ABSTRACT
Non-esthetic cntICIsm is employed by a number of South African film critics, notably Raeford Daniel, Johan Liebenberg, Ian Gray, Victor Holloway and Robert Greig. Of these Greig is the most controversial. His experience ranges through dramatic art, stage directing, poetry and criticism. His concern is with an industrial product, rather than with art. He cites Ross Devenish as a director who has confused art with entertainment. That Devenish wants films to be more than just trivia is admirable. but, warns Greig, there are pitfalls: "If he continues to make films here, he must adapt to a more popular entertainment. The art that happens usually happens as a byproduct of an industrial process, not an intention. I think that this is film's strength-that it has kept in touch with a mass audience. I am suspicious of coterie filmmaking and coterie film discussionthen you reach the stage that ballet has reached-an in-group situation, it's got too sophisticated a code-and the art dies." Greig, however, defines (and perhaps limits) his criticism by arguing that "ultimately criticism is description."
