April 10, 2007

What is Cinema?

This might seem to be a rather imposing question with which to start off my blog, but one that I feel is entirely appropriate and deceptively simple. Maybe I should have re-titled the post "What is Cinema to me?" because that is really the question I am answering. But anyways... To me, Cinema is my life. I have been immersed in it for as long as I can remember. My exposure to the world of film started, probably like a great many children in America, with Disney films. However, by the time I was in my early teens, I was begging my father to let me see films like A Clockwork Orange and Apocalypse Now.

One of my fondest memories from my early teen years is visiting the local video store every weekend, scouring the aisles for interesting films. It is there that I first discovered the pleasures of genre filmmaking. One weekend I would do westerns, the next, sci-fi, and the next, WWII films. Before I really got interested in film, I would go to movies purely for entertainment and escapism. I enjoyed the spectacle of it. As I grew older, I began to appreciate the artistry and technical aspects of film. I began to think about a film on a level deeper than plot as I watched. I would think to myself, "How did the filmmakers achieve that shot?" or attempt to determine the film's subtext, if there was one. Suddenly, before I knew it, I was collecting film. I would go out to the nearest Suncoast, or Price Club, and buy up VHS’s of films that I had already seen and loved, or had read about and was interested in. I was lucky to have supportive parents, who would pretty much buy me the films I wanted. After a couple of years, I had a pretty respectable VHS collection for a middle schooler.

Then, the DVD revolution hit, and you know the rest. Suddenly, I had access to more films than I knew what to do with. Today, my DVD collection hovers around 2,500 and counting. (I really need to pick a weekend to catalogue my entire collection on DVD Aficionado) All of this is my very roundabout way of saying that I live for film.

To return to the initial question… Cinema is a medium of such diversity and scope, which is one of the reasons I find it so sad to see so many people out there who confine cinema to the prisons of their own narrow taste. Now, I’m not criticizing a person's right to love or hate whatever they want, but I am talking about people closing themselves off to cinematic avenues they have never really experienced.

For what is cinema if not adventure. From the days of the Lumiere Brothers, cinema was perceived as a grand adventure, a mysterious medium that could take people to places that they had never been before. With "Direct Cinema" I hope to achieve something similar. I hope to examine Cinema on as grand a scale as I possibly can. From the mainstream to the fringes, from art house to grindhouse, from blockbusters to sleepers, and even bombs, I hope to open people’s eyes to films that they have never seen. I hope to convince people to see those films that they had previously closed themselves off to for whatever reason. Cinema has so much to offer, and I hope that in offering up my own cinematic adventures, I can unlock celluloid realms that for many never existed before.

3 comments:

Sarah said...
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Sarah said...
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Sarah said...

You have a great idea in the works here. As someone who enjoys chick flicks and other bubble gum film genres and seems to lack the time to research other areas of cinema to explore, I predict this blog will prove useful. What a great way to expand my cinematic horzions. Thank you for posting!