When the Festival asked me for this lecture the first thought which popped up in my head was that I had to be present at a friend’s funeral – in this case Menno ter Braak’s funeral, and that my task was to say goodbye to all those ingenious and wonderful people who invented cinema and film art.

“CINEMA” is , I should say, was something of the 20th century – the film d’auteur  died recently with the death of Bergman and Antonioni – and the  word “militans” makes me think of the Russian revolution and filmmakers like Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov.

Today , including film for maybe 3 or 4 % , the business of images for mass consumption, is responsible for I estimate 95% of the media industry.  
Should we be nostalgic about the avant-garde filmmakers and essayists of the 20th century. No. Their way of filmmaking is now past history : only very seldom today can we see films which remind us of the craft of “direct visual storytelling”, cinema which produces images which in principle need no explanation with words.

Cinema is overruled by other media , partly by television, DVD but mainly by INTERNET and whatever will be invented next. Internet has many more consumers and much more influence than the Cinema ever had and therefore it also has much more power. The new technologies determine and rule the business , they are responsible for the new way of communication between the people of the world.
 
Let me flashback for a second  and recall what happened since the films of Carl Dreyer or Pasolini  were slowly but greedily devoured by the Supermen and Dark Knights of today.
We switched of interest : football and pop, rock and rap music became popular and  important events in our society.
Economically speaking, the  reason to invest in a delightful, memorable,  challenging or subtle film is useless, except if the product has a chance to make money.
Politically speaking,  art is unnecessary, because one does not  need art to stay alive, to survive.
The need for spiritual and artistic nurturing seems to have faded,  and lives on mainly because some people need to fight the triumphant materialism and crave for emotions as a proof of their existence.
There are two processes that human beings cannot stop as long as they are
alive : one is breathing and the other is thinking. Thinking makes us present to ourselves, thinking is the main component of our identity. Thoughts are the only assured possession we have. Thinking is supremely ours, and buried in the uttermost privacy of our being. No other human being can think my thoughts for me. 
Therefore, politicians, funds and managers should not be held responsible or take decisions regarding human creativity and the creative process. It’s us, the ordinary people, we citizens, we craftsmen, who should be in charge and decide what we want to make and what the people need to see.

To start, our attention and our interest should focus on the incredible progress in scientific , technical and technological inventions : which obliges us to rethink our concepts of culture and our cultural values. 
Since when is happiness invented ? which century was that?

And can we still make films for audiences, in a world where most human beings seem not at ease, unadapted, stressed, lost, in panic or in shock?
There is a dichotomy, a deep fault between our old classical education and the fastness of the upcoming technologies. The two don’t match anymore. The abyss grows..
What we have to learn is to think, and to be able to think, to stay in sync with tomorrow, we have to learn again.
In fact if we want to be happy or comfortable we have to work on our mutation, accept to live in a world where the creative principle resides in mathematics and where we have no problem to feel at home in a methodical, technological environment, without becoming robots. Mutation, if I may illustrate  with a simple and childish example : is to learn children to like and enjoy the plastic, concrete and metal in their playgrounds in the city, instead of missing trees and flowers in nature if their parents can’t afford to have them travel to green areas outside the city.

In past times, we were reassured how to survive by our religious, philosophical or ethical concepts. We were reassured about the essential problems of life, the eternal, the infinite, life and death.. and so on.
Now we should give up those faded intellectual and emotional thoughts and ideas. The new technologies will probably never give us  assurance, certainty or safety. So we have to model for ourselves new ways of thought and thinking.
If we are lazy , and as it were, take a break from thinking, our “me” , who we are, will come apart . Then a combat will rise  : the emotional versus the scientific .
Just imagine for a second, that we would have interplanetary communication, or if the experiments with the big bang tell us totally new things about the universe and our planet, wouldn’t we have to modify and redefine all our moral issues? And therefore also the content of our films?

Anyway, to come back to our western world of today, it is evident that growth is the keyword to survive. In our so-called democratic capitalistic countries, the State and the big industries have the power.
The question is : How fast do we want to grow? And do we care if we make victims on the way?
How does the filmmaker fit in a system where  the economic power and therefore mass communication lies in the hands of those who decide how we consume the goods.
In fact, we are all lured and pampered “forced” if you prefer, every one of us, into the social and political values which are profitable to the State and to other powerful organizations. They provide the entertainment  - we don’t.  Is “entertainment”  by the way another word for putting to sleep the minds of the audience? Or if we don’t sleep and watch the entertainment will we  suffer from brainwashing and eventually from brain damage?  Should we have our brain medically checked  after watching some of the TV programs?
One thing is sure, to be invaded  day by day with stupidity, permissiveness, violence, sex if not perversion is sometimes quite amusing , but not always pleasant for those who recognize that banality and vulgarity are important attributes of the media and modern cinema. 

