The New Century Cinema
This is a fuck you to cinema. This is a love letter.
I feel compeled to say these things.
Cinema has been with us for a century, for 100 years. We are in the second century of movie making. And cinema is stale. It is a one-hundred year old child of stunted growth.
I fear any filmmaker who accepts the present cinema. I fear any filmmaker that is satisfied with the current affairs of movies. And I’m not talking about the big ones, the blockbusters that tower over weekend box offices. It is far too easy to despise that branch of movies. I am talking about all cinema, especially the work that passes nowadays for shocking and unconventional.
Change is born from dissactisfaction. The leaders of the French New Wave were not happy with French cinema when they created their cinema. The cinema that changed French Cinema, the cinema that changed the world. They looked at their current cinema and destroyed it with new cinema.
As a working filmmaker and soldier of cinema, I reject all current cinema. I reject Darren Aronofsky. I reject the Coen Brothers. I reject all their attempts at cleverness and provocation. They are feable and their cinema is weak. I reject Christopher Nolan. I reject Quentin Tarantino. He loves cinema and I acknowledge his love but I reject his cinema. I reject it all because it is nothing but the games of a 100 year old child of stunted growth.
This is a new century for Cinema and our cinema must be new. I am driven to find my cinema, seperate from any other that has come before it and equal in worth.
-Travis Mills
I agree that we shouldn’t hang on to tradition in cinema as much as we do. it’s a young art form and we seem to have lionized it’s history very early on. but I don’t know that we need to throw the baby out with the bath water. Goddard was influenced by American movies at first (ie Breathless) but he took the crime genre and used its conventions for personal means, not simply to be clever. But we need more people questioning the status quo like you’re doing. Best of luck!