In the dark: a scene from Thanos Anastopoulos's Correction, which bloggers are unlikely to cast much light on.
Once again stars, directors, producers, buyers and journalists descended on the agreeable northern Greek city of Thessaloniki for one of the world's leading film festivals. The latter were there to report on the presence of John Sayles, John Malkovich, Danny Glover, William Klein, Alfonso Cuaron, Diego Luna, David Strathairn and Chris Cooper, all of whom gave masterclasses to packed houses. They also had their hands full with all the other events on offer: the strong international competition, new Spanish cinema, the Mikio Naruse retrospective and a score of new Greek films, which ranged from the excellent: Thanos Anastopoulos's correction, which covered various themes such as redemption, immigration, nationalism and racism, in an understated manner, to the monumentally bad El Greco (though Spain is partly to blame for co-producing this Europudding).
Among those banging away at their computers in the press room was the increasing number of bloggers, mostly in their 20s and still looked upon with some disdain by professional film critics who write for newspapers or magazines. But it's a phenomenon that more and more filmgoers and those in the film business are taking account of, though, I believe, their impact on the way films are marketed, distributed or seen has been minimal.
Little has changed since bloggers began sprouting everywhere. Distributors are still as conservative as ever, Hollywood continues to dominate the publicity, the general public still favours the American mainstream. Film publicists don't dare quote bloggers but still rely on positive reviews from the established press. They would be perceived as pretty desperate if they were to quote: "Brilliant!" - Joe Bloggs, moviemad.com, even if Bloggs is the most perceptive of critics.
I expressed this and other negative views of blogging, of which I remain agnostic, on a panel in Thessaloniki under the title "Film Criticism on the Internet". My fellow panelists were Variety film critic Lisa Nesselson, three Greek bloggers - Ilias Fragoulis, Iosif Proimakis and Christos Mitsis - and Chicagoan Ray Pride, who runs Movie City Indie.
Pride seemed more interested in the technological possibilities of blogs than the content. "Somebody can exit a theatre, write a review on his or her laptop, publish it on their blog and people around the world can read it instantly," he said.
Fragoulis, who has suffered from editors' cuts and alterations, felt that blogging gave him the freedom to write whatever he wanted "uncensored and unchanged".
I admit that the internet does give budding critics the chance to express their views. As someone who has been writing about films for more than 30 years, I'm quite happy to share cyberspace and a platform with Iosif Proimakis, who disarmingly admitted that the first film he recalled seeing was Robocop. "I don't remember whether it was Robocop I or II," he admitted.
That doesn't alter the fact that there is now more uninformed writing about films than ever before. Just as everybody thinks they can direct a film without experience or learning the basics, everyone thinks they can write about cinema. Who is the general public, whose taste is questionable (just look at the list of bestsellers and box-office hits), to be guided by? Professional critics have now become redundant.
When multiplex cinemas came in, we idealistically believed that there would be more choice of films. Unfortunately, it was not to be. When DV cameras became available, we awaited masterpieces from directors who never had a chance under the studio system. Wrong again. Now with the internet, we hoped that the infinite space would be used to counterbalance the global dominance of commercial American productions, and raise the level and widen the scope of discourse. Alas, film blogs, in the main, seem to be no more than ego trips. I should know.
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