Introducing Sally's Summer Arthouse Cinema Course As Taught By Me
I'm giving my new life partner and writing partner an education in what I've learned about film over the last 25 years and you're welcome to join us or suggest titles for us to review and discuss.
Dear Sally,
So it looks like hopefully very soon this air conditioning system the contractors spent over a week installing will provide us with an escape from the coming worst of the summer desert heat in August. Thus, since we’ll be inside much more I think we should put the time to good use: resuming your private tutoring in the dark realm of 20th century arthouse cinema I know too well.
Before I stumbled into the strange worlds of ideological political blogging and Zionist new media activism, from high school through college one of my primary obsessions was the world of 1990s “arthouse” cinema. As a teenager and 20-something I loved the overlapping genres and styles of independent, foreign, classic, and “avant garde” filmmaking, eventually working at the now-deceased Castleton Arts cinema in Indianapolis and making my first regular freelance paychecks as a film critic enamored of this world. I understand you also worked at a movie theater in high school, albeit one more focused on the blockbuster movies of the era.
As an adult and 30-something I drifted away from this space from a time but still kept a few toes dipped in the film pool, keeping somewhat close proximity living in and around Los Angeles from 2010-2021, interacting with the film world’s residents with regularity. Now it’s time to dive back in full-force and begin planning the screenplays and film projects we’re going to want to write together and shoot independently out here in our healing desert hideaway.
Now I know you already have a decent film understanding and have seen a fair number of titles, so let’s consider this “course” not a basic introduction to film as a medium. Rather, we’ll focus on some titles, directors, genres and themes that are fundamental to this period and culture. These are the films which I “grew up on” from roughly 1997 through 2007. From my embarrassingly large and now monstrously disorganized collection, I’ve culled the titles pictured above, all of which I propose that we:
Watch in full together.
Then have on in the background throughout the day at times to take in more of the film’s themes and atmosphere.
Discuss your reaction to them and which ideas in them interest you on the podcast.
Do some blogging about each.
Invite others to offer their views and to suggest potential titles we should also include in the course.
Make a list of the various elements from them we both like most and want to incorporate into our own work.
The pile of discs above represents 43 individual titles and three director-focused box sets (including key works by Jim Jarmusch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Ingmar Bergman). During my years of cinematic madness I particularly embraced “auteur theory” - the idea popularized in the 1960s and 1970s that the director was akin to the “author” of the film and their collected works should be analyzed as one would a writer’s books, seeing the similar styles and themes across them. Other directors heavily represented in the pile who have influenced me too much include P.T. Anderson, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Orson Welles, and David Lynch.
Arthouse is not just about auteur theory though - also represented will be some genres, in particular film noir, historical drama, and black comedy. We’ll also consider the period of the 1990s independent film revival which began in the late 1980s, peaked in about 1999 and 2000, and burnt out by 2009 or so, by which time it had gone more fully mainstream.
So where shall we begin? What’s a movie that really captures this “arthouse” period in tone, style, and spirit? Last night we pulled out several and settled on this one:
I’m very much looking forward to your take on it, which we’ll follow with the recent sequel:
Really excited to see what you think of these two and to talk with you about them in an upcoming podcast!
Love,
David
P.S. Readers: which films would you like me to subject Sally to first? Any titles we should add to the course? Now with the streaming worlds and easy Amazon ordering entering the world of arthouse cinema is far easier than when I was a teenager 20 years ago…