Ricardo Bedoya: streaming, the spectacularity of the rooms and the problem with the critics “influencers”

“First of all there is my personal relationship with cinema. Everything else, writing, teaching classes, being on television or anything else that I have done before or will do from now on is the result of that cinephilia. I will be able to stop doing all those activities related to the cinema, but I will never stop watching moviesBedoya says.

He began as a critic in the early 70s, writing in the prestigious magazine “Let’s talk about cinema.” Remembering this time for him means returning to a Lima where film clubs, post-show gatherings and, above all, films of various calibers abounded. “I remember the San Marcos film club, the room located on the sixth floor of the Ministry of Labor or the projections at the Lima Art Museum. At that time, the production companies had a stock of films that could be seen in different rooms, which made the offer diverse.“, bill.

Since then, it has seen a change not only in the way in which films are distributed and exhibited, but also in the mood of the public that approaches them. “In the 1980s, the National Film Library began to operate –which is now the PUCP Film Library–, which was attended by a very active public. Then several movie theaters disappeared and the arrival of VHS meant that a large part of that moviegoing audience stayed at home with this new alternative.”, adds Bedoya.

But if VHS and DVD were a revolution, streaming platforms and their ever-widening production and catalog make it impossible to approach cinema as it was done 50 years ago. Given the reign of Hollywood on our billboard, those looking for a different type of cinema have to resort to a peripheral offer, which always had a place and even a leading role in its program. “The pleasure of the eyes” will return, surely, with a new driving.

Ricardo Bedoya, meanwhile, we will find, as always, in the cinema.

—How have you seen the public that comes to the cinema in our country change?

The public has become much more, let’s say, conservative, in the sense that they don’t risk seeing new things and are much more attached to the repetitive. Second, the cinema itself has changed. With the advent of digital, a lot of very diverse cinema is made: many styles, many forms of representation and all this cinema finds no place in commercial theaters that are totally dedicated to the hegemony of Hollywood. The viewer who wants to see different things has to search, do a kind of specialized search. There is an audience for which the cinema model to follow is the model that Hollywood has proposed to us since the late 70s, from “Jaws” onwards. For a mass audience, cinema is that model.

—In that sense, how have you seen the role of film critics change?

Let’s see, I’m talking about my experience in “The pleasure of the eyes”. The program was not a film criticism program because I believe that the television format does not lend itself to film criticism. That, because criticism, as I understand it, is argumentative. But we had spaces, for example, the billboard, in which the good films were distinguished from those that were not, in a few lines. Look, the cinema has memory and a superhero movie can come, but if we are going to talk about a superhero, the ideal thing is that we remember there was also a Superman in the 30s and there were characters in the silent era who somehow had special powers …that memory is what I feel is being lost in those who speak or write about cinema. Sometimes I read texts about cinema and it gives me the impression that cinema had started with Tarantino, which is not true because, furthermore, in order to understand Tarantino you need to know a little about the cinema of the 50s, 40s. and 70, because the movies dialogue with that all the time. And another thing that I see is that, in certain approaches to cinema, everything doesn’t matter, the films are there and the point is to promote them. No hierarchy is established, no difference between the films being talked about, no differences in quality or treatment. And missing that distinction. The critic is not a judge, a prosecutor, but rather someone who can point out values, since not everything is equal. There appears the figure of the influencers, who are increasingly powerful, but in which I do not feel that there is any desire to establish differences between the films that reach the billboard.

—What you point out can be understood as a certain neglect, also as a certain disdain for the past, in which I agree, but it also has to do with problems of access to a more diverse offer, don’t you think? In other words, how to approach the films of the past when they are not easily found?

Yes, totally, there is no past. Who sits down to watch black and white movies now? I am not asking to go back to the silent era, but to the 30s, up to the 70s, where cinema is a mine to discover wonderful things. It is true that the offer is restricted, but there is also an impressive lack of curiosity.

—If we talk about public formation, we have serious problems

Yes, because a vicious circle is generated. Look at the catalog of platforms in our country. If we compare it with the catalogs of the same platform in other countries, we realize that the same films are not offered and that there are catalogs that are richer in quality and diversity in other countries. The algorithm judges us somehow

—Then, the billboard problem can be replicated on the platforms

It seems to me that it is very good that people go to the cinema, that people see movies. There is no elitism here. I don’t think there are such art films and popular films. In the cinema what we are going to find are good movies and bad movies. And you’re going to find good ones in the superhero movie and bad ones in the superhero movie and you’re going to find good second auteur movies and bad ones. I believe that cinema has always been spectacular, that seems very good to me. The problem is seeing the lack of diversity.