Exit Poll

This is the last day of this exceptionaly long blogathon. Not quite an entire month, but 3 good weeks. I'm happily surprised by the success of the event and overwhelmed by the enthousiastic response! Thank you very much to all contributors, readers and bloggers who relayed the information with a friendly link. Also special thanks to the Cahiers forum readers who discussed the subject in French over there.

I apologize to the contributors I haven't had the time to comment on their post yet, I will soon I promise. I tried to keep up with the flow until it was faster than me. But the Unspoken Cinema blog is still alive here and I hope this fascinating collegial discussion will keep going past the blogathon. I know the topic was a little confusing but it didn't prevent fruitful conversations to happen. The question of an alleged "Contemplative Cinema", which has raised a lot of controversy, hasn't been sorted or completely ruled out yet.

Everyone is welcome to revisit the blogs and continue to engage on the ideas developped here (general table of content). I didn't find the time to post all I had planned either, so I will add other posts later. It would be great if this place could be a watchcenter for this type of films where we can find links to articles on the subject. So don't stop adding more informations and links to our resources. You may ask to join the team blog if you haven't yet, to be able to post here with us in the future (drop a comment anywhere so you can be sent an invitation to your email address).

25 members joined this team-blog, 25 different authors participated, 45 contributions (to this minute [EDITED], you can still enter last minute posts) since the official start and a dozen before that, some participants came back to contribute two or more times.
This is amazing, and the discussions in the comments section of each blogger or at the roundtables here have been as thought-provoking as the posts themselves.

EXPERIMENTAL FORMAT POLL

I'm very satisfied by the activity fostered on this team-blog, which was designed to experiment a new collective-interactive way to take part in a blogathon. And this despite the NEWBlogger bug that paralized the blog during the first week! Really the worst time imaginable to open a team-blog effort. Thank you all for keeping up and sticking around. So all in all I hope the inconvenience didn't spoil the fun of the group. Sorry about the troubles.

Now what is your level of satisfaction? I'd like to have the feedback of the readers as well as the contributors about this experimental blogathon format. Notably about the 3 week length, the team-blog, the roundtables, and all the features available on this blog. Was it too long? Should it be repeated? What should be improved?

You may post your comment below anonymously. It's not a call for congratulations but to know what didn't work and what were the user's expectations and problems. So really I won't take the negative remarcks personaly ;)

Comments

Steve C. said…
Make that 25 authors - I'm sneaking mine in under the deadline wire. As usual. :-)
Ouyang Feng said…
First, thank you Harry to deal with this blogathon - you did a good job and several posters contributed regularly, there is a good collection of writings. I wish I were more available (sound strange sorry I've been try/helping translating german english chinese french all day long my brain is a bit mixed).
As I told you I'm rather busy at the moment preparing the Chinese documentary line-up for Berlin (err for next week! :@ !).
I will post something regarding to these films as funnily enough most of them are also contemplative in all kind of sense...

It'd be good if this blog still continues.
adrian chan said…
Ii thought it was great -- and personally really enjoyed some of the comment threads especially. I for one am not done contemplating the genre, so with luck we'll get to circle back around on some of the films, film-makers and elements
.. when the time's right...
weepingsam said…
I think this is a very good format. I like the collaborative blog - it pushes discussion, in fact, I think it would be an interesting model for an ongoing site for more open discussions... As for the blogathon itself - it's an interesting topic, and one that works well with the collaborative central blog, the longer time frame and so on - it's the kind of topic you want to be able to ruminate over for a while. That kind of collective exploration of the questions works well for more theoretical topics like this... course I'm enough of a geek that this kind of thing - poetics of film, that sort of thing - is manna....
Marina said…
As others have said, the format is perfect for such a topic and it's much easier than fleeting from one blog over to another - which gets in the way of organising and structuring the essence, discussing it and so on.
I believe it was very stimulating and enlightening, though definetely not over. :)
Was it too long? Noo, the enthusiastic activity of a month is perfect to create the base and clear out some points, but it should have an afterlife. At least, when its subject is of such scale.
Oh, and this format is also great for organising discussions (limitless in time) on urgent or disputable problems.
Tucker said…
thanks for making this happen. I wish I could have participated more, but I've just been too busy lately. I look forward to future 'thons.
Jo Custer said…
Harry, I loved this idea and this format...and I think we should do it again next year.

I couldn't help but notice that some of us had more time during the holidays, it seemed, while a lot more had more time after the holidays...oh well :)
terabin said…
I want to echo the praise for the blogathon format. I liked the communal space we could all share, in some ways more closely echoing a real get-together than other, more scattered, link-format blogathons. Harry you've been a wonderful host. I think your personal and passionate moderation of the blogathon is what made it such a stimulating and inviting event. I wish I could've contributed my own well-thought-out, formalized piece! I'll get to it eventually. Congrats to those who fleshed out their thoughts more fully. You're all awesome.