I have a feeling that the mind of the audiences are getting more and more confused and that they have difficulty in distinguishing  reality from fiction or from fake. The consequence of this “confusion” is that the viewers lose the sense of a coherent vision and that makes it very easy for an audience to be conditioned and accept what the market suggests them.  
Just watch some film posters and compare the slogans on the posters to the content of the films. The slogans  are preferably exploitative, and use words to attract an audience on false premises as the content of the film is usually somewhat different. Why is it necessary to cheat with the audience ? To be gently dishonest? And is the audience indeed so naïve and easily manipulated that they won’t go to a film with a  fitting and adequate slogan. Why do we all stay willingly immature? 
Education is needed !

What can we assume and deduct from the activities we call “cultural” : is culture similar to indoctrination or is culture the same as alienation? Alienation being the distance we create between the essential values and ourselves as human beings.
Can we or should we try to improve the situation? If our goal would be to humanize our society, then a real human should be someone who can express his personal qualities and someone who is true to himself . Many of us have however a feeling of resignation, that we can’t avoid “wrong” things or  “wrong doings”, it’s like a fatality we can’t suppress. The Church and our educators, family and school, have reasoned mankind into doing  “good” and refused to take into consideration their vices, which belong to the world of demons.
To clarify my point of view, I say that the most human quality of man is his inhumanity.
In capitalistic society where money keeps the individual in the position of a non-free person,  moral decline is the logical fatal consequence of our way of life.

So, can we do something about our indoctrination or about our alienation ? Can we change culture? We can, if we are willing to be critical about the world we live in, to accept no compromise, to reject preconceived ideas and the choices imposed by family and society. We should realize that our sense of values are not ours, but that they are defined by others, partly by the legislators we voted for …and who often misuse our trust.

One of the main questions I asked myself writing this paper, was : Can we integrate religion, philosophy, arts and science. I doubt it.  Science takes a much faster road than the other three, and soon science will take over all  power. Our brain will probably in the future eliminate everything which is not connected to scientific knowledge. Moral concepts : the idea of good and bad for example will alter or disappear.  By the way, morals only exist within the human race, not in the world of animals. To kill the neighbor does not enter the mind of a bee, but the bee will kill without hesitation the Queen-bee, if there is a Queen too many. The community of bees take the decision. Not the individual killer.

One of the little things to redefine culture is to accept and acknowledge that every human being is unique, and each of us original. We look alike, but we are different. Every child has some resemblance with his parents, but he/she/it is not identical to the parents. Human beings want to share feelings and emotions with each other, but we should not forget that, even in moments of  deep intimacy, the lover cannot embrace the thoughts of the beloved.  “What are you thinking? what am I thinking? ” as we make love.
We shall never know. The closest, most honest of human beings, remain strangers to each other. Thought veils as much , probably far more, than it reveals.
That doesn’t make it easy, so we and the community  play safe.
Society prefers to obey to existing structures and it has decided that the structures - where people are treated equally or similarly - are more important than “imagination” or a “spirit of innovation”. Society is always busy protecting stability, and not evolution. Education is a way to keep the status quo.

Some of us think there are profound intellectual differences between men…or women. In reality, there is not much difference in mental capacity in people. But there are deep cultural differences, which give us the impression that one person is more intelligent than the other. What one person ignores or does not know, another knows or understands. Ignorance is not useful to anyone, except to those who take advantage to dominate others.
If we really want to move on, to be in connection with our times, we should give more attention to scientific and biological facts than to psychological notions. Mathematicians think first in general terms , then in particular terms . A logical order. The arts, on the other hand, don’t have to be logical,  they can be a mess, mentally deficient, inconsistent, and beautiful and sometimes even poetic.

Again I plead for Education! But to learn what?

The only profession we should learn is to be a human being. That takes a lifetime, so we have to devote a whole lifetime to this profession.
We could quite easily improve our situation, if we cared and devoted time to our need of identity, our need of orientation, the need to build a bridge between our
humanity and bestiality.
We, human beings, are a special kind of animal because we use our brain both to think and to feel.

How do our senses play a part in all this?
It is evident that eyesight is the most essential of our senses. Well..we start our life by seeing. To see is the first step in the learning process. To remember what man learned , he had to invent words, language.
Being a filmmaker,  I’ll limit myself here to the power of visuals. Images, can they tell us, teach us all we need, to teach others again?
The images we produce are ultimately only an ornament to our use of language and speech. With images we illustrate our language. That is  quite a different process than direct vision, which I mentioned in the beginning of this lecture.
Seeing does not explain or prove. Language has the possibility to prove. Seeing cannot. It is direct, real and it cannot lie.
Didn’t God create the word so we could lie to each other…?
I think that when we finally will learn to SEE, many of our actual problems will diminish or disappear. We have to see who we are , to learn who we are, to enjoy who we are, and not to be confused by all the different and contradictory opinions we encounter.
We should  search for a better and more definite  balance and reach greater harmony. If we are willing to participate in the adventure of knowledge , it will bring us consolation and courage. As we know we are the only living species who by their biological constitution want to dominate the planet and the space we live in. We want to decode and master the universe. At times a  tiring and often a destructive exercise.

