Declaration of Principles

This blog was inspired by a couple of things. One was a discussion on film criticism in the age of the internet in the magazine Cineaste. In particular the critic and blogger Robert Cashill, who wrote: ‘there are an estimated 113 million blogs out there and 112 million seem to be about film.’ The significance is simply the sheer amount of writing on the cinema on the web, some of it interesting and well thought out, much of it - perhaps most of it - worthless. Some of the serious journals – including Sight and Sound, Film Comment, and Cineaste – have looked at the future of film criticism and painted a bleak picture. The message is that the rise of the internet means the days of journalists and historians paid to express their curiosity and thirst for film are numbered. The fear is a loss of expertise and knowledge and the issue becomes one of trust. Where does one go to read intelligent analysis of the movies or be pointed in the direction of the ones we should be watching?

The name of this blog was inspired by a 1979 British television drama directed by Bob Brooks and written by Jack Rosenthal. The Knowledge is the story of a group of men all hoping to become licensed drivers of black cabs in London. To achieve this, they must gain ‘the knowledge’ – the ability to remember every street name and every potential route through the city. From the outset we are made aware that the task is so monumental that most of them will fail. But, despite this, the underlying theme is that the attempt to learn the knowledge, or indeed any knowledge, is worthwhile; indeed it is to grow as a human being.

I wouldn’t want to take this metaphor too far; the aim of the blog is not to navigate the history of cinema in the same way that a London cabbie would the city (that journey may be beyond all of us!); more it is to take the subject of film seriously, to reject flippancy and rumour and to celebrate intelligence. In the spirit of Charles Foster Kane’s declaration of principles, ‘The Knowledge’ will make some promises and try and keep them. Contained within the first is an acknowledgement that most people coming across this blog will be seeking out information or comment on a certain film or filmmaker rather than to read this particular writer, so let’s make those details as accurate as possible. I’ll go further; I want to make this blog a trusted voice, a place for opinion and debate, yes, but never based on supposition or scurrilous falsehoods. A second promise is to 'spread the wealth’, to let you know where the best film knowledge on the web and elsewhere is. A lot of blogs, most notably GreenCine, do this already and incredibly successfully. But some of the subject matter here will be pretty specialised and off the beaten track, so having as many different routes to the information won’t hurt at all.

I hope that doesn’t sound too high minded. The Knowledge (we’ll get rid of those quotation marks now if that’s okay) is about revelling in the entertainment of film and supposed to be fun – for the reader as much as the blogger. But it never hurts to set out your store as it were. Be seeing you.