How did you get into older, obscure films?

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zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

#51 Post by zedz » Sun Oct 16, 2005 7:06 pm

David Ehrenstein wrote:Nothing mentioned so far that qualifies as "older/obscure" to me.
Anyone familiar with the following:

Chappaqua, Separation, Bariera, Daisies, Guns of the Trees, L'Amour Fou, Vanishing Point, Performance, Savage Messiah, Le Joli Mai, Je T'Aime Je T'Aime, L'Amour c'est gai L'Amour c'est triste, Der Leone Have Sept Cabecas, La Femme du Gange, Son Nom du Venise dans Calcutta Desert, La Cicatrice Interieure, Le Pere Noel a les yeux bleu, Hurlevent, Grandeur et decadence d'un petit commerce du cinema, Duelle, Noroit.
Yes, of course, but I think the gist of this thread is how people first got onto the track that eventually leads to the truly glorious and obscure treasures of cinema. It's pretty unlikely that one's first encounter with non-Hollywood cinema would be a rendez-vous with Eustache or Duras (though I'd be curious to see what that would do to one's sensibilities).

I also realised fairly early on that many of the members of this forum are not yet within hollering (let alone echoing) distance of middle age, and the 60s/70s 'golden age' of world cinema is thus in large part a great dark continent to them. Although the DVD era has made much of world cinema far more accessible than it was when I was first seeking it out, the release patterns to date provide a massively distorting lens. Hence Rivette, such a defining filmmaker of an entire era, is understandably underappreciated, and entire national new waves are all but invisible.

It would be great to share your enthusiasm for the above films and filmmakers in dedicated threads. I know there are other Rocha, Roeg and Russell enthusiasts lurking hereabouts.

mikeohhh
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#52 Post by mikeohhh » Sun Oct 16, 2005 8:34 pm

My college film professor showed us Guns of the Trees! Well, portions of it at least. He's a huge Mekas enthusiast- scenes from Lost Lost Lost found their way into class all the time. We also saw Flaming Creatures and Scorpio Rising and lots of other NYC underground stuff that at the time I had no idea how lucky I was to see.

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#53 Post by David Ehrenstein » Sun Oct 16, 2005 8:50 pm

You were extremely lucky. Just thought of three other 60's era American independent titles of note: Hallelujah the Hills by Adolphas Mekas (starring Peter Beard with a great score by Meyer Kupferman), Jerome Hill's Open the Door and See All the People, and Leslie Stevens' Private Property.

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#54 Post by David Ehrenstein » Sun Oct 16, 2005 10:49 pm

I was born in 1947 in New York, grew up there, and became part of a floating crap game of film freaks in the 1960's. This was the era before the invention of home video, therefore one was required to hunt down movies whereever they might be found. Members of the gang I travelled with included Jim Mcbride, Myron Meisel and Marty Scorsese. Our haunts included The New Yorker, the Thalia, the Bleecker St. Cinema, the Museum of Modern Art and 42nd street at Times Square -- whose many theaters featured films from around the world and stretching over several decades. One theater, the Times Square, played nothing but westerns. Lots of John Ford, Budd Boetticher and Anthony Mann. The Apollo was the "art" theater. My favorite 42nd st. double feature was Lord Love a Duck and Kiss Me Deadly.

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denti alligator
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#55 Post by denti alligator » Sun Oct 16, 2005 10:57 pm

My 8th grade teacher told me to see Eraserhead. Seriously. I wrote it up for the junior high paper and had to be censored for using the word "ejaculate" (not really accurate anyway-- used to describe the chickens' secretions of blood). Funny that it should basically start with that, though maybe I had seen Blue Velvet prior to it. Don't remember exactly.

