolution texture images to use with your titles, as well as 200 backgrounds, as seen in the Title Effects Preview video below.

Titles can be scaled up fit your 4K projects and graphic designs.

Watch the Tutorial

An overview of the template, and what you need to know about customizing the titles

Title Effects Preview

Quickly showcases all 200 title effects, with their default font and settings. Scrub through this video to quickly find the right title for your project.

Compatible with Adobe After Effects, versions CS5 and all later versions. This template was updated with new features in 2021. To open the updated version, After Effects 2020 or later is required. Works on both Mac or PC. No third-party plugins required.

The 3D effects in this template are appropriate for getting a basic extrusion. The extrusions are made using several techniques, each with their own advantages and limitations. Not all 3D extruded titles can be viewed from behind.

This template uses a small selection of web-safe, cross-platform fonts (Arial, Arial Black, Courier New, Verdana, Comic Sans, Impact, Georgia, and Times New Roman). You can change the fonts to any font in your library. If you have a Creative Cloud subscription, you already have access to many free fonts that you are licensed to use in your projects, through Adobe Typekit.

Using the title effects in your own After Effects templates which you are selling is prohibited by the Creation Effects TOS as well as by the stock agencies that sell templates.

"Creation Title Effects" has been universalized, so it will work with After Effects running in any language.

Music in demo video not included.

The Creation Title Effects template is not a plugin. Rather, it's an Adobe After Effects project file, commonly known as a "template" because the work is already done and the user needs only to make their own adjustments. This template is compatible with version CS5 as well as all later versions of After Effects.

The Creation Title Effects template contains copyrighted intellectual property. The sharing or online posting of project files with or for anyone other than a client is prohibited. See the Terms and Conditions for more details.

Positive and/or negative feedback is appreciated. Use the contact page to send me a message.

If you are coming from the " 3D Extruded Text" tutorial on YouTube, click here to download your After Effects preset.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Creation Title Effects for After Effects

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Creation Title Effects is a collection of 200 custom, animated text styles for Adobe After Effects. Quickly and easily make beautiful, high-quality titles for many videos to come. Whether it's fire or ice, modern or retro, comedy or horror... there's a title effect here for every project.