Questions of value.

Wood, Robert Paul

CineAction originally announced itself, almost thirty years ago, as 'A Magazine of Criticism and Theory'. I was always glad that criticism came first--I think in fact I wanted it printed in bold, with 'Theory' in ordinary type, but was overruled.

Over the last few decades we have witnessed, in the university, theory and scholarship usurping the place of criticism: a major setback for the development of our culture. Aside from the loss within academia, the result has been the degrading of criticism to the level of 'reviewing'. This is not of course to denigrate the importance of scholarship and theory, upon which criticism depends. The three should form a triangle of which criticism is the apex.

Theory supplies the critic with maps, scholarship with facts; the critic needs both, as reference points when relevant to her/his needs. But it is the critic who is primarily concerned with questions of value: the value of the individual work of art, its potential value within a (so-called) civilization that at present appears bent upon self-destruction. The question of value has never been so urgent.

The articles in this issue have been selected (from an encouragingly large number of submissions) for their concern (explicit or implicit) with questions of value. Each 'close reading' was clearly, for its author, a labour of love. Each implicitly, and in a variety of different ways, seeks to provoke in the reader agreement or dissent, stimulating ongoing debate over a film's value. The fact that criticism is not a 'strict' discipline with a Q.E.D at the end of each proposition is a decided positive: It encourages thought and initiative, in which 'teaching' consists not of the transmission of currently dominant theories but of the challenge to fresh independent thinking.

My graduate course at York University this year was on contemporary world cinema, centred upon twelve films by twelve filmmakers. A number of my students expressed amazement, followed by evident delight, when I told the class at the outset that, while they were welcome to read anything they found relevant and helpful, they should devote their time primarily to repeated viewings of the films screened or to viewings of other films by the same directors. We discussed films from Asia, Europe and the Middle East with reference to aesthetics, politics, basic premises and assumptions ... Four of the articles in this issue (including my own) derive from this creative interaction.