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bunuelian
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#56 Post by bunuelian » Mon Oct 17, 2005 3:33 am

The obscurity of films is not helped by negative reactions to people who haven't seen them. At a party last night I was asked about my interest in film. When I named Tarkovsky, Bergman and Bunuel as my favorite directors, someone asked me, "Are you pretentious or just weird?" I did what I could to recommend that my friends seek out their films. It wouldn't have done any good for me to tell them that they are ignorant fucktards for not having heard of these directors, since they're all highly educated people and they would appreciate "film art" if only they would interact with it. People simply lack the opportunity, and those of us who "see it" need to stand together. It's beyond pointless to engage in chest-beating exercises in who has seen the more obscure film, though I'm sure there are thousands of fascinating films that should be seen by a broader audience. Let's start petitions . . .

My parents are not film fans. They showed me 2001 when I was fairly young and it made a strong impression, and that probably was the single greatest catalyst of my interest in film. I saw some things in high school and college but my serious engagement with film didn't start until a few years ago, several years out of college, when I started to sound the depths of the "foreign" section at my local place because I was so tired of American fare after exhausting my limited obsession with Kubrick et. al. I credit Tarkovsky's "Stalker" with opening my eyes to the greater possibilities of cinema. "Cries & Whispers" also impacted me.

I'm sure there are a few who will consider folks like me to be nothing better than neophyte idiots since I've not read enough, seen enough, or heard enough esteemed scholars lecture in obscure classrooms. I've dealt with plenty of people like that in the music world, and usually it comes down to whether to experienced person genuinely wants to share knowledge or just puff up his own greatness so he can pick up chicks (because it all boils down to sex, once it passes beyond a gesture's profundity). With the hip arts, it's not a question of the "intellgence" of either the relative newcomer or the experienced person judging the newcomer. The newcomer wants to show that she knows something, and to raise questions which she finds useful; the old hand wants to help the newcomer understand the limits of her knowledge. The newcomer can't be blamed for anything she does - the beginner makes a lot of mistakes, but its the mistakes that teach the lessons, and the "stupid questions" which hopefully glean the most instructive answers. The experienced person who offers anwers to the newcomer should consider the purpose of her answers. The worst answers are the ones that discourage the newcomer from exploring further - "You're an idiot because you haven't experienced X." "Your reaction to this film is stupid because Y." The reactions needn't be worded in this way to have this effect. It's far more effective to say, "Have you seen x, y, and z? They are "obscure" but also fascinating!" than to say "Well, I've seen x, y and z, so you don't qualify!"

The more people who are discouraged from embracing film as an art form, the greater the loss to this community and the art form. Those who really know film should encourage those who are interested in it to explore further, and to provide tools for this exploration. Abrasive attitudes only drive people away from what should be a broadly embraced art form.

There are exceptionally few places on the internet where intelligent and informed discussion can happen, in any field. This forum can be one of those places, and those with broad experience and knowledge should see this as a chance to bring more people into the field. That some users arent' scholars shouldn't offend the scholars, any more than the scholars should offend the laymen. But when the scholars and laymen start to compare dick size, the discussion has already lost any value and Matt's discipline sadly has to be enforced, and no one wins.

Internet forums are oftentimes full of idiots, and it's easy to fall into a habit of treating everyone with distain. But forums live and die by those who are dedicated to the subject, and this forum has more than a few who want to see serious discussion of film. I'm hoping those who know a lot, and those who know only a little, can coexist without constantly having to whip it out and demand for measurements.

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exte
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#57 Post by exte » Mon Oct 17, 2005 4:25 am

David Ehrenstein wrote:Nothing mentioned so far that qualifies as "older/obscure" to me.
Anyone familiar with the following:

