I was crazy about film from the beginning, but I didn’t start getting into foreign/independent film until I was about 12 or so.
when I was 12 and my older sister took me to see One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It opened to door to what film is and just not going to the movies.
twenty is when I fell in love with art house but I have been in love with film my entire life
Very young and I owe it to my much beloved Saturday Matinee and the “B’s”.
Caught the French New Wave in my teens and that was it.
It wouldn’t have been as strong without an early exposure to , in deference to Dimitris, “non-American” cinema.
I was bizarre / not very bright little kid, who couldn’t seem to comprehend anything that didn’t involve film, music and doodling things like cats. I’ve almost always held a heavy interest in the two subjects, though needless to say my tastes have matured a bit since the time I was 4-5. At the age of 6 my favorite music to listen to was Sonic Youth, Radiohead, Wu-Tang Clan and the Smashing Pumpkins, and I was absolutely devoted to Tim Burton, Sergio Leone’s westerns, “The Blues Brothers” and whatever inappropriate horror / sci-fi movies I could get my hands on, both new and old. It was at this point that I also began making small adventure movies at places like zoos, and aquariums. They sucked. I Saw “A Clockwork Orange” a little too young (around 8 years old) and that fucked my head up pretty bad, and I liked that feeling ha. When I was 10, my mom made we watch “2001: A Space Odyssey” with her, for which I can’t thank her enough. My father also had me watch “The Third Man” with him, a film I would have revisit later in life to see the endless genius in. Then at roughly age 12 I saw a number of films that would stick out in my head for the rest of my life, starting with Spike Lee’s “Summer of Sam,” followed by Herzog’s “Nosferatu” and “SLC Punk.” By 13, I was asking my friend’s older brother who worked at a local movie theater to sneak me into R / NC-17 rated films like “Requiem for a Dream.” I also started watching IFC regularly, at which point cinema officially made me it’s bitch. Though, I’d be lying if I said we didn’t have an on/off relationship spanning over a few years here and there.
It really started to happen, when I bought a VHS recorder as my parents finally got us satellite TV (I had to live with 3!! programs between the age of 5 and 15, but that may have been a factor why I became a huge cinema lover with 6). That must have been when I was 14 or 15 in 1999. So I taped dozens of favorite Hollywood films from the 90s (which I had usually already seen at the cinema). Fortunately our local library had also a few hundred phenomenal films from Jarmusch, Lynch, etc., and when I started to ask the librarian if I could borrow some of the old VHS tapes from their attic(!!) he started bringing out even more (and now older) good stuff, like Leone, Kurosawa, Reed, Wiene, Huston, etc.
So till I was 20, I basically taped from TV and borrowed from the library. What a great time that was…
Don’t know if I would have become a film fan if it wasn’t for my local 60 seat cinema with mono sound (until 2002, I believe), which showed some unforgettable classics like “Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves”, “Waterworld”, “Forrest Gump”, Sister Act 2", etc., etc.
I wrote scripts and played with some 8mm and video as a young teen, and took photographs, but nothing serious clicked in until I was 19. I decided to switch from a politics degree to film. Because I was a total rebel-want-no-help-from-anyone-anti-authoritarian type, I had no money, so worked on film sets (as runner —which irked—, then gaffer, then cameraman/assistant) from the outset to make ends meet. The films that inspired me to this path? If — I’ve outgrown it now (I think), but it was my unstated manifesto for a long old time. And a mind-blowing encounter with Loin du Vietnam
19 years before it was cool to hang out in the cinema lounge with your espresso, and blogging with your macbook pro.
i was lucky enough to meet a great bunch of people at pratt university while i was in high school. They introduced me to a lot of classics.
when i was 11 my mom made me audition for a fine art school. i got in and i listed Intro to Audio Visual without thinking as a class. my teacher related star wars to everything in the world but i took his next classes up until my 10th grade year (my family moved that year). we mostly did brodcast stuff and i volunteered at a local brodcast station. along with my brodcast classes i did theatre work: lighting, stage direction, and set design ect. i remember the director and producer of a movie called 21 reasons to run came to our school and told us about how movies are made and to me that sounded like stage and brodcast put together so i was game to try.
there wasnt a movie that gave me an epiphany into filmmaking. im actually learning so much now that im studying it in school but if there was a movie that cemented my love of the cinematic arts it would be trainspotting or clockwork orange.
when i was 11 my mom made me audition for a fine art school. i got in and i listed Intro to Audio Visual without thinking as a class. my teacher related star wars to everything in the world but i took his next classes up until my 10th grade year (my family moved that year). we mostly did brodcast stuff and i volunteered at a local brodcast station. along with my brodcast classes i did theatre work: lighting, stage direction, and set design ect. i remember the director and producer of a movie called 21 reasons to run came to our school and told us about how movies are made and to me that sounded like stage and brodcast put together so i was game to try.
there wasnt a movie that gave me an epiphany into filmmaking. im actually learning so much now that im studying it in school but if there was a movie that cemented my love of the cinematic arts it would be trainspotting or clockwork orange.
Age 15, working at a video store, ‘Blue Velvet’.
Age 15, after watching The Piano, Green Ray and For a Few Dollars More in a week.
