Manifesto

As an individual you are completely unique, so are your sensibilities, morals, and tastes. This means that not every piece of work that is produced will connect with you as an individual, so to allow a canon that can be recognised as defining a ‘greatest film of all time’ is simply unjust to the importance of the work and the individual it relates to. A canon is only significant to the individual who produces it, for a number of cultural and personal factors. In thinking this, it must mean that a canon should be a personal project that effectively works to spark a dialogue within the art form as way of perpetuating significant spread of personal and cultural beliefs that effect the landscape of film.

As a canon is produced there can not be a set criteria that dictates what an individual must choose as a film that belongs within it. The removal of this criteria allows for all forms of film to become legitimate and significant works of art that are not easily recognised by the broad public. These criteria act to disparage the understanding of what film is and what it can be, inevitably reducing the amount of great works that could not effectively be translated in to the current understanding of film.

The idea of a ‘high art’ is a classist ideal that only acts to gate keep both the film industry and critical one, such respects are antagonistic to the formation of a canon as its criteria surrounding it effectively diminish film as a whole. This is due to placing certain elements surrounding film above another allowing for a stale and fruitless art form that slowly rots away from the inside. A film should be judged upon its own merits and not by the nature of its production or targeted audience.