Alan Berliner; Filmmaker

Author(s): Alan Berliner

Source: Film Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Autumn, 1998), pp. 55-56
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1213369
Accessed: 25-06-2016 23:07 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Film
Quarterly

This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Sat, 25 Jun 2016 23:07:16 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 I met everybody who made movies in the U.S. and
in Europe. They all came through New York and we'd
talk together on the air-not interviews, conversations,
live. I still have the tapes of all those shows. Anybody
want to hear 2 hours of Jean Renoir? 4 hours of Josef
von Sternberg? Marlene Dietrich or Lillian Gish? Or
Pasolini, 32 hours? Or Fellini? I moved to Europe in
order to be with him after my show in 1956. I ended up
living in Rome and becoming a critic-and Fellini's
biographer, they say. 72 hours of tape, anyone?
In fact, I think I really only began being involved
in world cinema when I went (at Fellini's invitation)
to Rome and was confronted, on the drive from the
airport in his old Jaguar, with his crafty smile and the
faked surprise when he heard I had come only for a
few days: "I am sure that now you are in Rome, you
will stay here. I can't imagine what you want to go
and do over there."
He was right, of course, although I did go back (a
year later) for a few days to New York, but only to ac-
company him for the opening of 8 1/2, as he said he
didn't want to face the New York press alone. As soon
as he found out that no New York critic would talk to
him in my presence (of course, I was their competi-
tor!) he sent me back to Rome.
And Rome and Fellini never let me go. Until that
day in 1993. And that funeral ...
? Gideon Bachmann
Bruce Baillie; filmmaker
I recall nearly falling for film when on one occasion
we arrived to set up for our weekly Canyon Cinema
show at Oakland College of the Arts. The janitor had
locked all the doors and we were obliged to demon-
strate our acquired burglar arts by breaking and enter-
ing above the stage, descending like Douglas
Fairbanks via raised sets and a series of ropes. The
show of course went on without a hitch, no one but
our apprentices the wiser.
We were not infrequently obliged thus to sidestep
the establishment, with our VW vanguard waiting on
the Berkeley Fire Department's inevitable last mo-
ment arrival, transporting our audience, screen, pro-
jector, and film to an alternate mountain retreat-like
Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman in Hemingway's
late 30s Spain.
And the lovely outdoor theater we enjoyed in
Chick Callenbach's Acton Street backyard-the creek
and a little shed for our impoverished filmmaking
collective.
This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Sat, 25 Jun 2016 23:07:16 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Chairs gathered by VW from two separate mortu-
aries. Free bananas from my job on the San Francisco
docks. And a free pass, one female and one male, to
the local, now deceased, Finnish sauna, as a door
prize. Wirklich, furs Kino gefallen!
? Bruce Baillie
James Benning; filmmaker
One afternoon in the early 1960s, I was flipping
through the four channels on my television set. It was
a 20-inch, b&w Muntz. Upright model. Somewhere
between "American Bandstand" and "Cooking with
Bretta Greene," images crossed the screen that were
completely foreign to me. They changed my way of
seeing and thinking. A scary experience for a boy try-
ing to fight his way out of his late teenage years. Eight
years later I bought an 8mm Bolex and tried to follow
their lead. So now, almost 40 years later, I find this a
good time and place to thank Maya Deren and Alexan-
der Hammid for that enlightening and fine afternoon.
? James Benning
Alan Berliner; filmmaker
Because family home movies have played such an im-
portant role in several of my films, I am often asked
how the presence of a movie camera in early child-
hood influenced my decision to become a filmmaker.
Everyone naturally assumes that my father, the
primary force behind our family chronicles, must have
enjoyed putting the old 8mm Bell and Howell in my
hands and talking me through my excitement, as with
unflappable concentration (Keep it steady) I brought
my eye to the viewfinder for the very first time (Try to
put the subject in the center of the frame) and pressed
the trigger (Keep your finger on the button) before
recklessly panning (Not too fast now) across the field
of view (Just because its a movie camera doesn't
mean you always have to move it) until the spring-
driven camera motor (Remember you only have 25
seconds) would cough itself to a stuttering halt (Now
wind it up and try it again). All of this paternal en-
couragement (You're making movies!) certainly must
have made an indelible mark on the impressionable
young filmmaker to be.
Not quite. Consider that a dream sequence.
I wish I could say that there is a roll of film, or
even a single shot, however technically compromised,
that represents the inaugural fledgling efforts of a pre-
cocious five- or six-year-old. Something like the first
55
E T E
(Z4-
The passage of time ... father and son
scrawls of a child who eventually becomes a painter.
No, oddly enough, despite the fact that I am in a great
deal of our home movie footage and am often clearly
(along with my mother and sister) the object of its lov-
ing gaze, I have absolutely no memory of ever seeing,
being seen by, or even touching that movie camera.
None at all.
The truth is I never actually "decided" to become
a filmmaker; somehow, via a more arduous and cir-
cuitous route derived of inner necessity, I grew into
one. Much of my adult life has been spent grappling
with the conflicts and contradictions of family. With
both the presences and absences of memory. When I
came upon my family home movies some 20 years
later-as if for the very first time-the images I had
56
This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Sat, 25 Jun 2016 23:07:16 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
forgotten about suddenly became triggers for a flood
of memories. Using them in my films became a kind
of photo-therapy, perhaps even a way toward healing
some of the wounds of my childhood.
I still often wonder why my father never offered
to share his newfangled mechanical toy with me.
Wouldn't any good parent have done so? Didn't he re-
alize how high the stakes were? Like music lessons,
stamp collecting, or chess, this could have easily been
the seed of a lifelong passion. Maybe it would have
motivated me to join the elementary school audiovi-
sual squad, which in turn might have made me aspire
to write screenplays, or become an actor. Perhaps
even a Hollywood director.
Instead, I became a filmmaker who uses home
movies in films about his family.
? Alan Berliner
Yvette Biro; scholar, writer
My first memorable movie experience was connected
with a little scandal which was often recalled in the
family. I was six or seven years old when my mother
took me to see Tales of the Vienna Forest in one of the
big cinemas in Budapest. The opening images showed
a sunny hillside with white sheep grazing on it, ac-
companied by enchanting music. I watched them mes-
merized when all of a sudden the sheep faded away
and a young couple appeared on the screen. I was ter-
ribly disappointed, nagging my mother, asking her,
"What happened to the sheep? Why are they gone?"
She tried to calm me down, saying it was not impor-
tant and I had better watch what was going on. But in
vain. I insisted on the sheep, stubbornly questioning,
and finally in my great unhappiness I broke out cry-
ing. My hopeless disappointment was so great that my
crying became increasingly loud, so much so that my
mother had to take me home. She said I was too fool-
ish for the cinema, and indeed, I was not taken to the
movies for many long years.
Well, this was my first encounter with film, sug-
gesting that we really did not get along with each
other very well.
Looking back upon that silly episode now, I some-
times question whether I was really so foolish. In fact,
I must have been right in demanding that once you
begin a sentence you should complete it properly. Is it
not the true secret of storytelling to create a suspense-
ful balance between promise and fulfillment, playing
with expectation through surprise and unforseeable
gratification?
( Yvette Biro