[This message was deleted by the poster]
Age 4. I saw Satantango and that was it.
I had always had an affinity for film, but April 17, 1993- I was 11 and caught a late night showing of Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush” on AMC, back when AMC was what TCM is today. That did it. Everyone has that one film, and that was mine. Soon I was into all Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Langdon, etc. which then spread to silent film/early sound film in general, then to foreign films of the 20’s, 30’, 40’s and continued onward until high school, by which time I was into just about everything.
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At 10, I was collecting Star Wars figures and watching that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where they all get to eat monkey brains and serpents.I also used to memorize the actors playing in every major Hollywood production.My favorite “foreign film” was Begnigni’s “La Vita e Bella”
At 12, I saw for the first time a true classic, “Singin’ in the Rain”. Then, thanks to the AFI and it’s Top 100, decided to watch them all: I hated “Citizen Kane”, “Lawrence of Arabia”, “Doctor Zhivago” and “How Green Was My Valley” but was mesmerized by “Casablanca”,“Rope” and especially “Gone With the Wind”, which was my all-time favorite back then.I discovered “Jules et Jim”, “Hana-Bi” and “Seven Samurais”.Loved Luc Besson and his “The Proffessional”. “The Lord of the Rings” was a masterpiece.
At 13, I discovered Asian/European cinema: My favorite auteurs were Truffaut, Kitano and Kubrick.I coudln’t understand a thing Bergman wanted to express in his films and that would get me furious.
I also began watching Bunuel and Lang: Couldn’t understand a thing, but loved the visuals.
At 14, I discovered film is more about symbolism, themes it’s trying to explore,and ideology than storytelling.I threw away all my Star Wars Collectibles. Removed my membership from the AFI website.To me, Jeunet and Peter Jackson were no longer part of my world. Hello Bela Tarr and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
All thanks to Godard’s “Pierrot le Fou” and Moodysson’s “Lilya 4-Ever”.
So, at what age did I really started getting into film? It’s a matter of taste, really.
Edwin nails it.
I don’t know how to believe in catastrophic, epiphanic moments where suddenly everything has changed with a single moment and all the birds are singing.
I’ve never had one of these moments. Do the birds grow opposable thumbs?
EDIT: Your edit killed my joke. :(
Age 15 I think
with Taxi Driver
hmmmm… never really thought about it, and i dont have a particular film or period i can trace that i started really being into film, but i do remeber when i was still very young, (4-5) i will stay up late and watch classics from my country (Philippines) and remember waking up in the middle of the night and watching Jurassic Park (in VHS)
it wasnt really special, since my whole family was into watching films
but i started reading and started really looking for obscure films about 4-5 years ago, and im 25…
Good one, Law.
A cinephile group on Facebook actually guided me into the light.And that is when all the birds started singing.
I had seen some of the greats in high school (The Godfathers, Taxi Driver, Casablanca, etc.), and my favorite movies exiting high school were Dr. Strangelove and Apocalypse Now. But in the interim between graduation and heading to college, I watched Seven Samurai because it was the one film in the IMDB Top 10 I hadn’t seen (oh, to be young and innocent again), and that was all she wrote. Now, 2-1/2 years later, I dropped out of Engineering — I would have flunked out anyway — to pursue Journalism and I’ve been reading and watching on the side to be a film critic.
It has damn near ruined my relationship with friends and family ;)
I got into film about a year ago (aged 14 1/2, or thereabouts). My parents had just tolerated buying 18 rated film for me. Pulp Fiction really inspired me. I read a few of Tarantino’s screenplays etc and my interest exploded from there.
I was about 17 (27 now) when i first saw Clockwork Orange, which was the film that got me into film. My ascension into full Film-Snobbery was a little slow, however, but that all changed a few months before i went to college and joined…BMG!!!
The Baader-Meinhof Group? :-o
At 5 years old ca 1950-54 my 1st memory of film is Johnny Guitar by Nicholas Ray—Jean Luc Godard later saw it and tried to steal my thunder—although it was his favorite film ca 1950’s , I believe I can still beat him in (over)praising it and the great Sterling Hayden of the fifties!
Four. My mother was a lecturer in film studies so I didn’t have much choice. I remember being taken to see Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright at four and being appalled at the blood on Marlene Dietrich’s dress; the image always stayed with me. When I saw the movie again years later I realised what a crucial plot point that was, it was both disturbing and comforting to know I was ‘getting’ Hitchcock before I could read!
He has always remained one of my favourite film makers despite the bloody dress.
“Age 4. I saw Satantango and that was it.”
……..say whaaaa?
Ryan Estabrooks
Around 18 I would say. It started off with a friend of a friend recommending Hitchcock to me. Before then, I had never really watched a movie made before the 1970’s…and even the 70’s movie I had seen were mostly relegated to “Taxi Driver” and “A Clockwork Orange”. I started off with “Vertigo” and “The Birds” and loved them both. I went back to that friend to ask for more suggestions but she had vanished, pretty much leaving me to myself. Then luckily, I stumbled across “Mouchette” and decided to take a chance on it and blind buy it. I loved it and that led to me scoping out the rest of the Criterion Collection, which led to discovering more directors, more film movements and so forth.