i don’t know where to begin. i guess i will just start rambling and let my mind go from there …

if there was a moment where i could say, “this is when my journey really began”, it has to be credited to pbs (public broadcast system/non-profit broadcasting for ppl not stateside). i don’t know if it was a series or something they were just featuring… but two films that they showed was a pinnacle moment for me…

ran
akira kurosawa

johnny stecchino
roberto benigni

everything was a blur before that. but with those two films, i can truly say that my perspective of how i viewed cinema had started to change forever.

i think what happened next was that i saw an ad for the dc filmfest in the dc city paper. i probably started on their eleventh year, when they were still showing at dupont 5 cinema with their “tube tv”-sized screens. after that, i exploded and couldn’t get enough. went to the arabian nights fest, reel affirmations fest, and whatever i could get my hands on!

but the most memorable was the dc filmfest. it felt “raw” and exciting during those early years. you had a feeling that you were in an exclusive club and all you had to do to get in was to have a “ticket”, like that charlie and the chocolate factory feeling!

cinema houses that were part of my pastimes: visions theatre (founding member), inner circle west end, outer circle tenleytown, avalon, foundry before it was a dollar, and that ghetto theater in dupont circle with the beam right in the middle of the screen… the janus.

… i am glad and feel privileged to had been a part of this era seeing the rise (and sadly the fall) of the last remaining art houses before the landmark theater takeovers.

the only theatre i will go to now (maybe) is the gigantic uptown (love the balcony!), with the afi silver, landmark, smithsonian, and imax sprinkled in. curious to check out the re-opening of the west end though and how it will fair in this day and age.

all others, i will watch comfortably on my hi-def 77" home theater with surround sound… and netflix with film movement series. yes, i am part of the reason why the art-houses closed, sorry to say.

regardless, glad to have found mubi… via my ps3, out of all places. and to ppl who are wondering why it would be on a gaming system, as someone said on the mubi forum, (paraphrase) “we all have had to start somewhere!”.

… i was playing doom, duke nukem 3d, on the bbs, and wreckless getting into all sorts of trouble in my mid-teens when i had my pinnacle “moment” of cinema. give the younger generation a chance… some benefit of a doubt. they may be lost or seem to have no rhyme or reason. but art is art and a good film is a good film. this is their time for experimenting and discovery. it is built. let them come and see what this passion is all about.

other things… x-club kid (shelter, tunnel, twilo, paradox, limelight, sound factory bar, edge, capitol ballroom/nation), old school raver (tracks – dc, nasa – nyc, ultraworld – baltimore), house dancer.

now, i am just a wall flower with water in hand. i am definitely, “past”.

i n-joi the calmer/quiter things in life now… with some rare spark every once in a moon-lyte.

that is all i can ramble for now. if anyone thinks it would be cool to be associated with moi, then i would much appreciate the add.

thanks for taking the x to read my “journey”.