Not a Filmmaker...Yet

The other day I was walking with my friend John, complaining about all the work and education and money I have to put in to become a professor. He then asked me an obvious question: “Why teach? Why not make?” This is hardly the first time I have heard this…and normally I have a go-to response that can get a little cranky: “NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO MAKE FILMS! I AM A HISTORIAN, A SCHOLAR! LEAVE ME ALONE!” But for some reason on this day, I answered something unusual, and utterly sincere. I replied: “I couldn’t, if I wanted to. I don’t know enough yet.”

…and John scoffed at me, Miss “my world is cinema” Monica.

Let me make one thing clear: in that statement, I didn’t mean that I don’t know much about the technical aspects of films, which is true though. I know very little, enough to get by, and make myself simple films. I know I am about to piss off any of my film school friends when I say this: but those technical aspects are irrelevant as far as I am concerned…for this discussion at least. Jean-Luc Godard hardly understood the filmmaking lingo when he directed Breathless, and he ended up revolutionizing cinema.

Honestly, I am kind of a bitch to most production students: people who tell me they would rather make films than watch them, that they are artists. There is far too much unsaturated crap out there to me to give a flying fuck about most of cliché stories that come out, or the new people that schools are generating. I am looking for inspiration, please show me some.

I say my harsh words only because I feel that the emotions and reservations I have about my own potential in filmmaking should be felt by any person attempting to yield a camera.

Tangent over: back to me…

In spite of my cinephilia, my efforts to watch two films a day during the summer, all my theoretical essays, and my attempts at making actual shorts, I have no idea how to take that knowledge and apply it. What I still need to learn is why do certain films move me, and how? And that is a question that I am not certain I will ever be able to answer.

Is great filmmaking great storytelling? Beautiful imagery? Or something greater? I would say something greater: some of the best films I’ve ever seen have no narrative or simple mise-en-scenes.

If I am to become a filmmaker: what am I to make? What am I to say? A great filmmaker should have something to say in their films, something they want to show the world…but if I were to make films I want to show people a feeling. Why do I cry during the Cheek to Cheek number in Top Hat? Or feel utter joy as Antoine Doinel runs to the water at the end of The 400 Blows? And more importantly: how does someone create that moment themselves?

I am at a loss. And perhaps when I figure that out I will be able to pick up a camera and no longer call myself a scholar or essay writer, but a filmmaker. Perhaps my ideas and expectations are extreme. But I feel that anyone who is not striving to achieve this goal has no business pursuing a life making films.