Hi everyone, I'm Balor.
I am a graduate student who has been spending the last few years really ramping up my personal interesting in film and film history (which is not my main subject of study).
While I know that there are HUGE gaps in my awareness, I have tried my best to watch as wide a variety and the greatest number of films that I can manage---attempting to cover everything from the silent era to the present day.
I think the first time I really noticed film as an art form rather than just another source of entertainment was when I found Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal in my local library. While that started me off, it wasn't until discovering D. W. Griffith (through The Birth of A Nation) that things really took off.
While I hesitate to say that I have absolute favorite films (I tend to think in terms of what is important to me at the moment), I have found that my taste in cinema---like my interests in music and literature---tend to run fairly extreme.
My current top films, for instance, are:
-Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
-Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
-The House that Jack Built
-Suspiria
My favorite directors are:
-Lars von Trier
-Pier Paolo Pasolini
-Dario Argento
-Robert Bresson
-Nagisa Oshima (there is still, nevertheless, something I am repulsed by in him---but that might just be due to his New Wave stuff)
My current personal project is watching through the entire Ingmar Bergman boxset that Criterion put out a while back. It's been quite the journey (having been regularly interrupted by David Lynch).
Outside of film, I enjoy literature (Dennis Cooper, Yukio Mishima, Peter Sotos, William S. Burroughs, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, etc.) and extreme music (noise/industrial and black metal).
Hopefully this is sufficient for an introduction. I look forward to discussing film with you all!
I am a graduate student who has been spending the last few years really ramping up my personal interesting in film and film history (which is not my main subject of study).
While I know that there are HUGE gaps in my awareness, I have tried my best to watch as wide a variety and the greatest number of films that I can manage---attempting to cover everything from the silent era to the present day.
I think the first time I really noticed film as an art form rather than just another source of entertainment was when I found Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal in my local library. While that started me off, it wasn't until discovering D. W. Griffith (through The Birth of A Nation) that things really took off.
While I hesitate to say that I have absolute favorite films (I tend to think in terms of what is important to me at the moment), I have found that my taste in cinema---like my interests in music and literature---tend to run fairly extreme.
My current top films, for instance, are:
-Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
-Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
-The House that Jack Built
-Suspiria
My favorite directors are:
-Lars von Trier
-Pier Paolo Pasolini
-Dario Argento
-Robert Bresson
-Nagisa Oshima (there is still, nevertheless, something I am repulsed by in him---but that might just be due to his New Wave stuff)
My current personal project is watching through the entire Ingmar Bergman boxset that Criterion put out a while back. It's been quite the journey (having been regularly interrupted by David Lynch).
Outside of film, I enjoy literature (Dennis Cooper, Yukio Mishima, Peter Sotos, William S. Burroughs, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, etc.) and extreme music (noise/industrial and black metal).
Hopefully this is sufficient for an introduction. I look forward to discussing film with you all!