Thoughts & Things

Film Challenge

I love getting to explore, experiment, and expand my tastes when it comes to all forms of media. I try to broaden my horizons with reading, writing, music, TV, video games, and film. Before this year, I had tried at expanding my film tastes, and in some ways I had a lot of success. I started to feel like I got into a bit of a slump, so I created a film challenge to push myself harder.

The premise of my film challenge was to watch two to three new films per month in areas that wouldn't necessarily catch my attention first. It had to be something I had never seen before, and it had to fit one of the categories. There were twenty-five main categories, and five categories for the bonus round, for a total of thirty films. Each film could only count for one category, so even if it qualified for more than one, you had to choose which one you preferred it to count for. You had to watch the full twenty-five to thirty.

The categories were things like decades (one film from every decade from the 1910s to the 2010s), locations (Canadian, European, Asian, African, South American), documentaries (social/cultural, science, history), independent, animated, based on a true story, based on a book, by or about someone from the LGBT+ community, directed by a woman, from the year you were born, and so on.

I set it up on facebook, and got friends, family, and co-workers to participate. There were discussion threads for every category. We talked about legal ways to obtain films for every category, different film suggestions, and reviewed the films we watched.

As of right now, I am the only one to have finished the challenge. I actually finished my year long challenge at the beginning of July. I found it really got me looking at films I hadn't really considered before, and I absolutely fell in love with some of them. I ended up watching several silent films, and became incredibly interested in them as a whole. Where Are My Children and The Toll of the Sea were the ones that counted for the challenge officially. I made a full post about silent film in August.

For my 1940s film, I watched The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. I am actually a big fan of 1930s-1950s romantic comedies or romantic dramas featuring ghosts. It's a very niche area of film, and people always look at me funny when I say it, but it's been true since I was a little girl. I am actually surprised I had never seen The Ghost and Mrs. Muir before this year, but I loved it. My female directed film was Austenland, which is one that was a great deal of fun and I really felt that connection to. My LGBT film was But I'm a Cheerleader which was funny and touching and colourful in every sense of the word. My African film was Moolade, which had a fascinating plot I hadn't even considered, and felt well written and enjoyable all through. Carandiru was my South American film, which was based on a true story as well, and it was fascinating and heartbreaking. I actually watched Schindler's List for the first time ever as part of this challenge for my 90s film, and thought it was excellent. My love convinced me to watch The Warriors for my 70s film, and I loved it and maybe felt the urge to join a gang for a time afterwards. I saw Up as my 00s film, and cried like a baby.

Of course I did watch a few movies that were not quite as enjoyable. Crowsnest (my Canadian film) gave me a headache, and Ghost Team One (for a bonus round involving watching a movie that looked bad) was just awful.

As a whole, I feel like I got a great deal of personal benefit from this challenge. I really explored areas I wouldn't have explored before, and I explored areas that I should have explored and had not. I am particularly fond of challenges that allow me to push my media interests to their fullest potential, and as long as I can get interest again, I plan on running another one with new categories for 2017.