2017-07-29

How I Came to Love Watching Movies

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When I was a child, I knew only a handful of movies. Cartoons like Studio Ghibli and Disney films. Musicals like The Sound of Music and The King and I. Stuff I caught on TV because my parents were watching it, like Alien and Poltergeist. (Yeah, I know—what was my 5-year-old self thinking? I have a great story about me damn near killing myself while watching a scary movie that involves a donkey, but that's for another time.) Needless to say, my taste in movies as a child was limited and fairly narrow.


The number of movies I watched while growing up increased over the years—with going to the movies with family or friends for special occasions, and with renting movies at the local Video Time (now defunct)—but it wasn't until I got to college that I started watching more movies. Like, really watching more movies.

There were two specific factors that spurred on the increase in my movie-consumption rate. The first was a class that I took first quarter of my freshman year. It was a Spanish language class in the Culture track (as opposed to the Business track or the International Relations track) where the instructor had us read a lot of amazing literature and watch a lot of equally amazing films. It's where I first learned that films, like literature, were texts not only to be devoured, but also to be analyzed. (Yeah, shut up, I don't know why I didn't realize that until I was in college.)

That class was the first time I watched a Pedro Almodóvar film, with Todo sobre mi madre. It was when I learned to think about the political in film, with Azúcar Amarga, or the violent in film, with Eréndira. It was, most importantly, when I learned to watch movies in the Media Center in the basement of the library—by myself, in the dark, for hours, for free.

The second factor was the Ozu film series that took place during that same academic year. I'd never heard of Ozu Yasujirō until then, but seeing that he was a Japanese filmmaker, I thought it would be fun to go catch some. This was before the time of regular Wikipedia usage, so it was only when I later talked to my mum on the phone that I learned 1) that he was famous and 2) that my mum was a fan of his works. I'll never forget that feeling I got, sitting in Cubberley Auditorium, with the lights going down and me thinking I was learning about not just Japanese film but also my mother, with each screening that I went to.

After I graduated from college and moved to San Francisco, I met people who told me about more great movies I felt I had to watch. I made countless trips to Lost Weekend Video (still kicking) to rent (all) non-American and (mostly) great films. It was also during this time, in 2007, that my sister got me trial subscriptions to both Blockbuster and Netflix (YES that DVD shipping service from Blockbuster...), and I shamelessly signed up for the 3-week trials where I could have 3 DVDs out at any given time. I humorously kept screenshots of my two rental histories, and I'm amused by my selections—25 films in total, across 6 weeks of subscription. But with films like Breaking the WavesGate of FleshIn the Realm of the SensesThe PianoWide Sargasso Sea, and Zigeunerweisen, I'd say it wasn't such a bad run. At least I got my fill of sexy movies to last a while.

It's funny to think how much has changed—now instead of trials I piggyback on my sister's Netflix subscription, and instead of DVDs I stream movies online. I guess what remains is my appreciation for libraries with big media collections—and my love for a simple movie night-in.

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