Chappaqua, Separation, Bariera, Daisies, Guns of the Trees, L'Amour Fou, Vanishing Point, Performance, Savage Messiah, Le Joli Mai, Je T'Aime Je T'Aime, L'Amour c'est gai L'Amour c'est triste, Der Leone Have Sept Cabecas, La Femme du Gange, Son Nom du Venise dans Calcutta Desert, La Cicatrice Interieure, Le Pere Noel a les yeux bleu, Hurlevent, Grandeur et decadence d'un petit commerce du cinema, Duelle, Noroit.
I'll be honest. No, I haven't heard of any of these (and I thought I knew it all). Perhaps I've seen parts of them, and didn't know their names, but they don't sound familiar. But that's why I love this forum. They're now on a list for me to seek out. Ehrenstein, I respect your challenge to the forum. Obviously such a provoking dash is only healthy for this place...
bunuelian wrote:I'm sure there are a few who will consider folks like me to be nothing better than neophyte idiots since I've not read enough, seen enough, or heard enough esteemed scholars lecture in obscure classrooms. I've dealt with plenty of people like that in the music world, and usually it comes down to whether to experienced person genuinely wants to share knowledge or just puff up his own greatness so he can pick up chicks (because it all boils down to sex, once it passes beyond a gesture's profundity). With the hip arts, it's not a question of the "intellgence" of either the relative newcomer or the experienced person judging the newcomer. The newcomer wants to show that she knows something, and to raise questions which she finds useful; the old hand wants to help the newcomer understand the limits of her knowledge. The newcomer can't be blamed for anything she does - the beginner makes a lot of mistakes, but its the mistakes that teach the lessons, and the "stupid questions" which hopefully glean the most instructive answers. The experienced person who offers anwers to the newcomer should consider the purpose of ...
We also need a snooze emoticon...

analoguezombie

#58 Post by analoguezombie » Mon Oct 17, 2005 6:38 am

bunuelian wrote:At a party last night I was asked about my interest in film. When I named Tarkovsky, Bergman and Bunuel as my favorite directors, someone asked me, "Are you pretentious or just weird?"
I've gotten so sick and tired of the "what bands/film/directors do you like?", question that I usually answer with "probably better stuff than you" or "all the usual indie bullshit". That sort of name dropping/cool check just goes hand in hand with college and twenty-something hipsters. And even when you meet someone with similar interests, or so they say, it's often very hard to engage them in meaningful conversation about the artist they claim to like. It's 99% name-dropping, and it exasperates me.

your response tot hat question should have been: "pretentious? no. Just better versed in art than you I imagine." go for pompous

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Andre Jurieu
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#59 Post by Andre Jurieu » Mon Oct 17, 2005 10:58 am

As usual I agree with bunuelian. There's not a whole lot to be gained from someone just stating how many more films they have seen.

I remember a few months ago some poster linked to an article where someone claimed that a certain film was the best asian film they had seen. The poster's reply to this was essentially "You're a moron. I've seen 1000s of Asian films and I don't think this film is the best I've seen". There wasn't any reasoning given for making this statement, or an explanation of why this particular film was inferior, or an explanation of what other films were better or why. Simply just someone belittling the opinion of another based on the fact they assumed that they had watched more films. All I kept thinking while reading the post was that I could stick a pig in a room and force him to watch 1000s of different obscure films on a continuous loop, and that pig would probably be no better off for it since he probably wouldn't have a single significant thought about the films he watched. Intelligence and knowledge isn't just a function of volume. It's obvious they are correlated, but it's not a direct relationship.
bunuelian wrote: ... or just puff up his own greatness so he can pick up chicks (because it all boils down to sex, once it passes beyond a gesture's profundity).
I'm sure it's not just limited to chicks.
bunuelian wrote: ...and it's easy to fall into a habit of treating everyone with distain.
exte wrote:We also need a snooze emoticon...
[sigh] Dang [/sigh]
analoguezombie wrote:I've gotten so sick and tired of the "what bands/film/directors do you like?", question ... That sort of name dropping/cool check just goes hand in hand with college and twenty-something hipsters. And even when you meet someone with similar interests, or so they say, it's often very hard to engage them in meaningful conversation about the artist they claim to like. It's 99% name-dropping, and it exasperates me.
Agreed.
analoguezombie wrote:your response tot hat question should have been: "pretentious? no. Just better versed in art than you I imagine." go for pompous
I assume you're joking, but isn't that kind of what bunuelian is arguing against?

