Are out of touch
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says that it has "tracked down and reviewed the 100
best conservative films and videos ever made."
Libertas: A forum [blog] for Conservative Film has been on a hiatus since July 2008. Its hosting website Liberty Film Festival, ditto.
Liberty Film Festival was once associated with Frontpagemag, having had a prominent link on its menu. I don't know what happened to have its name removed, but I have always wondered when the site would go defunct. It was disorganized, the information was never clearly available, and its activities seemed to be a little all over the place. Are its members documentary filmmakers? Are they film critics and writers? Are they an advocacy group? Are they trying to be a glamorous alternative to Hollywood? A monthly film festival of conservative films? It was never clear. Too many roles and activities is a sign of a lack of focus.
I remember listening to Govindini Murty, who according to the website is: "Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Liberty Film Festival", on an interview and found her to be the usual outspoken "conservative" woman, à la Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter and Debbie Schlussel. A bit ingratiating, and spending too much time berating liberals (or liberal films) instead of talking about real alternatives herself.
Here is another film society called American Film Renaissance Institute, whose mandate is to:
[C]elebrate timeless American values by producing, showcasing and distributing films that promote freedom (including free speech, free enterprise and freedom of worship), rugged individualism and the triumph of the human spirit; and through supporting, nurturing and training filmmakers who share AFR’s mission.Now, this doesn't tell me anything new. In fact their workshops look like any other film workshop, and their big name instructors are all from the "original" Hollywood. And like Liberty Film Festival, they don't really seem to have much going on.
The irony is that there are really quite a lot of very good films around these days, from Revolutionary Road to Valkyrie, and even Australia is a well-executed film from which students can learn a lot. There seems to be no need for a "renaissance." Somehow filmmakers are figuring it out by themselves.
The problem is not of technique, many film schools can provide excellent technique, but of script. And that doesn't really come from workshops and activism, but from core values. Of course, art is not ideology, and I think that is what conservative films are trying to do, in reaction to liberals; form an "artistic" ideology.
Reaction, a good word in many conservative causes, is now overburdened. All conservatives do is literally react to liberal ideology instead of formulating their own beliefs and thoughts. Thus, what they do becomes haphazard and disorganized, following their noses instead of their minds. I think also that somewhere in their hearts, there is a liberal meter beating. So, rather than form organizations true to fundamental beliefs, conservatives start and fail regularly. Hence we get the John McCains and the David Frums of the political world, trying out a "new" conservativism, which really means an embellishment of liberal ideas. The same, apparently, goes for film.
