Can you think like Eisenstein?

[Jamie (K)]

The Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein believed that the government should finance artists so that the artists were free to do anything they wanted, without any regard to the budget.

Do you agree with this?

[Ahmadov]

I think if Sergei Eisenstein was a chess player he would solicit the government to do the same for chess players...
_________________
Learning is a sacred engagement.

[Lost_Soul]

I think it's downright stupid of that "filmbegetter" (if I can put it that way :) ) to put forward such an embezzling idea.
We must invest money into science, give most talented scientists fair funding, not artists. And artists must get by with that little they have as it were. :)
You see, if Picasso hadn't created his works of art, we would not be experiencing any difficulties, but if the computer hadn't been invented... well, I can't imagine contemporary life without the computer.

[Brian Huang]

I think what Sergei said is right, but not possible. I think Sergei must be a successful and famous filmmaker, and so he is after I seached the name by google. What he said possibly means if the artists don't have to worry about the budget, they'll have more time and energy to do what he loves and possibly make more contributions and works to the world. But Sergei forgot one thing, not every artist can be great, can be as successful as him，not every artist is supposed to be able to creat great works for the world. Maybe the proportion is one out of hundred or less. So it is true if the govenment have financed him, he wouldn't have to go through so much rough way to his success and might have earned his reputation in an early age. So the artists mentioned in Sergei's qutoe probably refers to himself or any one who's genius. As to Lost-soul's answer I want to say sometimes computer programmers are also called artists. And that's why Microsoft allows it's employees to go to work on slippers. ～～

[Jamie (K)]

There are a lot of problems with the whole idea. Among them:

1. There's no reliable way to decide who is an artist and who isn't. If government officials decided it, then the artists would get angry, saying that the process is unjust.

2. There is no good way to track an artist's use of the money. If someone from the government checked to see that the artist was really using it to create art, the artists would get angry, saying that the process is unjust. (A study in the US has shown that there's no correlation between an artist receiving a government grant and his actually completing a project. The artists were just as likely to finish or not finish a project, whether they got the government money or not.)

3. Like everybody who gets government money -- especially government money with no limits -- the artists will quickly become parasitic, and soon almost everyone will claim to be an artist. (Think of the villain's line in one of the Batman movies: "I am not a murderer! I'm a homicide artist!")