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Hai2u
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#60 Post by Hai2u » Sat Feb 02, 2008 6:42 am

I first got into actually watching and appreciating film like 3 years ago, around the time I was beginning high school, and the time this thread started. :? My father said someone at work recommended watching Boondock Saints :oops:. So I did, and thought it was incredible #-o , then I moved on to Tarantino and the like. Eventually I discovered Criterion DVDs, which then lead me to this forum, where I've been ever since. Now I cringe whenever someone brings up Boondock Saints at Hollywood Video where I work. However, I do get unlimited rentals from a decent library of films, so I guess it could be worse.

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#61 Post by MichaelB » Sat Feb 02, 2008 7:31 am

My first "serious" film was either Close Encounters of the Third Kind (original UK release) or 2001: A Space Odyssey (10th anniversary reissue) - the latter making a far bigger impression on me, not least through instilling a love of the music of György Ligeti that hasn't faded even though I must now have heard every note that he wrote.

In 1980, my parents bought an Apple II computer, and my bedroom was the only place with enough room to comfortably store it. I quickly discovered that the "monitor" was essentially a portable colour television, and started to watch films late at night - favouring BBC2's Saturday night foreign-language titles because (a) it was easier to keep the volume level as low as possible to avoid getting caught, and (b) I very quickly realised that such films were far more likely to feature nudity and graphic sex scenes, thanks to the BBC's policy of not cutting arthouse films.

And in early 1981, in response to a review by Derek Malcolm in the Guardian that I'd probably sneer at today - he reviewed it as though it was the Soviet answer to Star Wars - but I went to see it at the now long-dead Academy Cinema, was absolutely spellbound, and never looked back. I'd have been thirteen at the time.

And just before I turned fifteen, I realised that cinemas really didn't care about age restrictions if you looked old enough (thankfully, I hit six foot well before then), so devoured all manner of disreputable shite on the big screen - I think I was a member of the legendary Scala Cinema Club by 1983, watching triple bills of Thundercrack!, Glen Or Glenda and Doris Wishman's sex-change "documentary" Let Me Die A Woman in the company of a large and occasionally vocal audience.

Sometimes I envy people twenty years younger, having grown up with the ability to order all manner of exotic DVDs from around the world in a matter of minutes - but on the other hand, I think it made a huge difference getting most of my film education courtesy of the big screen. The repertory circuit has shrivelled almost to the point of irrelevance now, but in the 1980s triple bills of weird and wonderful curiosities were very much the norm - and of course I'd see all three, otherwise I'd feel I was wasting my money.

Oh, and I wouldn't dream of calling someone a moron for only seeing a limited number of Asian films - since I saw just two new American films last year (When The Levees Broke and The Simpsons Movie), I can hardly talk! (This isn't out of snobbery, by the way - it's just that I have such a massive viewing list that I have very little time to watch stuff that isn't intimately connected to work)

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What A Disgrace
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#62 Post by What A Disgrace » Sat Feb 02, 2008 9:11 am

A friend of mine was big on films, and convoluted a list of Top 152 Movies. It wasn't all Casablanca and Gone With the Wind, either...it had Fires on the Plain, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs and Madame de..., and Citizen Kane was trumped by Seven Samurai for the number one spot. A lot of the movies on that list still aren't on DVD in the R1...Greed, The Crowd, Napoleon, The Big Parade, Exterminating Angel. I sought a lot of those movies out...and branched away to others; slowly at first. Now hardly a week goes by when I'm not recommending a film to him that he's never seen; or even never heard of. He's created a monster.

Anyway, I started slow...Princess Mononoke and Crouching Tiger were my first entries into foreign language movies; Brazil and Godfather Trilogy were my big forays into native classics. Seven Samurai was my first international classic...then I got into Fellini through 8 1/2...so on, and so on.

