An Obligatory Introduction

I am certain that (mostly) everybody reading this at the time of posting is at the very least aware of who I am and what I do and what my interests are (as I've led you here from my social media). So I will spare you my own personal pedantry. Let's get to the meat of why I've started this blog and what to expect going forward. 

Aside from my own aspirations as an independent filmmaker, I've long had an interest in the literary musings and overall analytic abstraction of the cinema supplementary to the medium itself. Essential to the act of watching movies for me is reading material written by critics, scholars, and obsessive cinephiles alike. To see how the effects and vibrations of the art reverberate differently among us folk, simultaneously opening up revelations that in turn imbue the films with newly gained perspectives of which to be viewed and observed. For me, this vital aspect of film culture ties directly with my own creative process when making films. The synergistic relationship between the two is something that I've wanted to document and have been doing so for the past couple of years through a combination of various sites including Letterboxd, Instagram, and even Facebook. The problem though with these platforms are their fleeting structures designed better for quick interactivity than a place for dedicated discussion. Letterboxd is great, I must add, but its interface mostly dedicated to assigning star ratings and logging as well as its contributing user base made up of a more casual, Tumblr-esque crowd make much more formal efforts for perspective sharing unwelcome. Not a criticism of the folk on LB (I love most of them), but a much more centralized and focused hub for musing is what I hope for this blog to do justice.

Writing about film is just as important to me as making them. I can't not do it. I have to write about my thoughts, readers or no readers. Whether it's some form of compulsion or what, I don't know, probably, maybe. My place here is to freely write about film related topics anywhere from individual write ups of specific movies to more broad observations. I'm not interested in reviewing per say, but simply writing on what film has made me feel, see, and reflect upon.  The overarching goal is to document my cinephilia and how that corresponds with my own film work. I am a strong believer of the auteur theory and I feel that as a filmmaker who is cinephilic in their approach to educating, I'd like to see how that relationship evolves over time. Everything I take in, good or bad, noteworthy or bland, has an effect that is everlasting. Ultimately that forms my outlook on things. Occasionally, I will likely bleed over into other mediums and topics in the arts such as books I've read, music, and etc. Above all else, I want this to be my forum for how art impacts me, both as a creative and as a person. Lastly, I'd like to give a special nod to Michael Sicinski and Josh Brunsting whose critical and essay work greatly pushed me to begin writing passionately like I do now. As well as shifting my perceptive analyses for the better. With all that done and said, let's ease ourselves and take a nice, leisurely stroll through this film street.