Video thinking, nostalgia and arthouse
The director and producer of the podcast of «Foma» magazine, Matway Kipnis, in a new issue of «Cultural Relations», spoke about his experience in creative projects and shared his thoughts about the nature of art and nostalgia. We’re publishing key messages from talking to him.
Nostalgia
Nostalgia is the boredom of childhood, in clear times. In the 1980s and 1990s, we had understandable common and unifying trends: fashion, movies, comic books, music, and so on. At the same time, it’s hard to understand it as clearly as it is to turn it into an aesthetic type, and people are tired of digital loneliness, so they want to go back to an understandable analog world in which everyone watches the same movies and shows.
Video Thinking
«Clip-thinking» is usually spoken of by older generations, with a sense of youth indistinctness. However, this term, introduced into Russian by a philosopher from the MGU, Girenk, hardly correctly describes the quality of modern thinking. Boys and girls, who actually consume a lot of fast content, are still able to read books and watch full-blown movies. Apparently, there is no video thinking per se — but there is a specific culture of content consumption. It is important now to fight for the attention of the audience and to be interested in it in the first 30 seconds of the timeline. Only then are people willing to spend more time on content, up to many hours.
Media
If you want to make a media product, you’ll find out why you’re doing this. A good podcast, blog, magazine, or film has a purpose. Do you want to do a blog to make money? That’s one approach. Do you want to be creative or get social status from your activities? So you have to look at this blog differently. Another important point is that good media doesn’t provide ready answers, but it helps to clarify the issues that we face in times of crisis.
Art
Making a real spectatorial movie is more difficult than an arthouse, which is often nothing more than an impersonation of real authors who tried to be understood. Andrei Tarkovsky, for example, was not an arthouse director at all. A thoughtful and complicated movie, by the way, doesn’t have to be boring. On the contrary, the only way to make your film interesting is to make the audience feel and survive. And that’s the best thing — there’s no need to do another tendentious manifesto.
Last advice: Tell me what you’re interested in; don’t make podcasts for podcasts; examine formats and use them to share a topic of importance to you.