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ogygia avenue
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#63 Post by ogygia avenue » Sat Feb 02, 2008 9:14 am

Serious films were accessible to me as a kid of the 1980s, especially growing up in New England. I would occasionally stay up late and watch "The Movie Loft" with my dad -- this was how I saw La Planete Sauvage as a six year old (which my dad thought would be okay for me to watch because it was a cartoon), and bits and pieces of Citizen Kane and The Man Who Would Be King. Though I'd seen a lot of better-than-your-average movies as a bairn (seeing Gilliam's Baron Munchausen on its original release in a theatre that had a Victorian magic show on the weekends), pursuing good film never clicked with me until the year I turned 20.

There had been a death in my family and I'd gone to live with my boyfriend in NYC. He took me to see everything, and what we couldn't see in the theatres, he'd rent. This was the year Contempt was rereleased, so we saw a lot of Godard. He rented double-bills of Poison and The Lady Eve. The film that most stuck with me was Hal Hartley's Trust -- the locale of that film looked so much like my neighborhood, but while I could identify with the story, the way it was told completely blew me away. I felt as though someone had said something beautiful to me in another language, and I wanted to respond to it. I immersed myself in film, hit the revival houses, read interviews with the directors whose work struck a nerve, and worked my way backwards from them. Sometimes something clicked (like finding Keaton indirectly through Jim Jarmusch), sometimes it didn't. Somewhere along the line I bought a Super-8 camera and began making movies.

Now, here I am...

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#64 Post by jbeall » Sat Feb 02, 2008 10:19 am

During my first year of grad school, a professor screened The Passion of Joan of Arc. I loved it so much that not only did I buy the dvd, but I had to buy my first dvd player to go along with it. Included in the dvd case was a booklet listing Criterion titles, and so I began to search for those films.

Up to that point, my cinematic tastes were fairly pedestrian; our family rented movies every Friday, but my mother only goes for sentimental tearjerkers and my father likes sci-fi and action. Growing up in Georgia in the 80s, there simply wasn't an outlet for 'obscure' films, and foreign films implied a crappy VHS copy with subtitles that were practically unreadable against the b&w background.

So anyway, that's a long-winded way of saying that The Passion of Joan of Arc is the film that started it all for me.

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#65 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Sat Feb 02, 2008 10:39 am

MichaelB wrote: I think I was a member of the legendary Scala Cinema Club by 1983, watching triple bills of Thundercrack!, Glen Or Glenda and Doris Wishman's sex-change "documentary" Let Me Die A Woman in the company of a large and occasionally vocal audience.

Jings! Michael B did you just push a few buttons or what!! If you ever saw The Big Combo at the Scala (either in Kings Cross or at Tottenham Street) with a rather inept New Wave band making a racket alongside, that was me thumping those tubs. And while we're on the subject of Thundercrack let's not forget the mighty 'Devil's Cleavage'.

Similarly, BBC2 World Cinema introduced me to Closely Observed Trains and 400 Blows and after that it had to be Film School or nothing.

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#66 Post by MichaelB » Sat Feb 02, 2008 10:47 am

NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:Jings! Michael B did you just push a few buttons or what!! If you ever saw The Big Combo at the Scala (either in Kings Cross or at Tottenham Street) with a rather inept New Wave band making a racket alongside, that was me thumping those tubs. And while we're on the subject of Thundercrack let's not forget the mighty 'Devil's Cleavage'.
Tottenham Street was before my time, but I remember chatting to Jonathan Ross in the early 1990s and discovering that he was a Scala regular before he hit the fame jackpot in 1987 - and that we'd been at a lot of the same shows. He mentioned a film featuring a fifteen-foot exploding ninja, and I said "I saw that one!" - and it must have been the same all-night show, because the Scala only ever showed Ching Siu-Tung's Duel to the Death once.

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#67 Post by lady wakasa » Sat Feb 02, 2008 1:23 pm

This is a great topic! Never noticed it before. And it makes me think...

I'm not 100% sure I can completely answer this - I've always been outside the norm with a lot of things - but there were two items that might've started me down the road.

