ID:
Age: 22
Gender: alpha male
Sexual orientation: fluid
Race: Latino descended from Spanish Jews
Nationality: Texan
Economic class: lower middle
Cultural class: intellectual jock
Religion: agnostic Episcopalian
Philosophy: Romanticism
Top 5 Favorite Directors:
Eagle Pennell
Bernardo Bertolucci
John Ford
Jean-Luc Godard
Terrence Malick
Top 10 Films:
1. Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972)
2. The Whole Shootin’ Match (Eagle Pennell, 1978)
3. Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975)
4. Waking Life (Richard Linklater, 2001)
5. Histoire(s) du Cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard, 1997)
6. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)
7. Le SamouraÏ (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
8. Scorpio Rising (Kenneth Anger, 1964)
9. Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)
10. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
10 Most Played Songs On iTunes:
1. Wavves, “Post Acid”
2. The Clash, “Safe European Home”
3. Lykke Li, “Unrequited Love”
4. The Cars, “Just What I Needed”
5. Bob Dylan, “All I Really Want To Do”
6. The Clash, “Julie’s Been Working For The Drug Squad”
7. Bob Dylan, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”
8. Simon & Garfunkel, “The Dangling Conversation”
9. Adele, “Rolling In The Deep”
10. The Beatles, “And Your Bird Can Sing”
Top 10 Books:
1. 1984 (George Orwell, 1949)
2. The Great Movies I-III (Roger Ebert, 1996-present)
3. The Drowned and the Saved (Primo Levi, 1986)
4. 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (Steven Jay Schneider, 2003)
5. The Basic Eight (Daniel Handler, 1998)
6. Neuromancer (William Gibson, 1984)
7. The Stranger (Albert Camus, 1942)
8. One Up On Wall Street (Peter Lynch, 1990)
9. Macbeth (William Shakespeare, c. 1605)
10. Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov, 1955)
My latest film:
I’m from South Texas, been watching films my whole life, planning on making them for a living. I used to be a regular on the Criterion Collection’s Facebook page, but after they were taken over by trolls, jocks and hipsters, I left to found a private group. Called Criterionism, I tried to democratize it, only to be thrown out of it by a bourgeois New York lawyer who has never made a film in his life and was bigoted against my mental condition. I’ve returned to the MUBI forums after a long absence, seeking an immersion in the art of film as I head towards graduation and my first features as an independent, art-minded director.
I’ve never subscribed to any specific cinematic ideology (examples: contemplative, anti-narrative, entertainment, avant-garde) because I feel that 1) a true cinephile gives everything a chance, and 2) that ideologies of any kind put blinders on the way we see the world. Therefore, my favorites and ratings are all over the place, reflecting how much visual, intellectual, and emotional pleasure the films I watch give me. I’m definitely anti-canon, and my sense of a film or filmmaker’s greatness is rooted in my individual, subjective perception of it or them. For example, I enjoy the works of Ozu more for their emotional impact than the formalist deconstruction people place on his camerawork. Similarly, I consider the Jean-Pierre Leaud scenes in Last Tango in Paris to be essential to understanding the film’s dream logic, while the conventional opinion is that they distract from the main theme of torrid eroticism.
My future plans are to finish four feature-length films and ten short films I have in the works between now and the end of the year. I plan to submit these works to various festivals in Texas, the first in a multi-year plan to make many innovative, provocative works and get them shown at festivals, that will eventually result in my becoming among the finest directors of the 2010s. I have the self-confidence, strength, and allies to complete this goal, and I refuse to fail at it. I also refuse to fail at graduating with a Bachelor’s of Arts in Communication this December from Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi.
I hope you find my commentary informative and intelligent. If you follow me, I’ll follow back, and don’t be shy to say hello via my wall or by private message.
Yours truly,
Joseph Garza Medina
