Why real film discovery means resisting lists, escaping algorithms and learning to love without snobbery.
How To Be A Cinephile In The Age Of Algorithms
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Streaming has changed everything — but real cinephilia still begins with curiosity, community and a willingness to love films without hierarchy or algorithmic hand-holding. Alexander Sergeant writes.
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SO YOU WANT TO BE A CINEPHILE? It used to be easy enough. When the first generation of film audiences emerged in the early 1900s, film clubs began springing up in urban centres across the globe. From New York to Paris to Mumbai, people would gather to watch, discuss and pontificate over the nature of the world through the lens of the screen.
Yet, as time and technology have progressed, the birth of home viewing and then streaming has created a much more fragmented and bewildering landscape – particularly for the young film fan wanting to progress to the elite ranks of the cinephile.
Far from simply becoming a member of an actual club, it can feel daunting for modern film fans to know where to start if they have a desire to learn more about movies. To help those in need, I present these handy tips for how to become a modern-day cinephile in the age of streaming algorithms. Your pop culture fix awaits on OTTplay, for only Rs 149 per month. Grab this limited-time offer now! |
Take ‘best of’ lists with a grain of salt A useful starting activity for the digitally savvy film fan looking to get up to speed with the history of cinema is to consult the wealth of “best of” lists available online.
These can be useful for drawing your attention to the wealth of films you might not have heard of. But these lists are inherently subjective and say far more about the people who produced them than they do about the supposed objective quality highlighted in the films.
Historically, cinephiles came from a particular subsection of society. This was not a club that made a lot of room for people working blue-collar jobs, marginalised people, or anyone who didn’t have a lot of free capital and leisure time to spend in large urban centres. It is not surprising that the films and filmmakers that appear on “best of” lists are usually for, and from, that audience. Ignore the algorithms Another temptingly easy way to consume more films is to allow technology to do the work for us, particularly in the age of AI. Netflix has built its entire business model on this approach, providing suggestions for what we should watch as part of its platform model so that we all feel individually catered for, even if what we actually watch is very similar to everyone else.
Cinephiles through history have developed ways to watch beyond what was available in their local multiplex or video store. You must find ways to watch beyond what your streaming service recommends to you. Alternative streaming sites like MUBI draw from a wider range of both historical and world cinema.
These might be useful platforms to access films from a richer cultural heritage. But keep in mind rule number one: these services should not get to decide your favourite films either. |
Be a contrarian There’s a varied tasting menu of film history out there. Only you get to decide what is special. There's delight in defying expectations. Mix a course of French New Wave arthouse filmmaking with a marathon session of all the High School Musicals. Find value in the onscreen charisma of figures like Vin Diesel or Kevin Hart while enjoying the method acting of Marlon Brando or Viola Davis. Enjoy the directing of Michael Bay or Uwe Boll as much as Christopher Nolan, Greta Gerwig or Martin Scorsese.
Don’t be pigeonholed into liking only one kind of filmmaking . The more the merrier.
Try to love rather than judge
Cinephiles should be haunted by the spectre of the words of Anton Ego, the ghoulish restaurant critic and antagonist in the Pixar film Ratatouille (2007): “[Critics] thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read … But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defence of the new. ”
Being a cinephile is about loving the new. It is not about degrading works you feel superior to. Avoid attending quote-a-longs of infamous flops like The Room (2003) or embracing cynical “so bad it’s good” rewatches. All they do is enforce fixed ideas of what is good and bad, while arching an eyebrow to seem subversive in the process.
Love whatever you want to love, sincerely and passionately, and find ways to articulate why. |
Let’s get physical We assumed when everything went online that, well, everything would go online. But the utopia of that worldview is long gone. When Netflix first launched as a DVD postal subscription service back in 1998, it boasted to its customers a back catalogue of over 70,000 films.
In 2020, it was estimated that the platform offered approximately 3,800 film titles. It turns out it’s cheaper to tell us what we should like, rather than letting us find that out for ourselves.
To find the films you want to see, you might have to go back into the physical world. Embrace older technology. Dust off your parents’ DVD or Blu-ray player (if they still own one). Visit your local library. Attend local film festivals or free screenings, especially if they are showing films you’ve never heard of. ALSO READ | The Cinema Of A Cinema Hall Better yet, go to the cinema. Switch off your mobile phone. Make conversation with the person sitting next to you (before and after the film only, please). Cinephilia was always supposed to be a way of bringing people together. Let’s turn it into that once more. Alexander Sergeant is a Lecturer in Digital Media Production at the University of Westminster. This essay originally appeared on The Conversation and has been republished here under the Creative Commons License. |
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