The Bell Maker
On Programming, Purpose, and Perseverance
Tell anyone you’re a film programmer and you’re almost guaranteed to get one of the following questions:
"That’s a job?”
or
"What’s your favorite movie?”
and sometimes both.
Believe me, I understand. Most people don’t even conceive of film programming as labor; I know I didn’t until I started doing it. The truth is, almost everyone loves movies and certainly everyone loves their own taste. Who among us, having watched movies all of our lives and, thinking about our own experience, settles on a list of favorites while thinking that the movies we’ve chosen are somehow not good or not worthy? No one. People like what they like, and they like specific movies for their own specific reasons, now and forever. That’s how it works.1
But like so much work in the field of the arts (and at non-profits in particular), there is a perception that programming and curation is nothing more than having taste, that the job is simply a matter of deciding what is good and worthy and then just selecting it and bringing it to an audience— This Movie Is Good, The End, You’re Welcome, Enjoy The Show! Which, if you’re doing the actual job well, is not the case at all.2
I am almost positive no one walks into a surgeon’s operating theater and thinks “I could do that!” but truly, almost everyone imagines they could be a film programmer. In the grand scheme of human endeavor, most people would say that film programming is a pretty easy, cushy job. I mean, you only need to look at some of the hiring practices in the field to see what our own industry thinks of us.3
So, while I never4 judge what other people enjoy (in all honesty, I’m just grateful they’ve taken the time to engage with and think about the films they love), when I get asked about my own work and my own tastes, I try to deflect, to dance around the questions because there is a lot of heavy lifting that typically needs to get done once I let people know that, yes, film programming is hard work (boo hoo), and while I don’t have a favorite movie (smug), I guess I would say I can put two at the top of my list (ugh) and one of them is about a French donkey5 (elitist) and the other one is called “Andrei Rublev”, which is a film from 1966 about a painter of religious icons who lived and worked in Russia from the late 1300’s through the early-1400’s (snooze) and who… hey, where is everyone going?6
From the moment I first saw it, Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Andrei Rublev” had a profound impact on my thinking about cinema. The more I watch it and think about it, it is clear to me that it has had an even greater impact on how I experience the world around me, and especially how I think about my work.
In the film, the painter Andrei Rublev travels throughout Russia during the dark ages, searching for inspiration for his religious paintings and for belief in himself (and his art) in a world filled with extreme brutality, as war, famine, and plague ravage the people and communities he encounters. In the film’s penultimate section, Andrei comes upon a young man named Boriska, the son of an expert bellfounder, who has been tasked by the local Prince to cast a new bell for the church. Boriska reveals that his father and family have died in the plague, and that he is the only person alive who possesses his father’s secrets for bell making. He accepts the task in place of his father and begins the process of casting the giant brass bell. If Boriska fails, he is told, he will be killed.
And here, a spoiler, which is essential to the meaning of the entire film and which I am going to tuck into a footnote so I don’t ruin this sequence for those interested in watching the film.7
Boriska oversees the making of the bell, and it becomes a monumental undertaking. The workers, having worked with his father, are suspicious; Boriska seems to not know what he is doing, taking unnecessary risks at tremendous expense. Soon, Boriska begins to doubt his own approach but, having risked his own life and under incredible pressure to complete the project, carries on as Rublev silently observes him at work.
When the bell is finally completed, the time comes to test it, which, if it rings, will vindicate Boriska’s faith in his ability to cast the bell, but if it does not ring, means he will lose his life. A crowd gathers, and Tarkovsky holds us in his hands as he pans across the nervous faces of those who have assembled for the test. The moment sits on a knife’s edge, the moment of truth, life or death, has arrived. As the foreman of the work site “slowly coaxes the bell's clapper back and forth, nudging it closer to the lip of the bell with each swing,” we hold our breath. Will it ring?
