9 de dezembro de 2005

Inicia-se hoje a publicação de um artigo, em Inglês, da autoria de Anabela Moutinho e Ana Soares, do Cineclube de Faro. O artigo, cuja cedência agradecemos desde já, foi apresentado pela primeria vez na Secção «Approaching a New Millennium: Lessons from the Past — Prospects for the Future», da 7th conference of The International Society for the Study of Ideas (ISSEI), da Universidade de Bergen, Noruega, Agosto 14 — 18, 2000.

Portuguese Cineclubs - One Step Ahead (Part I)

Anabela Moutinho and Ana Soares

Talking about cineclubism means, at the same time, talking about two parallel issues: the tension between art and commerce within film activity, on the one hand, and David’s resistance to Goliah, on the other. In Europe as well as in Portugal, which is a case among many, or a unique case. Portugal at its measure.
The founding dates of cinema are settled between 1893 and 1895. Since this is neither the time nor the place to discuss its paternity — at the end of 1897 there were 196 patents! —, we shall begin by accepting what is consensual and pertinent: in December 28^th,1895, at the Salon Indien du Grand Café, Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, 15 people paid to see. Cinema – the commerce and rudiments of a language — had begun. The art would arrive afterwards.
At an early stage, Portugal responded to the interest of "living pictures", as they were then announced in the press. On June 18^th, 1896, Real Colyseu, in Lisbon. In November of the same year, in Oporto Coliseum. With a significant difference — in Oporto, the films shown were the first pictures of pioneer moviemaker Aurélio da Paz dos Reis. Portuguese cinema — the commerce as well as the first babbling (later to become art, but never an industry) — was slowly arriving.
Fair attraction, circus-like entertainment. Time would have to go by before cinema would become a true industry and a noble art. The events are practically simultaneous — birth of Hollywood, 1907 [1]; The Seven Arts Manifesto, 1908 [2]; or they succeed one another — Charles Pathé, 1904 [3], Films d'Art, 1908 [4], Adolph Zukor, 1913 [5]. To make a long story short, time had to pass before, on the one hand, cinema would acquire the necessary intellectual and financial grant for the middle and high classes to recognise it; and on the other, industry and commerce would get together to create a successful and artistically enriching joint venture. The intellectual grant implied two battlefronts: to reproduce the best of theatre in moving images, texts, actors, settings, and costumes. This was the task of Films d'Art, a French producing company whose model was soon copied on both sides of the Atlantic. At the level of journalism, or of the rudimentary cinema critic, or of the historiography being born, it was necessary to defend that, as a recent language, cinema was a new code of communication, more or less dependent on the other arts. And this was the task of Riccioto Canudo, to whom we owe the designation 7^th Art. Thus, the first 20 years were dedicated to overcoming the starting misconceptions about the uninteresting character of cinema as an art. Cinema artisans and cinema lovers alike fought this battle. The first 20 years, thus, were dedicated to building the most powerful communication industry of the 20^th century, both in Europe and in the USA. The goal was attained through a simple but extremely effective strategy — vertically concentrating the three economic sections of the activity (production, distribution, and exhibition) in the hands of few. In France, Pathé was quick to realise this formula. In the USA, Zukor was fast to put it to practice, without the restrictions of the world war. Pathé went bankrupt, and with him almost all of the great Europeans (if not with the 1^st, certainly with the 2^nd World War). Zukor became stronger, and with him all other American majors [6].
When cinema was 20 years old the cineclubs were born, closely linked to the intellectual and artistic vanguards. In Paris. Could it have been anywhere else? There, people were fascinated with and practising Dada, graphic cinema, surrealism and futurism on the screen, richer in possibilities than the canvas; Canudo was an emigrant there, Delluc gave him a hand. In other European countries there were similar vanguard movements — cinema of the body and of the open air, in Scandinavia; expressionist cinema in Germany; edition in the USSR; the peplum in Italy. Maybe that was why the cineclub movement started its international expansion. Cineclubs were supposed to receive, discuss, and desperately love cinema: in the movie rooms or in the pages, in conferences and discussions, through exhibition of the most daring, through the liberation from the star-system and from other equally attractive and repulsive commercial baits, through experimental and amateur cinema, through a politics which would be able to choose what was more interesting and to become an alternative to the usual paths. There was a seminal relationship between the cinema lover and its creator, also because both were born from the need to open doors and stretch horizons, escaping from or imagining beyond the "popular taste" and its "factories". In 1929 the cineclubs of France, Spain, England, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, and others, gathered in a Congress. With them were not only Bela Balasz and Léon Moussinac, but also Hans Richter and Sergei Eisenstein. Two main goals were then presented: one, to create an International Cineclub Federation and two, to start an International Cooperative for the independent and experimental production. It was not a casual occasion that the time between the wars corresponded to an age of expansion and success (except perhaps for Germany and Italy) of the cineclub movement and of artistic vanguards.