First, my father, who is very much into science fiction, took us to see 2001 when it came out. Being about six at the time, there isn't a whole lot I remember about the whole trip, but I to this day have memories of two things: the woman doing the 360 in the hall, and of the colors later on. (And I did that w/o the drugs!) Plus we got a program from the theater, which would actually be worth quite a lot if I had any idea where it was at.

The second would be that the public tv station in New York City used to run lots of silents in the 1970s because they were cheap. So I'd watch those at home, and one day in my early teens I saw Nosferatu. It being cheap programming and early in the life of public broadcasting in the US, the movie ran on Cinema Thirteen every day that week. I first caught it either Monday or Tuesday and thought the speeded-up carriage ride was hilarious, so I kept watching when it came on throughout the week. And got interested in silents, which in my case carried over into being open to non-mainstream movies. It took a while until I had access to see much of anything beyond the tv (my folks weren't much into movies, so we didn't see that many). But I also was partial to being in cities, so once I was on my own I'd start looking for special showings and such. That, for example, is how I got to see the 1906 Ben-Hur, stationary camera and all.

It's worked for me - I've gotten to see some really obscure films (some of which never made it to any sort of video), go to some festivals and such, and was even interviewed by Korean network news for an American take on Korean film (although that ended up getting bumped). So yeah, it's worked for me.

Interestingly, my sister also saw Nosferatu and it's still a favorite of hers - but she doesn't have the same relationship with obscure movies I do (although I'm loosening her up, heh heh heh).

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Cinephrenic
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#68 Post by Cinephrenic » Sat Feb 02, 2008 2:32 pm

is fairly boring, I worked at Pizza Hut in high school and had friends who worked at Blockbuster
Haha...In high school I was working for Pizza Hut and working at Blockbuster Video at the same time. Just working at Blockbuster will not get you anywhere close to obscure films. Most of the films at my store was mainstream films. This was before the Netflix era. The foreign section hardly existed. The few we had was mostly 90's French cinema and recent works. For some reason, I thought I was witnessing cinema all these years before I discovered the films of people like Bunuel, Bergman, Tarkovsky, and Fellini. I knew them, but never indulged into their work. I suppose I saw enlightenment from that day on...and of course the Criterion Collection. One of the things that affected me through all this is that I get to watch more films alone most of the time and less popcorn.

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miless
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#69 Post by miless » Sat Feb 02, 2008 2:47 pm

I became enraptured with David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick in High School. These are by no means obscure filmmakers (especially in liberal Portland, Ore.) The big turning point, however, was when I spotted two Criterion titles and bought them each over the course of a month. First, it was Solaris. I saw the box, went home and read about. The next day I went back and bought it (mainly because of the 2001 comparisons). I liked it, and then I lent it to a friend (a fellow cinephile) to check out. He watched it with a group of friends and they all hated it (except for my friend). I found myself arguing the merits of the film, and thus strengthened my love of the film. My friend has since become a big Tarkovsky fan (and so have I).

The other was That Obscure Object of Desire. Luis Buñuel quickly became my favorite filmmaker (although Tarkovsky and Tarr would later rise to that spot). I even suggested that my documentary form professor (the only film class taught at my college) show Land Without Bread in class (he did because there's a chapter in the text about it). He has since used every film I have recommended over these years in his class (including F For Fake).

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#70 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sat Feb 02, 2008 3:07 pm

My father usually worked two jobs. But he was often around for late night movies. so I watched old Hollywood stuff, while he alternated between watching and (well-earned) dozing. Saw stuff like Marx Bros, Fields, Bogart, Prisoner of Zenda and the like.

Our high school (back in 1968-9) had a brief experiment with showing real films at a nearby theater (we got free prints from the library -- and free use of the theater on weekday mornings). This is where I met Citizen Kane, Bergman (Wild Strawberries), French films (Sundays and Cybele), Russian films (Ballad of a Soldier), etc.

Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie came out when I was in college -- and I liked it so much I saw it twice -- at real first-run prices... Also encountered things like Eisenstein. In grad school (and for quite a few years thereafter, there were lots of interesting, cheap films to see in Hyde Park (Chicago).

