Ron Holloway (1933-2009)
It was less than a year ago, in February 2009, that I saw Ron Holloway and his wife Dorothea, at the FEST in Belgrade, where Ron and Slobodan Sijan had organised a round table on women-filmmakers in Eastern Europe. I knew that he was not well, but did not expect that he only had months left to live. He seemed as busy and as active as always, passing around copies of his ubiquitous publication KINO: German Cinema, which he had been publishing for many years (since 1979, as it seems) and which highlighted German and East European cinema and festivals. I just received the publication that resulted out of this project about ten days ago; one feels like life continues and that Ron has not left us.
My first encounter with Ron was through a book of his, Bulgarian Cinema (1986), which I read in the early 1990s. It strikes me that, like the cinema to which it is dedicated, this book is now being almost forgotten. It is not mentioned in the obituaries I read, and yet it is one of Ron’s most serious academic efforts. It is a systematic and deep study, in which he introduces the concept of Poetic Cinema, a key term that was adopted later on by Daniel Goulding and other academics and gained currency through its wider application to the cinema of Eastern Europe at large. This study remains probably the most academic study of Ron’s. I am deeply grateful for it as it greatly influenced and shaped my own scholarly interests.
I had several opportunities to work with Ron over the years. One of the projects was special issue on Bulgarian cinema which I edited for the on-line journal Kinokultura in 2006. Here is a link to the article we co-authored, entitled Hoping for a Bulgarian Film Revival.
There were several occasions over the years that Ron shared with me his dismay with Bulgaria’s film bureaucrats who had invited him in the early 1980s and had helped him to view all the films he needed in order to write his book. Later on, however, he felt ignored by them as, in the 1990s, they seemed to have had completely forgotten his existence and commitment to the cinema of this country. I tried to explain that governments had changed, that the new people were most likely considering everything done by their predecessors as worthy of destruction, and so on — yet, I can see very well why he was feeling so bitter. I would feel the same in his place. His death is not being reported in the Bulgarian newspapers as far as I can tell, writing this from Sofia where I am visiting at the moment.
During our encounter in Belgrade in February 2009 I kept pestering Ron with questions about his long life as a festival goer, to me he is probably the prototypical individual who I describe in my writing on the ‘Festival Circuit’ when I talk about ‘the festival treadmill’. He was a man living for an at film festivals. I very much wanted to learn, in particular, about the film festival of non-aligned nations, mostly from the Third World that the Soviet Union was trying to rally culturally, that had been taking place in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (USSR), during the 1970s and the early 1980s, a festival that no longer exists but which he had visited many times. He did not manage to tell me as much as I wanted to know, and promised to talk to me about it at a later point. With Ron now gone, the feeling is that a whole era has disappeared.
It is only now, from his obituary issued by Interfilm, that I learn about Ron Holloway’s involvement with the Cuernavaca (Mexico) centre for intercultural learning, run by de-schooling ideologue Ivan Illich, another person who has had a shaping influence over my thinking over the years.
© Dina Iordanova
19 December 2009
December 22nd, 2009 at 11:27 pm
It is a great loss to the world of cinema especially serious writing on cinema. I have had the pleasure of meeting Mr.Ron Holloway on a couple of occasions at various film festivals in India. He even wrote a detailed letter of recommendation for me which helped me to find acceptance in Indian film festival sphere. What I liked the most about him is the fact that he supported innovative ideas on cinema. It might appear strange but we discussed the showing of “Erotic Tales” produced by Regina Ziegler in Indian film festivals.He was always willing to share his writings on cinema.I liked the ease with which he spoke about cinema,arts and life in general.My sincere condolences to Mme Holloway.
January 3rd, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Thank you very much, Dina, for your true words of admiration of Ron as an outstanding character both personally and as a connoisseur of films. He transgressed cultures - as an American, who in Europe had expected that! He was in favour of slawonic film idioms - as an American ! He, together iwth Dorthea, promoted “German Film” - den Autorenfilm und den Dokumentarfilm - as an American ! He esteemd even small film festivals - not less than Cannes, Berlin and Venice: as an American! And so on: he was a Weltenbummler mit scharfen Augen und weichem Herz - thnas to him and thanks to Dorothea: they assisted each other honestly in their extraordinary ways o life. An extraordinary couple: Filmliebhaber ohne gleichen. Heaven should care for some Leinwand - my prayer. Manfred R
January 9th, 2010 at 9:32 am
I too have read with regret about the death of Ron Holloway, but for different reasons. I am not suprised that he became a film festival devotee and an expert in the Bulgarian Cinema, for a witnessed the start of his “career” in the late ’50s. At the time I was a grammar school boy and Ron was the new assistant priest (Archdiocese of Chicago) at St. Celestine in suburban Elmwood Park. Compared to the stoggier, older, and pious priests, Holloway was hip and alive. He and his brother coached our basketball team and he was a bull on the court. I remember quite well his invitations to some 8th grade boys to come over to rectory on Friday nights to watch films like The Battleship Potemkin and Metropolis. These were indeed strange films compared to the standard cowboy and comedy movies at the local theatre, but I can trace my own interest in film and in academic life to episodes like these. (Can you imagine these kinds of “film soirees” taking place in the wake of the sex abuse scandals in the Am. Catholic church?). I went on to an academic career teaching in a small college outside Chicago for more than 35 years and frequently used film in the literature and writing courses that I taught. This afternoon I will be attending a meeting of the organizing committee for our 50th grammar school reunion and I intend to share your blog with my classmates. In preparation for the meeting I took out the graduation “autograph book” (I suspect you don’t have a tradition like this in Europe) and found Ron’s inscription to me. Even 50 years later I remain quite please that he said that I was “one of his favorite conversationalists.” I will be remembering Ron in my own way.