In Portugal, in our own timid way, something was happening — we did not have proper vanguards (our first silent movie expressing a personal reflection of foreign vanguards was produced when the ‘talkies’ were four years of age in the States [7]); we did not have cineclubs either, though 1924 marks the date when the Association of Cinema Friends gathered in Oporto to present its goals, similar to those of the European correspondents [8].
As for an industry, there were more attempts than realities. Invicta Films, in Oporto, is the most important in these two decades. It contained the dream of placing the adaptation of our literature classics in the hands of renown directors, such as French Georges Pallu and Italian Rino Lupo…, who corresponded to the best level of Films d'Art, though at a short rhythm of production in titles, and disproportionate in time. Bankruptcy soon followed, and other similar companies in the country went bankrupt too. Both the Portuguese and their government lacked money and vision.
In 1926, a military revolution suffocated our young and troubled 1st Republic (proclaimed in 1910) and started a civil fascist dictatorship lasting until 1974. While the Europeans were busy reconstructing their countries or their democracies after the war, we had to await liberation for another 30 years. Portugal was a frightened orchestra led by a deaf conductor, Salazar. To him, cinema was not only a sort of vile form of entertainment but also too expensive. Besides, it could be dangerous. Portuguese cinema and cineclubs — as well as cinema in Portugal — cannot be understood outside this context, or outside the resistance to it, as we shall see.
1945 was not just the moment when neo-realism began in the cinema [9], a gulf of fresh air in the world creative scene. It was also the moment for the rebirth of the cineclub movement worldwide — once again, if for other reasons, "vanguard" went together with "cineclubs". While other European cineclubs were born again, ours were being born for the first time. 1945 saw the foundation of the Portuguese cineclub movement, if we consider the importance of the Portuguese Cinematography Club / Oporto Cine Club [10]. Portugal was present, as an observer, in the first after-war Congress in Cannes, of the International Cineclub Federation, in 1947. This was an important occasion not only for the experience it represented, but also for the élan it granted the Portuguese movement. And if the first two years served for attempting ways and affirming wills, in 1948 the Oporto Cineclub is adult — its constitution is approved, it gathers important names of the Oporto journalism and intelligentsia, vital for its credibility by the public entities and the general people; the number of members increased from 80 in 1947 to 2500 in 1952. The Oporto Cineclub was a beacon guiding the ones which were to come.
In many newspapers and magazines, reviewers such as Roberto Nobre, Luís Neves Real, Henrique Alves Costa, Manuel Azevedo, were making an impact. The cineclubs had noble and high, hardly attacked principles — to defend artistic cinema and the people’s film culture. The government, however, knew these aims to be innocuous only at the surface: in Portugal it was forbidden for people to create associations. Allowing for the existence of a Cineclub was in itself a threat, for they would surely show such films from which all reflections would be possible (including political interpretations, as obvious). Films were either censored or forbidden, as were conferences and the bulletins necessary for the sessions to take place. But how could the thoughts behind the images be censored? Cineclubs even insisted in scheduling films in non-commercial formats, sometimes even in their original versions! The government started to complicate the life of such a slippery and weak movement [11].
Firstly, by creating difficulties to the birth and survival of Cineclubs — there were all sorts of bureaucratic and financial obstacles, from prohibition for political reasons to the proposal of names for their boards of direction, the refusal of their constitution, the taxing of non-commercial sessions with the same taxes applied to commercial ones… Secondly, by obsessively controlling — and this was constant and done previous to censorship. And there was also the strict surveillance that directors as well as other members were subjected to, through the presence of the Political Information Service at the sessions and through spies in the board of direction, or among the active members. The creation of a Portuguese Cineclub Federation, controlled by the Government, had the assumed purpose of immediately working as a surveillance instrument for the activity of cineclubs.

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