Movie going sort of halted when we had kids (with limited exceptions) -- and didn't re-start until our kids were old enough to start watching interesting stuff. The most fateful event was going to see Princess Mononoke (late December 1999 and Jan. 1 2000). This set off an interest in Japanese films in our whole family -- and especially me.

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Shrew
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#71 Post by Shrew » Sat Feb 02, 2008 4:22 pm

When I was little, my grandmother would bring me to this series of classic films where I saw an eclectic mix of King Kong, Funny Face, Giant (the most grueling experience of my life at 10), and Wings (which I'm amazed I liked). But during high school I was pretty dissatisfied with all the films I was seeing and lost interest. I probably would have continued studying French if we had watched The 400 Blows in class and not My Father's Glory/My Mother's Castle every single year. So instead I watched a bunch of crappy anime.

But that brought me to Seven Samurai, which led to dabbling in other Kurosawa. I also saw The Royal Tenenbaums around that time, and it sparked a big questioning of what constituted a film. Then I was lucky my college showed films 5 days a week, which made for a big eclectic assortment of awesome. I saw Band of Outsiders based solely on the Tarantino connection and was totally perplexed/amazed. The next semester I took an excellent intro to film studies course which covered lots of ground and gave me numerous paths of inquiry.
Last edited by Shrew on Sat Feb 02, 2008 5:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Antares
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#72 Post by Antares » Sat Feb 02, 2008 5:11 pm

For me, it was a sad event and 2 different television programs that helped me find new 'virgin' film territory.

My father loved movies. And although we never got along, it was one bond that we shared. When he died in 1995 and my mother succumbed to cancer two years later, as part of my inheritance, I received the 35" Mitsubishi CRT that I had helped them purchase with an employee discount I got at the department store where I worked at the time. My primary reason for not watching 'artsy' films was the annoyance of reading subtitles on a 26" TV screen. It seems small now, but back in the mid-90's a 35" screen was HUGE.

One night my wife and I were watching Siskel & Ebert and they reviewed Il Postino. The snippets from the film that they showed looked interesting, but I still had no desire to act upon renting it. A few weeks later on a Saturday night, we are at Blockbuster, and the shelves are pretty much empty when my wife spots the film and asks if I would be into giving it a shot. Seeing as how there wasn't anything else, I relented.

Needless to say, I was blown away by the film and having the large screen TV helped me appreciate it.

A few days later, I'm watching an episode of Cheers and the plot of the show has the gang at the bar going to Sam's house to watch The Magnificent Seven. Diane blurts out some elitist reference to the film as being a derivative of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Now being a big fan of the western, I decide to seek out the original. I live in Rhode Island and this state has an excellent array of local libraries. The best part being that the furthest away you are from any of them is maybe 70 miles.

Found the film on VHS at my local library and was blown away. Over the next few months I searched all over the state for his other films. Sadly the widescreen films were also on VHS and in pan and scan so it was a mixed bag which in the beginning had me disliking certain WS masterpieces as Ran, Yojimbo and The Bad Sleep Well.

But with DVD on the horizon, and correct aspect ratio becoming the norm, A new illness had taken control of me. Treasure hunting for unknown films from around the world.

I really, really don't have a problem. I could stop buying DVDs tomorrow, cold turkey if I choose. #-o

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SoyCuba
Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2007 3:30 pm
Location: Finland

#73 Post by SoyCuba » Sun Feb 03, 2008 2:00 am

I think I started watching movies as a hobby in 2003 (I was 20 years old at the time) and it wasn't because of any particular movie. I just decided one day that I would start watching movies seriously. Before this I played video games, and a lot too - after the decision I watched a lot of movies and practically stopped playing video games the same day. In the beginning I started by watching pretty much anything that came from TV and everything that the local library had at their collection - from crappy romantic comedies to films of Ingmar Bergman.

