My schedule for the next several days will be all but completely occupied with attending the second annual Moving Image Institute, co-sponsored by the Museum of the Moving Image and the New York Times. The institute is an intensive program in which 13 journalists meet film critics and various industry folks in an effort to enhance our appreciation of the continually evolving state of film both as an industry and an artform, and the role that writers and journalists play in this landscape.

The MOMI site has posted the Institute schedule and profiles of both the speakers and journalist participants (myself included). A summary and blog entries from last year’s inaugural Institute is also accessible.

It will be interesting to spend several days at the MOMI, which is currently closed for a major renovation which includes two brand spanking new screening auditoriums, which suggests that the MOMI will be a more vital venue for film screenings in the future. I’m also looking forward to making my first visit to the new New York Times building and meeting the film editorial staff there. I’m curious to meet my fellow participants, who come from all parts of the country and collectively showcase a striking diversity of involvement with film. I’m glad to be familiar with at least a couple of them: it will be great to spend time with Doug Cummings after following his blog Film Journey for a long time, and it’s always a pleasure to see superblogger and karaoke fiend Karina Longworth (assuming she’ll make it in time from covering the Sarasota Film Festival). And I’m very excited to meet living legends from the realms of both filmmaking (Arthur Penn) and film criticism (Andrew Sarris and Molly Haskell).

Last but not least, I’m eager to hear what insights Eugene Hernandez (IndieWire), Michael Koresky (Reverse Shot), S.T. Van Airsdale (The Reeler) and Matt Zoller Seitz (The House Next Door) collectively have to offer on the outlook for online film criticism, and more generally the career prospects for young, up-and-coming generation of film writers. This sentence from the Institute description reads like a major understatement: “The participants will assess and discuss the critical issues that face film journalists at a time when the experience of viewing and writing about movies is evolving in leaps and bounds.” The slew of film critic firings and resignations in the past month certainly offer grist for the discussion mill for this coming week. Where is the future of quality film writing? Shall it be consigned to an online ghetto of niche sites and blogs? How can it keep a foothold with a mass readership, where it has a greater potential to promote a culture of film literacy, which might in turn promote the consumption (and production) of quality films? Big questions, and there are plenty others to chew on.

I wrote in my application: “It seems to me that the intellectual pursuit of cinema and criticism is evolving into something less like a career and more like a lifestyle, unsustainable as gainful employment but vital in promoting media literacy and a way of thinking and living with cinema among society at large.”  This isn’t necessarily how I would like things to be – like anyone I’d like to be able to make a living pursuing what I love.  I suppose with some attentiveness to the forces that are affecting the industry and some resourcefulness in responding to these forces, it is possible.  Let’s see what others have to say…

I’m hoping that there’s a wireless connection in the museum for me to submit some live blog entries immediately following the sessions (though after the many misunderstandings and mixed responses that stemmed my live coverage of the NYU Film Criticism workshop, I hope that readers will understand the raw nature of live blogging and exercise a little discretion when responding anything that I’m reporting on in the moment.)  The Institute program may also be running its own site and soliciting entries from participants, in which case my output may be directed there.  Will keep you posted as to where to find the loot…