YT Critiques – The Turbo Encabulator

(Screenshot image taken from the YouTube account of 'Dave Rondot')

The cinematographic approach was relatively unostentatious relaying efficiently on the same shot that vacillated between a close up view and a more distant perspective, with the latter offering the visual perceptibility of various unidentified mechanical parts of a possible automotive nature, a blackboard with an animated image of a Catalytic Converter cryptically placed amongst a series of unintelligible hand-written notes and most prominently a label-less diagram of some inscrutable technological object of unknown origin or purpose.

Any delectation in the video must arise from Bud Haggart in his role as the presenter of this rousing, burgeoning scientific advancement. Haggart spoke with an unassailable authority and indefatigable self-confidence that was wonderfully juxtapositioned against his somatic performance, which saw Haggart beautifully turn his head promptly at conductors and fluxes, and faintly raise his eyebrow at magneto reluctance and spurving bearings. At numerous junctures he would even gesture towards the diagram without any insinuation of incertitude.

Haggart never prompted the viewer to cerebrate his dominion over the subject manner, which was largely achieved due to the suave and perfectly polished manner in which he delivered the presentation’s sophisticated diction. This was no trifling undertaking given that the wording was such an opaque concoction of technical and enigmatically dense terminology that it would easily daunt and demean the public layman with its abstruse intelligence.

Initially there was a rather beguiling quality in how fastidious Haggart was in his disquisition, that is until such verisimilitude was broken at the mentioning of a ‘lunar waneshaft’, a phrase that ever so coyly suggested the satirically fraudulent nature of the work. Towards those who are not sufficiently conversant in technical and scientific matters, the lecture could be perceived as a cruel one in that it first bludgeoned the viewer with its imposing, impenetrable complexity before it ultimately ridiculed them for their attentiveness.

The World Cup of Cinema - Bhutan

Travellers and Magicians 

(Screen capture image taken from a Prayer Flag Pictures production/ Distributed by Zeitgeist Films)

The date was June 11th, 2019. The location was Guam, an island territory in the Western Pacific. A football match was played between two teams in which the Guam national football team won 5-0 advancing to the next round of the Asian qualifiers. This match occurred in the nascent stages of what was eventually a 3 year process; one that was impacted by acts of terrorism, months of hysteria over a global pandemic, a volcanic eruption, and geo-political warfare. And that’s before one gets to the typical shithousery that occurs during World Cup qualifying.

The World Cup of Cinema - Wales

Rebecca’s Daughters 

(Screen capture image taken from a co-production between Astralma Erste Filmproduktions and Chris Sievernich)

I don’t know how much of this might be the result of prejudiced English wankers, but in any case I found the distribution of Welsh cinema to be rather poor. Take for instance the 1992 film Hedd Wyn. Paul Turner’s anti-war biopic was the first (and so far only) full length Welsh language film to be nominated for an Oscar. This likely lead Fox Lorber to acquire the US rights and release a VHS copy of the film through Orion Home Video in the mid 1990s. No further release of this film has ever been issued in the US. The fact that a film that could easily be considered a landmark achievement in Welsh cinema has been left to languish in VHS purgatory, should illustrate what I’m up against here. While there are VHS copies of this film in libraries near where I live, currently I’m not willing to haul a VCR and video monitor into a library just to watch a film, … … not yet anyway.

The World Cup of Cinema - Morocco

Mille Mois (A Thousand Months) 

(Screen capture image taken from a co-production between Gloria Films, Agora Films, Entre Chien et Loup, Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, Radio Télévision Belge Francophone, Soread-2M, and Studio El Orch/ Distributed by Optimum Releasing)

What occurred in my search for Moroccan cinema was pretty much what I had expected to happen for a handful of countries when I first plotted this project. I actually found a fair number of films that I could consider as proper selections, but getting access to any of them proved to be extremely difficult. None of the films that I had on my list appeared to have garnered any sort of distribution to North America. In addition to this, streaming options for all of these films were effectively non-existent. And this was the case for Internet sites spanning the entire legitimacy spectrum. For this particular selection, worldcat.org indicated 8 university libraries within the US that were holding, what I presume were import copies. Unfortunately, none of these libraries where willing to lend out a copy through the ILL system. I grew frustrated enough to actually consider what I view as my final fallback option.

The World Cup of Cinema - Qatar

Dari Qatar 

(Screen capture image taken from a film that was distributed by The Doha Film Institute via YouTube)

Logically if one where to attempt this project, starting with the host country might seem like a natural choice, given that one would already know that they were taking part in the event and that there would be no ‘qualification grief’ associated with the corresponding selection. Unfortunately things didn’t quite work out that way in this particular instance. I have to be honest, Qatar was the most difficult country when it came to finding a decent selection to watch. While I may not have been particularly thorough in my research, based on all the time that I spent at the Doha Film Institute website and elsewhere I currently know of maybe … 3? feature length films that would satisfy my criteria as a Qatari film. And as for accessing any of these films in order to watch them, … HA!