Peter Kubelka talks too much (or, directors present at screening)...

YES! Traitor! :)

Here I am, calling the kettle...

(... to say nothing of my Philistine reaction to the first two.)

I can't honestly say I'm appalled at all with the walk-outs he experienced in Minneapolis now, especially after reading that he's noticed it happening before and continues to condescend at GREAT LENGTH to his future audiences.

Come on, I'm not that bad... :)

I understand why you walked out & why you deemed it condescending. But at the same time, I see Kubelka's side too--his work is mainly a formalistic experiment, and the mathematics & theory of his editing really superceed the imagery of him films. That's one reason he's never been one of my favorites--his films are a little too cold & analytical for me; I like chaos & the human touch. When Brakhage said that Kubelka made "some of the most perfect films ever made", I don't think this was completely a compliment.

And secondly, the dude's getting old & quite possibly reaching senility. Old people babble and repeat themselves--it's what they do.

**jay finds a safe house as peter kubelka puts out a hit on him**

What really irked me about the walkouts was that, as they were done so gracelessly and so late in the program, it reminded me of a phenomenon I'm forced to endure too often here on campus. Students here tend to prepare to leave class quite audibly well before the actual end of lecture, which strikes me as incredibly impatient and disrespectful (I guess I don't buy into the "consumer" model of university education as much as they do). I thought I saw the same attitude reflected in the walkouts on Kubelka, which apparently has nothing to do with your response to his stage manner, etc. My apologies.

Re: Kubelka's dissecting of his films, he mentioned sometime after people started walking out that he had intended his lectures to be for aspiring filmmakers, not as entertainment for the less serious, so the dissection served his purposes, especially given that his films aren't available for repeated viewing on video or DVD (and apparently won't be until after he's dead, from what he said in lecture). I think this intent also accounts for at least some of the apparent condescension. As for the rest of it, frankly, I took all the talk about how non-experimental filmmakers were all idiots, etc. to be at least half in jest, and I found it amusing even when it didn't seem to be. I think you were taking his sense of self-importance a little too personally if you found it so offensive that it forced you to leave early. As jay says, he's an old Austrian dude, and his expectations re: his role and status as lecturer and "master filmmaker" are probably entirely different from those of a person raised in a more egalitarian culture, like, say for instance, James Benning, who came to lecture and present here on campus previously and was very down to earth and laid back about what he does. I don't think you should feel insulted or slighted because Kubelka wasn't willing to treat you and the other members of his audience as co-equals. I would expect that it's just not a possibility for him at this point, and that the walkouts aren't going to make him change his manner of presentation accordingly.

(ah, blanchard, whose very withdrawal destroyed ILF. i know not why)

http://fourteenseconds.com/?p=75