“I asked a class of 40 who has seen an Ingmar Bergman film before. Two raised their hand. I asked them, dreading the answer, who knows who Ingmar Bergman is. The same two raised their hand. Then you wouldn’t know who Fassbinder is, I said, and this time twenty students said a loud ‘I do.’ For a second there my hopes rose, irrationally. Then I woke up. They meant Michael, not Rainer Werner. With an e, not an i. And this is Ivy League. And this is New York. This, my friends, is the new illiteracy. And we have to do something about it.” — Christina Kallas, an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of the Arts Film Program, and at The New School for Media Studies in New York City, posting earlier today on Facebook.
