Cinema of Disobedience:
Chapter 1: Out of the rules
We refuse to follow the rules of modern film markets. We accuse them of becoming so conservative, that they’re undermining cinema’s artistic innovation down to the point of a harrowing crisis. We bear witness to how filmmakers seeking funding must disfigure their work in order to conform to pre-approved formulas, shaping narratives to fit artificial market demands rather than authentic expression. We claim that prioritizing the financial security of films in order to let them access audiences, sacrificing creative vision in favor of marketability and profitability, has eroded originality. We point the finger at the fact that, if alternatives are first ignored, then silenced, and finally their existence even denied, we shouldn’t be surprised that cinema, which was once the most compelling of the arts, has been relegated to trivial dullness and that while many still try to push boundaries, the expectations of the current film landscape often leave those daring filmmakers outside of festival circuits and markets.
Chapter 2: Imagination in danger
We draw attention to the degradation of intellectualism as a core trait of fascism, manifested through hostility to critical thought, suppression of dissent, and the glorification of simplistic narratives. In this forced mainstream, ideas are recycled, complexity is flattened, and audiences are conditioned to consume rather than engage. We go against this erosion of thought! Art is the architect of an era’s imagination; it’s its very soul. We should not be surprised that young people turn to right-wing rebellion when their existential horizons are defined by corporate interests. If there are now factions attempting to attack diversity in societies, it is because a similar attack on media has been underway for some time, severely reducing the diversity of language availability. We blame modern film markets for hiding alternatives from their share, and discouraging both imagination in filmmakers and curiosity in audiences. Be aware, this situation must stop!
Chapter 3: Disobedience in practice
We believe that the market must be an instance after creation, allowing the free circulation of the potentially infinite variety of artistic expression, and not a formatting instance prior to its production. We maintain that the function of the market must be to facilitate access of each work to its potential audience. We hold that “an audience is an audience”, notwithstanding its relative size according to world profits. We are of the opinion that an alternative audience may be relatively small, as small as our non-standard film budgets, but active, and with the potential to be part of a community of creative forces aligned, contrary to the ordinary conception of what an audience should be. The heated debates that once took place at international forums, have been replaced by pitching rounds, where creators line up to submit their projects to the viability of the “film investment” market, weighing the range of concessions required to access production funds. The audiovisual community seems unable to understand that valid debates can continue to exist outside of market logic. A market logic that consistently offers inevitable obedience to its own rules.
We rebel against this obedience. Today’s cinema, contaminated by the corporate industry, and conditioned by formulas, must be reinvented by independent authors and artists to continue to exist as an art form. The function of the market must be to facilitate access of each work to its audience, an audience that can express the same degree of diversity as the works themselves, and not the imposition of a uniformity of supply that minimizes investment losses. The uniformity of supply in the global market corresponds to the notion of a society with that same degree of uniformity. And who among us, the queer crowd, those that perceive ourselves outside the norm of how we should be, in those moments of extreme vulnerability when we’ve been bullied for being different, haven’t clung to a memorable work of art, one that reached us at a critical moment, to comfort us in our uniqueness, relativizing the norms that seeked to standardize us? Disobedience saves lives.
Chapter 4: Queerness as a radical practice
Queerness is a tool that we use not only as a topic in our films. It’s a way of thinking, editing, sound making, and can hopefully be a tool for visibility, production and collective freedom. We don’t pretend to abolish capitalism, we want it to be open to unwanted options. A real free market cannot be called so unless it implies a radical pluralism of alternative ways of conceiving reality within reach of everyone. We want the market share for visions of a world beyond capitalistic market mechanisms, with its illusory quest of ever-growing profit! Market democracy cannot be established if it doesn’t contemplate within itself its own refutations, the nets where its rules no longer apply. We believe in a cinema that opposes the mechanisms of easy answers and pose as many questions as possible. We long for a cinema that stops treating audiences as consumers of mass produced content that imitates well-known, already-made blockbusters. Inspiration for the unknown must be the seed that cinema sows in the public! We don’t want to just entertain audiences with feel-good and fast-food spectacles; we want to make venues much more than places of quietly watching depression-inducing escapism; we want to spark debate and promote a disobedience that may prevent the subjugation of any authoritarian order. We want venues to be places where people go to meet real people that may change their lives.
If there is anything that queer people can teach society, it is to not be ashamed of its own desires, notwithstanding how unattainable, or contrary to current beliefs, they may be. That our freedom is in no small way placed in how we dare to wish our most cherished cravings without any remorse, and that it doesn’t really matter to what extent these wishes come true or not, because just the act of being able to wish it, to express publicly this ultimate desire, is a liberating act in itself, and we shouldn’t be humble while we do it, because our freedom may go to the extent of wishing the uttermost optimal manifestation of our cravings, without feeling guilty for wishing so, we are free to wish for miracles, and we are free to wish to wake up audiences from this zombie like, induced trance of corporate narratives, and make them intelligent again! Make them suspicious again! Let’s make our audiences our best friends, the ones that tell us the most uncomfortable truths again, so that we may tell them, in exchange, the darkest, bare, uncanny and uncomfortable things, or, on the contrary, our dearest hopes and cares, and our own ways of staying awake through this battlefield of consciences that the world became. Let’s make audiences radical again! We wish their truth on new terms, free from the market’s bubblegum logic. We crave a new underground, but on a global scale! A new global underground which may become a network of free, radical thoughts, flowing collectively in order to erase this hideous new fascism that is being tattooed in the brains of humanity. We believe that such a community can be attained worldwide, no matter how small it may be at first, because we know that we are not the only ones with this wish, the wish for it to be alive, and grow.
We disobey because our wishes are radical. Let’s make people curious again!
New Queer Radicals