I certainly didn’t plan for my first post on this blog to be about the sad state of contemporary American cinema, but Steven Soderbergh makes some excellent points in his State of Cinema Talk.

On art and why it matters:

Art is also about problem solving, and it’s obvious from the news, we have a little bit of a problem with problem solving. In my experience, the main obstacle to problem solving is an entrenched ideology. The great thing about making a movie or a piece of art is that that never comes into play. All the ideas are on the table. All the ideas and everything is open for discussion, and it turns out everybody succeeds by submitting to what the thing needs to be. Art, in my view, is a very elegant problem-solving model.

Added visual bonus (just because this flyer for the university’s students’ exhibit was lying on my desk):

On the current problems of the movie industry:

“But the problem is that cinema as I define it, and as something that inspired me, is under assault by the studios and, from what I can tell, with the full support of the audience. The reasons for this, in my opinion, are more economic than philosophical, but when you add an ample amount of fear and a lack of vision, and a lack of leadership, you’ve got a trajectory that I think is pretty difficult to reverse.”

It doesn’t take much to draw parallels to the equally sad state of the mainstream news media in this country. The race to the bottom of the likes of CNN is driven by economics rather than philosophy, and the distinct lack of vision about the future of the news media in the age of Twitter and YouTube amplifies this terrible trend.

On how to keep going:

So whenever I despair I think, OK, somebody out there somewhere, while we’re sitting right here, somebody out there somewhere is making something cool that we’re going to love, and that keeps me going.

When it comes down to it, this is a great way to start this blog after all. With a reminder that there are reasons not to despair, even if we get bombarded with news about the malfunctioning of all kinds of systems on a daily basis: the political, the social, the various professional ones and pretty much all the other ones in between. It’s the reason I’m writing again in the first place. Also: hope.