art? art in America?

But first, a word from our sponsor.

Film is a language unique in the arts, a powerfull melding of image and sound in a time-based medium. It has tremendous power to take us on aesthetic and philospophical journeys, to move us with moments of nuance, and stories of scope and majesty.

Who among us has not been entranced by Hollywood films and even diverted by the lowliest dreck that plays on TV?

And yet, let us not lose track of the magic of the medium, and the power, and let us not quite so easily give in to the self-serving conglomerates that would fill every frame of film with allusions to products instead of ideas, and with references to media instead of to life.

And let us not slip too easily into that safe place called cynicism, where contempt for discourse
dwells and where the lazy eye turns away from insight and emotion and the shock of recognition.

Let us look instead for a medium that hints at meaning and allows us self respect and autonomy and grace.