FILM GENOLOGY
Utilitarian Cinema and Phenomenon of Film Propaganda
In his discussion about utilitarian
cinema (films with special purpose) the author, as
opposed to Hrvoje Turković, talks about a completely
separated »film« field characterized by non-artistic
purposes. Utilitarian films motivate the engagement of
different media and this is especially related to the
television as a media that mostly presents many utilitarian
films. Film experts such as historian Vjekoslav Majcen
who was examining Croatian educational film (that is,
the films of the Andrija Štampar’s School of Public Health)
clearly perceived some special characteristics of these
films. But we should not neglect the fact that the category
of utilitarian film defined in this way arises from the
perspective of an artistic film researcher so it is defined
in contrast to the artistic film. Of course, a film can
at the same time be a work of art and utilitarian as
it is nicely shown on the example of films by Sergei
Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov or Ken Loach (Land and Freedom).
The author explains fictional and other poetic and presentational
possibilities of the utilitarian film and, starting from
the spectator’s experience, divides the utilitarian film
into educational film, commercial or propaganda film
and music video clip. Within these types utilitarian
films can be divided according to distinctions dominant
for artistic film and other similar media so the video
clip for the song Sledge Hammer (S.R. Johnson,
1986) performed by Peter Gabriel would most probably
belong to experimental animated film, while the video
clip for the song My Baby Just Cares For Me (P.
Lord, 1987) sang by Nina Simone would represent animated
utilitarian film. The author reminds about the historical
tradition of perceiving different film media functions
and laments that the newer »symptomatic« critique and
theory hardly remember the work of its predecessor John
Grierson and points out that conclusions about special
tasks of documentary film do not have to be made according
to documentary and utilitarian films’ »relation to reality«.
Nikica Gilić |
