SEEING these two films which were part of 12 films (one for children) selected for a mini-European film Festival in Georgetown, and presented by the Diplomatic Delegation of the European Union, made me aware of two things: Firstly, that the films comprised a selected cinematic viewpoint sent to the very limited local audience about film productions in diverse countries of the European Union today. The second was that the event, held at the recently renovated Theatre Guild, offered further proof of how curtailed, or deprived, and regressive Guyanese society had become since the senseless abandonment of its community cinema industry decades ago, and the eventual demolishment (or conversion to churches) of almost all its city cinemas in which these contemporary films of the European Union would have appeared commercially many times during the 1950s, 60s and 70s, thereby reaching both a far wider audience and relevance than they recently had at the Theatre Guild.
I was reminded of something Penelope Houston wrote in her indispensable book, ‘The Contemporary Cinema’ in reference to another film study by John Spraos, titled, ‘The Decline of the Cinema’, an Economist’s Report of 1962, which Houston is quoted as saying:
“The curtailment of available facilities for cinema-going, we are told, brings about a forced abstention.”
In other words, it is not communities that decide to abandon cinema-going, but the commercial introduction of OTHER methods of communication, and the taking away of previous ones. In all the developed countries, of course, this has not been allowed to dominate, and cinemas continue; Montreal alone has about 350 cinemas, and also the best films on TV, as well as in numerous DVD stores. None of this EQUALS the community cinema experience, so cinemas remain.

Introducing ‘Lila Lila’
Someone from the Delegation, in introducing the German film, ‘LILA LILA’ (2009) , directed by Alain Gsponer, commented that people who tend to think that Germans do not have a sense of humour will be disproven and surprised by this film.
True, ‘Lila Lila’ is quite funny at times; but it is a humour which camouflages the more serious topic of how a career in literature today can be seen and treated like any other commercial status symbol, and how a staid bourgeois quality of writing can be encouraged, promoted and capitalised on without the least bit of interest by the writer or section of the reading public in revitalising the idea of fiction, or use of language, as much more than simply ‘telling stories’.
It is precisely this void at the centre of the film, pertaining to the type of writing we hear as its content, which is both proof of the film’s disinterest in any visual structure which could define it as distinct cinematic art, rather than simply a clever vehicle for the presentation of literature as film.

Storyline
The so-called story or plot of the film is interesting enough: A young restaurant waiter in big-city Germany who regularly serves intellectual clients of his peer group (apparently he’s of a higher class) falls for a young female literature student whom he feels unable to impress because of her educational and artistic seriousness. He buys an old writing desk at a flea market, and discovers in a locked drawer the manuscript of an unpublished novel by an unknown, unpublished writer.
To win over the student, he loans her the manuscript, pretending it is his under a pen-name; and she is so impressed, they become friends and lovers. But unknown to him, she submits the novel to a publishing house; it is accepted; becomes a bestseller, and he a celebrity, who, for the sake of his affair and to avoid embarrassment, continues the charade.
As a plot, this sort of development is both interesting and funny, and becomes complicated when an older man turns up with proof, falsely claiming to be the real author, who, because of his age and a biased youth-obsessed market, could not get the book published, and secretly begins to blackmail the young imposter, living off his fraudulently achieved wealth, etc, and even trying to become his agent with sensational advice on ‘bestseller’ plots that will make even more money.
This point in the film is its most obvious criticism of a style of commercial writing and publishing which allows such fraudulent success to occur. Yet the film, for the sake of keeping its routine commercial plot, does not have the young writer become a different, more creative writer when he decides to learn the profession, and become an authentic novelist at the film’s positive climax.
‘Lila Lila’ is concerned with youthful success and a conventional bourgeois way of achieving it, so it does not go that step further and evolve into a truly good film in both new content and form.

New literature as print
An important moment which proves the film’s odd old-fashioned and conventional approach, despite its contemporary youthfulness, comes when the fake writer is asked to read his work in public to an adoring audience of fans. He stumbles and errs embarrassingly, because he is not acquainted with some phrases in the very text he is supposed to have written.
This is passed off as just nervousness by his female agent and girlfriend. But that is not the point; the point is that the very idea of an oral reading of all prose-fiction today harks back to the one-dimensional Medieval custom of reading texts aloud, which was the only kind of reading known back then, when silent reading of print was unheard of.
In Medieval times, ALL scripts were written to be read aloud. But that has been progressively changed by the advanced ability of print to ACCOMMODATE progressive writing which emphasises SILENT visual references, and diverse stimuli based on subjective description, memory, and various time sequences.
Imagine trying to listen to certain advanced fictional works by some of the greatest writers like Joyce, Proust, Faulkner, Beckett, Claude Simon, etc, being read aloud? Despite being conducive to the ear, one could lose the thread of what is being said, or become confused; but silently read and re-read on the page, such works are continuously fascinating, highly informative and ingenious, and 100 per cent engaging.

‘Lila Lila’ as film
The cinematography of ‘Lila Lila’ is mostly like the standard and familiar technical teaching which results in TV films. Since the film’s content is ‘story-telling’, the camera structures merely illustrate this intention. The decline of the Arts on the whole today is being assisted by training programmes which turn art into a controlled or fabricated commodity via specific teaching methods; but apart from the necessity of basic training skills, novelists must learn from novelists; poets from poets; film directors from film directors; actors from actors; and artists from artists, rather than institutional and academic teaching methods alone.
The great filmmakers like Howard Hawks, Nick Ray, John Ford, John Huston, Delmer Daves, George Stevens, Hitchcock, Truffaut, Godard, Resnais, Vadim, Lelouch, Besson, Beinneix, Fellini, Antonioni, Leone, Bellocchio, De Sica, Visconti, Kieslowski, etc, are the alternative and free academy for today’s directors who cherish interesting and exciting creative freedom.
Nevertheless, the best thing about ‘Lila Lila’ is that it restores to us the importance and excitement of printed books of creative writing. Its selection as part of the Festival could very well have something to do with this welcome value.