Saturday, March 21, 2015

Reflections on cinephilia

“I am no longer so hung up on the idea that a film should be consistently excellent from beginning to end; I have more time now for brilliant scenes or 'moments' within a generally uneven or even mediocre film. And I am unashamed to admit that quite often, instead of watching a favourite old film from start to finish, I watch just a few favourite scenes that I find stimulating. (Perhaps this is natural as one grows older and becomes more conscious of how short life is.)”

The online journal Projectorhead asked me to participate in a survey that “tries to construct a cohesive response to global cinema and cinephilia during the year”. With the disclaimer that I don’t watch as much of contemporary international cinema as I should, here are my responses to their questions.


(Note: the films listed in answer b include some I had watched years ago but only had a dim memory of.)

2 comments:

  1. Good stuff what you've quoted from the interview in the post. Reminded me of this Stephanie Zacharek tweet that I favorited sometime ago because it resonated with me.

    https://twitter.com/szacharek/status/497027242984484864

    https://twitter.com/szacharek/status/497027764625895424

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  2. Hmm, that's acceptable. Given our reducing attention spans, a sporadic spark of brilliance will burn brighter than the whole process.

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