My Journey Through Film
Nigh upon a midnight hour (actually it was a July afternoon in 2014) I came across a Peabody award-winning mini-series called The Story of Film: An Odyssey and it elevated my love of the cinema to heights I never before knew existed. The series is narrated by film historian Mark Cousins - he has an addicting Irish accent and a very distinct cadence to his speech, and now when I hear certain director's names I only hear them in Cousins's pronunciation - and he takes the viewer on a complete trip through the history of cinema on a global scale. It's 15 one-hour episodes that explore everything from the birth of film as an art form to the Golden Age of Hollywood to the New Wave movements to today. The series, along with my discovery of the Criterion Collection, inspired me to focus on cinema's bigger picture and to take an interest in and view the works of all the filmmakers that came before the modern era, especially those outside of the United States. It's driven me to feel an unyielding desire look at cinema's past pioneers, renegades, influencers, visionairies and legends, all the way back to film's silent era.
And thanks to such movie streaming services as Mubi, Fandor and Filmstruck The Criterion Channel, I now have the ability to not just take other's words about the history of film, but to take my own journey. I did a mini version of this back in 2015, but I only stuck to movies available on Netflix. It still took me about 8 months to complete. Over this past summer, after my second watch of The Story of Film, I decided to make a list (it's 33-pages long!) of all the important/influential films or works from important/influential directors, and to task it upon myself to watch them all. To learn the complete history of the cinema on my own. I already went through a bunch of short films starting from 1895 to 1920 or so during this past summer, and after a hiatus, I'm back and starting to get into the meat of silent films. With this, I'm going to start a new series on the blog, similar to Movies You Should Watch, called My Journey Through Film, where I discuss and post images from the movies I watch throughout this project. And it's all chronological, baybeeeeee.
My first post will be with Fritz Lang's 1921 silent drama Destiny. I would start with Charlie Chaplin's The Kid or Robert Wiene's expressionistic masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but I saw them too long ago (like 3-4 months) and the information is not fresh in my mind. These silent films are a bit of a grind, but it's rewarding to see the evolution of film grammar, how filmmakers communicate ideas through a visual medium, and to watch the films that influenced the filmmakers that influence and inspire myself. I will still try and post on Movies You Should Watch every once in a while for more contemporary content, but most of my effort will be going to this. Enjoy! Or not! I don't really care I'm mostly doing this for myself! [August 2020 Editors Note: I am back on this blog after a three year hiatus and will not be solely doing the chronological adventure I promised. Contemporary films (2000-current) can be found in Cinema Will Never Die, and anything before the 21st century will be in My Journey Through Film. Probably gonna be a lot of changes from what this actually says. I'm figuring it out!]
And thanks to such movie streaming services as Mubi, Fandor and Filmstruck The Criterion Channel, I now have the ability to not just take other's words about the history of film, but to take my own journey. I did a mini version of this back in 2015, but I only stuck to movies available on Netflix. It still took me about 8 months to complete. Over this past summer, after my second watch of The Story of Film, I decided to make a list (it's 33-pages long!) of all the important/influential films or works from important/influential directors, and to task it upon myself to watch them all. To learn the complete history of the cinema on my own. I already went through a bunch of short films starting from 1895 to 1920 or so during this past summer, and after a hiatus, I'm back and starting to get into the meat of silent films. With this, I'm going to start a new series on the blog, similar to Movies You Should Watch, called My Journey Through Film, where I discuss and post images from the movies I watch throughout this project. And it's all chronological, baybeeeeee.
My first post will be with Fritz Lang's 1921 silent drama Destiny. I would start with Charlie Chaplin's The Kid or Robert Wiene's expressionistic masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but I saw them too long ago (like 3-4 months) and the information is not fresh in my mind. These silent films are a bit of a grind, but it's rewarding to see the evolution of film grammar, how filmmakers communicate ideas through a visual medium, and to watch the films that influenced the filmmakers that influence and inspire myself. I will still try and post on Movies You Should Watch every once in a while for more contemporary content, but most of my effort will be going to this. Enjoy! Or not! I don't really care I'm mostly doing this for myself! [August 2020 Editors Note: I am back on this blog after a three year hiatus and will not be solely doing the chronological adventure I promised. Contemporary films (2000-current) can be found in Cinema Will Never Die, and anything before the 21st century will be in My Journey Through Film. Probably gonna be a lot of changes from what this actually says. I'm figuring it out!]
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