Like most academic conferences I've experienced (not that many, but a few), it was long on pretention, but short on substance. Still, people finally, on the last day, DID raise the issue of whether short should really be considered an impediment, a kind of deficiency. To consider it so is like saying that a large painting is better than a small one. Often, small ones are better. I watched Little Caesar recently. There is a diner scene at the beginning that simply IS the film, though it only lasts about ten minutes. The rest is fluff. That do me is an example of length as a kind of deficiency.
Another important thing I learned, that I didn't know before, is that Stanley Kubrick was a street photographer, somewhat akin to and peer to WeeGee, before he became a film director. That really helps me understand Kubrick's ability to bring something special out in actors, as well as the fanatical love for the detail of a scene that made his films into something like moving stills.
One particularly absurd presentation (I thought) was on some shorts done by Shirley Temple (before she became a star) and others, during which children acted out adult roles. The presenter acted as though it was surprising that this was not considered inappropriate at the time. I had bite my tongue Had this man never heard of Vaudeville? Is he completely unaware of child beauty pageants today and the often questionable 'sophistication' involved? Was he living on another planet in recent years when high school students and even junior high school students took to wearing clothes that would have made any movie star blush in the twenties and thirties?! The issue of appropriate behavior and clothing for young ones wasn't born yesterday and concern over possibly inappropriate clothing and behavior wasn't born yesterday either!
My Big Moment came when a panel moderator asked, during the Q and A, if anyone had concerns about the availability of collections. I screwed up all my courage and raised my hand. He called on me. I said that I'd heard and scene a lot at the con ference about the importance of making collections available to the academic community in various ways, but nothing about a gigantic community of researchers that the academic community seemed barely aware of, if at all: the blogosphere. The moderator seemed to think I had made an important point - and I noticed that one or two in the audience seemed to think so as well - but most of the curators on stage and most of the students and faculty in attendance seemed blithely unaware of the elephant that they apparently do not even know is in the room. One of the curators seemed furious at me, spitting out that she had no budget for anything further, and when I spoke to her personally (after the Q and A broke up), her apparent total ignorance of the blogosphere showed almost nakedly. 'What do people in the blogospere want?' she asked me, apparently totally unaware of the meaningless of her question. I pointed out that folks are doing any kind of research you can think of in the blogosphere, and that that will only increase. I explained that I could tell her maybe what I personally was researching, but I couldn't speak for the needs of other researchers. And pleeeze! We don't just do our research on line!! When I research a topic, I use, incredibly enough, piles of books. Yes, BOOKS! And other physical stuff!
Well, what I really wanted her and the others to understand was that the blogosphere could be their friend, potentially helping to spread awareness of the need for more preservation resources, for example. I don't think that point got across, but I hope I opened a door to an understanding that those whose heads are deeply buried in academia will some day achieve.
The ending of the conference was, unfortunately (from my point of view), somewhat infuriating to me. It was a segment on short films produced as propaganda by government organizations, domestic and foreign. The leadoff speaker gave an entirely uncritical presentation of (largely) Air Force related film work put out during WW2. No other speaker had spoken uncritically of the genre they were discussing. But not only did this speaker approach his topic uncritically, but he was rewarded by the moderator with an unusually effusive evaluation when he was done, as if he had done a good thing, not a bad thing, by taking such an approach. Nor did he, as I recall, disclose what (based on internet research) appears to have been his background as a teacher at the Air Force Academy!! That would be like giving a discussion on someone's films and not disclosing that I was their publicity agent.
I wrote to the conference organizers about this, and if my criticism is factually correct as I think it is, I hope they take seriously what it implies for the academic credibility of their conference, if they have conferences in the future.
__________________________
