Film Comment Review

Film Comment has published the first review of Flare Out: Aesthetics 1966–2016 in its July/August 2016 issue. Jordan Cronk’s enthusiastic response to the book concludes that Gidal’s prose is “as dense, complex, and harmonically composed as any the field has produced.”

Referencing the first publication from The Visible Press, the review draws parallels with Gregory Markopoulos, whose dictum “Film as Film” was also, coincidentally, used by Gidal in his own writing.

Gidal responds:-

thanks for the lovely review by jordan cronk, just a note about fim as film, which does not reference the work or writings of gregory markopoulos … when writing my piece “film as film” (not reprinted in my flare out: aesthetics 1966-2016)  around 1972 for the artists film issue of Art and Artists, i had thought the phrase was of my invention, due to ignorance of the many others who used that phrase from the 1920s onwards … in any case, gregory m. once phoned me in london in the late 1970s in a fury about the use of the term for an exhibition at the hayward gallery and also at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, organized by Wilhelm and Birgit Hein and others, in any case i said gregory before you blame only them i have to tell you i wrote a piece called that in the early 70s not aware of your use of the term and he said oh that’s ok peter, but this exhibition is an outrage etc etc … so somehow i was exempted. but this note just to say it doesnt reference anything but my own ideas (which of course don’t exist in a vacuum). and to thank film comment for the kind review. the visible press will no doubt echo beckett’s “7 copies sold, 3 at trade discount”.

Gidal’s text “Film as Film”, which originally appeared in the December 1972 issue of Art and Artists, will be reprinted in “Shoot Shoot Shoot: The First Decade of the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative 1966-76”, due to be published by LUX in October 2016.