Do we really wonder why and how our planet got sick and its inhabitants weary?

The actual biggest problem being to resolve the co-existence of one billion people who are comparatively rich and about 8 billion who are poorer. Or getting poorer. To try to solve this imbalance, we study our diseases : recession, underdevelopment, inflation , unemployment, terrorism , drugs etc. What are the result of all these meetings, a lot of talk and not much action or change. Drastic remedies are avoided. Politicians don’t dare or are incapable or lazy.

Let’s take a look at ourselves, observe why we do what we do . What are the main motives of our actions ? I name them: desire and fear.
We are split between the two. Fortunately, the incredibly fast scientific development of the last 30/40 years provides us with an answer to a lot of problems if we care to think well.
Education leading to knowledge will obliterate all the incoherences we are accustomed to. We have to disregard  the emotivity and sensibility which define us today.

Most cultural manifestations,  be it in the theatre, in the movies, in the plastic arts, in the press present a loss of lucidity sometimes close to alcoholism. When we pronounce the word “culture” today , we think automatically in terms of nice images, tragic images, savory, warm artistic, ornamental efforts. The cultural disciplines I am referring to now have nothing to do with real knowledge. Science is sometimes even considered an enemy of the arts.
Propaganda and marketing, very popular today, distances us from concrete knowledge. Democracy whose function is to make us adepts of democracy,  gambles also on the emotions  and moods of the people to win them for the cause of democracy, rarely defending reason and logic which are not popular.  All cultural activities, festivals, exhibitions, biennales, in short, all artistic manifestations are an exaltation of abstraction and emotivity, which means in fact “alienation”. For clarity’s sake, I mean by alienation any process by which the human being becomes estranged from himself, the individual deprived of his humanity.

This actual education I mentioned tends to inculcate respect for existing public structures. It does not take into account the critical and civic capacities of the individual : it leads to obedience or submission but not to responsibility. Museums, libraries, concerts of classic music, artistic collections intimidate quite a number of individuals.
In conclusion, if we consider that “the actual education” is to promote the already existing ideas, then we should conclude that such an education is insufficient.

And instead go for “integral education” .
Everything should serve everybody .
Imagine gathering knowledge without  exams and diplomas. And living well afterwards. Without problems!
We need to make better use of our potential intelligence. And slowly but surely the new education will lead to a greater collective wisdom.

We know for sure now from what  biology has discovered  that the brain of every human being living on this planet, whatever his race may be, has the same surface, the same number of nerve cells, the neurons. Their quantity is evaluated at 10 billion, and their network can produce about 100000 billion connections. Therefore, everybody who is part of humanity has virtually an equivalent intelligence. I realize that numbers are not necessarily equivalent to quality!
It’s the cultural and social differences that make that certain people know more than others. By upgrading the cultural level, we can diminish or even eliminate those differences. To succeed in that goal, the industrial powers, and politics must want it.
Unfortunately, hardly any economically oriented group wants to adopt a scientific method of information and disperse knowledge so that we could profit from the intelligence of everyone, of the whole human race.
To my knowledge, nothing is done in that field.  The world is overloaded with opinions and empty of intelligence. Sentimental motivation has the upper hand over knowledge.

Have we deserted our human nature? We created schools to guide us on the road to life . But what have the schools given us?  We have become active members of society, but the schools have not learnt us to judge or reform our society. Only to contribute.

Today we are full of illusions, we have lost our bearings, we are more alienated than we have ever been. We suffer from an illness which is called semi-culture,
this semi-culture being broadcast or distributed by the different means of communication. Film and TV produce semi-culture : the illusion of knowledge and the illusion of feeling. Mass media are not engaged in knowledge or understanding, but busy conditioning people.     
The semi-culture is worse than ignorance, because it is an illusion. We are daily fed with stimuli and news. The groups who feed us with the news belong to the dominant groups. They have to make money at all costs or to reach sufficient viewers. This explains why they search for the sensational,  blow up every bit of news, repeat every item until one is brain-dizzy. And due to the necessity to be fast, the news is often half-true or superficial. Usually we do not have the knowledge to solve the problems. It is preferable to fake the solutions than to admit the lack of knowledge.  If we don’t understand what’s happening, we will never eliminate collective ignorance.

At the end , we have to choose between the sweet consolation of the arts, the magic of dreams and  the restlessness of science ? Or said with a sneer, should we live in “drunkenness” or in knowledge?
Whatever ! To help us “dream”, we should remember that the great currents of thought from Socrates to Marx and further, that all philosophies had a common thought  : trust mankind.
Mohammed , in his own way, said the same and I quote :  “the variety and multiplicity of intelligences is the proof of our existence and the generosity of God.”
Today, science echoes : it has proven  the multiplicity of intelligences. We should profit from this richness. It should lead to an authentic and harmonious participation of all individuals in society.
Film and the media sould also profit!

Learn, because we will need all our intelligence .
Flutter your wings, because we will need all our enthousiasm.
Organize,   because we will need all our strength.

George Sluizer, September 27  2008

 

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