BA (HONS) AMONG THIEVES

Things must be bad when even a nonentity like yours truly finds their inbox stuffed with begging emails. These come mostly from hopeful graduates telling me how in exchange for a bottom-rung job in the film and TV biz they can – quote – make a mean cup of tea, as if that’s something to be proud of after three or four years of expensive education.

Yep, folks – up and down the country academe is busily ejecting yet another bunch of film and media graduates now burdened with five figure debts and with virtually no prospect of a job in the business. And whose fault is that? Well, not having enough fingers to point at them all, I’d say the blame lies with educational institutions who care more about making up numbers and building their brands than providing a useful experience for the saps they snare with a prospectus full of wishful thinking if not downright lies. Been there.

Isn’t it about time somebody set up a crap college/useless university website? I know more than a few people who would be only too glad to get post-graduate grievances off their tits. Maybe that way those punters thinking about signing up could get some real information about what they’re in for, instead of falling for the rubbish universities and colleges tell them.

Top of my list would be the teaching staff – who on your average film/TV course means some loser who made a couple of dire shorts about ten years ago but who never quite got a feature made because they realised that drinking/getting stoned/watching daytime TV was more fun than filmmaking. Next on the list is the technical staff, the guys who pull their cagoules on and rush out the door on at five on the dot but somehow manage a nice sideline in weddings or their mate’s bands videos, which means you can never get your hands on any kit when it comes to your graduation piece. I mean, how many times can the only 'good' camera be in for a service?

Throw in some pointless ‘course’ work eg. ‘Representations of the Working Class in Scottish Cinema’, in other words, a waste of a term, because none of the staff has a clue what else to do with the students but they need to tick a box to justify next year’s funding – and their salaries. Repeat for four years and – ta-ra – you too can come out the other end with a crappy 2:2 in Moving Image Culture and join the queue at the local Jobcentre Plus to find a way to dig a hole in your fifteen grand debt.

And no, don’t be tempted by those post-graduate courses. There’s already enough rubbish scripts/short films to go round so why prolong the pain? If after all this, you’re still burning to make movies, then you’ll find a way to do it. It’s just a pity that our educational institutions don’t tell you that your fifteen grand would have been better spent on some kit and a flight to LA, because at least there nobody asks - or cares - if you’ve got a BA or HND in being broke.

BOX-TICKING IN BOHO

Now that Scotland’s got itself a new government, you can be sure of one thing – it’s business as usual. Today’s Herald has a piece about the new culture minister, Linda Fabiani, in her first interview since giving Patricia Ferguson even less to do. Linda who? Yeah, my thought exactly, since before the election the Culture hat belonged to Stewart Maxwell MSP, the Nat’s shadow minister for all things arty. Maybe he got a better offer, who knows?

So what do we learn about Ms Fabiani? First, she won’t be making any more reviews about the arts in Scotland. Second, Culture Scotland will go ahead as planned, just when we had forgotten about the so-called consultation rumoured to be happening pre-election. Third, that she ‘can’t stand detective novels’, but quickly backtracks to give Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith honourable mentions, in case they go off on a major sulk, as if the skiploads of cash they make from their literary-lite piffle isn’t enough for them.

No mention of film - what else did you expect? But Linda says she’s ‘excited’ about Doc Richard Holloway stealing an idea from the Venezuelans to bring youth orchestras to ‘deprived’ areas, a prospect about as exciting as eating cardboard. Can anybody tell me how the tuneless scraping of fiddles in Drumchapel or Castlemilk will benefit people who’d rather stay in and watch Sky? No clue, have they?

Elsewhere – meaning the Scotsman – we have a puff on another exotically-named female, the London-based ‘filmmaker’, Rosalind Nashashibi, whose connection to Scotland is that she’s a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art and she’s repping Scotland at this year’s Venice Biennale. Oh, and she’s managed to get piles of cash out of the Arts Council coffers.

Like picking scabs, I’m always interested to know what goes on in the mind of the artist-cum-filmmaker because any time I’ve dragged myself into a gallery to watch this stuff, I’m usually confronted by a crappy video of some scrawny waif dressed out of a jumble sale dancing around their living room or an out-of-focus shot of a tree that lasts for about four days. And like the rest of the punters, mentally I scratch my head and wonder what would happen if you asked any of these ‘artists’ to actually draw something vaguely recognisable.

Maybe I’m missing the point. The point isn’t to make a decent film – and I’m not talking multiplex fodder here – but a set of pictures and sound that’s competent and at least tries to make some kind of sense to the viewer. Stupid me. Artist/filmmakers only cut it if they’ve got some elaborate excuse to make up for their lack of chops. They do this by covering the bases so much that any justification becomes invisible. To quote Ms Nashashibi – "I use reality because that's available with film, but it's not in order to show something that's true, or what real life is like, or documentary. It's more in order to show that transformation between everyday life and miraculous things, or mundane things and ritual or theatre."

Well I’m glad that’s clear, though I doubt it would wash with Warner Bros. Me, I’m more interested in how much take-home Rosalind got for her eight-month Scottish Arts Council-funded stint in New York shooting lightbulbs and stanks. Meanwhile the rest of us have to put up with job adverts that coyly read ‘meets the minimum wage requirement’. I’m not saying that artists get an easy ride but at least they have more fun than flipping burgers. Not so much BoHo as boo-hoo...