Gradually I would learn more about movies and learned to hate pan&scan, which later lead to my decision to watch movie in it's correct aspect ratio or not watch it at all (except when it's impossible to see the movie otherwise). I also began importing DVDs at the time. I also bought a movie book, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, which I have continued used to this day, although of course buying huge amounts of stuff not in it (most lately I've fell in love with silent cinema, which is quite poorly represented in the book). Nowadays I buy a huge amount of DVDs (too much really, since the amount of unwatched DVDs in my collection is steadily increasing) and rarely watch anything on TV, except if it's on one of the TV channels here in Finland that often shows great stuff. For example this spring they're showing many silent movies not on DVD: Greed, The Wedding March, The Covered Wagon and The Docks of New York.

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domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

#74 Post by domino harvey » Sun Feb 03, 2008 3:21 am

It's cringe-inducing to even remember how I used to think about older films, but not everyone was lucky enough to be raised in a Brownstone by professor parents. I was always very resistant to older films, and it wasn't until 4 or 5 years ago, midway through my third (!) film class in college that I saw a 1-2 punch of films that I felt were as good as newer films-- Trouble in Paradise and I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang! I loved those films so much that I started to become more receptive to older films, bit by bit, until the day I saw Breathless and as silly as these sort of grandiose statements are, had my life changed. I had no idea a film could do what that film did, and I dived head-in to all sorts of films from that point on, devouring everything tangentially related to the Cahiers crew and then branching out into movies they liked and so on at a very rapid clip until I got where I am today.

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Lemmy Caution
Joined: Wed Mar 29, 2006 3:26 am
Location: East of Shanghai

#75 Post by Lemmy Caution » Sun Feb 03, 2008 10:55 am

As for old films, I think it probably had a lot to do with watching Abbott & Costello movies every Sunday morning on Channel 11 (NYC), before the 1 o'clock football game. Also, they used to show a fair amount of WC Fields and Laurel & Hardy around Xmas and on New Year's Eve. Plus assorted Chaplin. So really the old comics helped pave my interest in old b&w films.
This would all be around ages 11-15.

Noone in my family is a moviegoer. My father probably hasn't been to the cinema since Nixon was elected, and only watches scenes from films while flipping around cable.
However, my mother (who probably got to the cinema bi-annually) did chance to see One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ... and then took me and a small troop of friends to see it for my 11th birthday. Pretty ballsy choice by Mom, although partly an excuse for her to see it twice. That was an eye-opener for me.
...
Then in college I took a number of film courses. French Film in English really blew my mind (L'Atlante, Zero for Conduct, Boudu Saved from Drowning, The Crime of M, Lange, Alphaville, etc). An Italian film course hooked me on Fellini, etc.

Around campus there were often screenings of interesting films (I remember seeing Eyes Without A Face, mid-80's). And generally if you picked up a syllabus for some of the film courses, you could easily crash a screening without anyone minding (or even noticing).

I've always been much more into music and literature than film. But coming to China -- the Dvd paradise -- has ratcheted up my viewings a few dozen notches. But basically I never bothered much with mainstream films, instead approaching film much like I did literature -- seek out the high quality stuff and skip the average. I guess I've always approached film as art, never having been exposed much to the mainstream Hollywood product when I was young.

Edit: Oops, forgot a couple formative steps.
Definitely Woody Allen films played a role, along with seeing Eraserhead as a midnight movie, and catching a few classics on cable (Citizen Kane, 2001, etc.)

Also in high school, a bunch of my friends in the year ahead were applying to college and realized that they had no activities to list. I mean, the school didn't have a Dope Smoker's Club or anything cool. So one friend with an interest in film decided they should start a Film Club. Found an adviser who never bothered us, and we help weekly showings. Bonus was you got to skip out of half of the last class once a week to go over to the local library and borrow a film.

The film club founder was a budding hipster with good taste, and we watched The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, M., etc.
The next year, my friends and I inherited the Film Club and I was vice-president. Again it was partly designed to bolster college apps, but we did watch a fairly random selection of good old films.
Last edited by Lemmy Caution on Tue Feb 05, 2008 5:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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