How can art change us? How does its making allow us to uncover truths about ourselves, to transform our doubts into beliefs? How does the work of others inspire us to re-imagine ourselves and our own work? What are we willing to risk? At its heart, “Andrei Rublev” is a statement of belief, made manifest in this incredible sequence, which unifies the artistic process with the limitless inspiration of human creativity in a world filled with cruelty, superstition, and doubt.
The painful parallels between Rublev’s time, Tarkovsky’s, and our own continue to deepen for me. For Tarkovsky, one of the cinema’s greatest poets, working during the 1960’s in the Soviet Union meant that his films were subject to state scrutiny and censorship. “Andrei Rublev” was no exception:
"The film premiered with a single screening at the Dom Kino in Moscow in 1966. Audience reaction was enthusiastic, despite some criticism of the film's naturalistic depiction of violence… But the film failed to win approval for release from Soviet censors; the Central Committee of the Communist Party wrote in its review that ‘the film's ideological erroneousness is not open to doubt.’ “Andrei Rublev” was accused of being ‘anti-historical’ in its failure to portray the context of its hero's life: the rapid development of large cities and the struggle against the Mongols. In February 1967, Tarkovsky and Alexei Romanov…refused to cut further scenes from the film.
“Andrei Rublev” was invited to the Cannes Film Festival in 1967 as part of a planned retrospective of Soviet film on occasion of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution8. The official answer was that the film was not yet completed and could not be shown at the film festival. A second invitation was made by the organizers of the Cannes Film Festival in 1969. Soviet officials accepted this invitation, but they only allowed the film to screen at the festival out of competition, and it was screened just once at 4 A.M. on the final day of the festival. Audience response nevertheless was enthusiastic, and the film won the FIPRESCI prize. Soviet officials tried to prevent the official release of the film in France and other countries, but were not successful as the French distributor had legally acquired the rights in 1969.Despite Tarkovsky's refusal to make further cuts, “Andrei Rublev” finally was released in the Soviet Union on December 24, 1971, in the 186-minute 1966 version. The film was released in 277 prints and sold 2.98 million tickets9. When the film was released, Tarkovsky remarked in his diary that in the entire city, not a single poster for the film could be seen but that all theaters were sold out.”
For Tarkovsky, the bell rang.
For me, it continues to reverberate across time.
When we look at the way in which our own society has begun to attack the truth, to ban ideas, to limit how we frame and understand our own history, to censor artists and the arts, I think about Boriska and his bell, about Tarkovsky and his film, and how inadequate we are, here and now, in our belief, in what we must require from ourselves and from art in order to persevere. What is cinema today doing address our shared condition? What am I doing?
And so, when you look at the top of this humble newsletter, and you see the simple image of a black bell, think of it as I do— a symbolic reminder to myself that we are responsible for making, supporting, and engaging with the art we want to see in the world. It is our responsibility to believe in what is possible. And then we must act to make it so.
“The truly terrible thing is, everyone has his reasons.”- Jean Renoir, “The Rules Of The Game”
Being a great programmer means collaborating with all of the stakeholders in your institution, serving your mission, balancing your programming to reach multiple audiences, developing and nurturing stakeholders in your organization, understanding operationally how to schedule, screen, and measure your impact, fostering strong relationships with artists and the industry and your community, and so much more. If it were just picking good movies that conform to one’s personal tastes, many film organizations would have collapsed from public disinterest long ago. Yes, there are a select few who work at institutions that have earned the power to accommodate a more rarefied programming process, but building the skills to create programs that can do all of this and still provide an outstanding selection of the best available films is what separates great programmers from the rest.
Just sayin’…
Sometimes… ok, usually
Yes, that one, about which, more another time.
Obviously, I am also great at cocktail parties.
SPOILER: We later discover that Boriska, despite being the son of the original bellfounder, did not really know how to cast a bell himself. He did not have the knowledge he claimed to have and instead, had risked his life by relying on his belief in himself and his faith to guide him through the making of the bell, as all artists must.
The times have, um, changed?
Did I mention the times have changed?