tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9182641864907598193.post529809603218682077..comments2017-04-30T20:25:32.390-04:00Comments on Curating Moving Images: Do I have Cinephilia? A rant by Ashley MortonUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9182641864907598193.post-69358732106276046502014-04-21T07:25:40.708-04:002014-04-21T07:25:40.708-04:00By: Diana Ritter
After I answered the question, A...By: Diana Ritter<br /><br />After I answered the question, Am I a cinephile? I was left thinking about it as well. In truth, I have thought about it since my first day in the cinema studies program at NYU. My first semester, I was taking an advanced seminar called Cinephilia/Cinephobia. In our first session, my professor ran through the list of movies she would be screening and was asking us which we had seen. One student raised his hand at nearly every film and I thought, "Man, he must really love movies. I am far behind." I felt this way for about half of the semester because my undergrad is not in cinema studies and there was so much, especially film theory, that I did not understand. I considered myself far from a cinephile. <br /><br />However, that thinking has drastically changed for me and I realized it after I gave my answer in curating. I said I was a cinephile and defined that as "I love to go to the movie theater and watch movies." The person after me said he was not a cinephile and one reason was because he was not into the silent films. I thought, "Well, I am not into silent films, maybe I am not a cinephile?" I also refuse to go to the cinema studies screenings on Friday nights because the movies they pick are so far from the beaten path, that I have no interest in them. I am not into experimental films, for the most part, and I am very picky when it comes to what I will and will not watch. Do cinephiles watch everything and anything because they are "devotees of motion pictures?" <br /><br />I then recalled a former classmate of mine who graduated last semester and told me he could not remember the last time he had been to a movie in the theater. I was always shocked when I learned one of "us" (cinema studies/MIAP majors) did not attend current movies regularly. Aren't we SUPPOSED to be doing that? But my classmate was not interested in current movies. His cinephilia revolved around 1950s westerns. What did he care that Wes Anderson had a new film out? Or that Leonardo DiCaprio was starring in yet another Martin Scorsese film? And now, after reading Ashley’s blog, I can see that she too has a distinct “cinephilia” in terms of how she most enjoys watching a film, what she likes to learn from a film, her love for extra features, etc. It all helps me with what I have been concluding about cinephilia since our class two weeks ago, which is (and this is only my personal take):<br /><br />Cinephilia is something we all have. If we didn’t, we would not be in this program. A “normal” movie goer/lover would not enroll in a program to either study moving images or preserve/archive them. However, just as movies are changing today (formats, viewing choices, preservation methods, etc), so is the definition of cinephile. And I think it is a personal one to all of us. Honesty though, I think even the cinephiles from back in the day, from Truffaut to Ebert, would have defined it differently as they saw it suited to their needs. I would not have paid a cent to watch an Alfred Hitchcock silent film back when Film Forum was running them, but if a theater ran a day long tribute to the movies of John Hughes, I’d pack a lunch and dinner and stay at the theater. Does that make me any less of a cinephile? No, it just highlights one aspect of my cinephilia. This loose definition is something I have developed since my first days as a cinema studies student and feel has been confirmed through my conversations with other students. In one way or another, we have enrolled in this program and are “devoting” ourselves to motion pictures as it fits our needs, and for doing that, we are cinephiles. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10787195937450739303noreply@blogger.com