How do you choose which film(s) to watch?

[Janice Glesser]

We all have our favorites when it comes to film watching. I was wondering despite the varying subject matter what criteria determines the films and what format we use in selecting what to watch at any given time. For example... I lately just stand in front of my film shelves and see if anything jumps out. I don't have an enormous collection...but a good variety. My first inclination is to pick something I haven't watched recently. On the other hand...I have some titles that I can watch repeatedly and those win out over other films more than not. My preference for full-length film watching is 16mm...but I do love to run my 8mm projectors. So it's mostly standard 8 and super 8mm shorts on those. Last December I was lucky enough to buy a full-length super 8 version of Scrooge that I ran just the other day. I don't feel it has to be Christmas to enjoy a film.

I guess my selection technique is rather random... Do you have a criteria for choosing...or is it a kind of a eeny-meeny-miney-moe system?

[Steve Klare]

You are employing my "refrigerator door method": I stand there and look at the shelves, try to make a meal out of what I have.

-what's nice here is in this case I probably won't eat what my wife planned for our lunch.

I do planned shows where I put together a list of films and we invite friends over, but that's the exception. Most of the time, other than a whim I've been feeling all day, I have no idea.

Sometimes I even get ideas after I've started to show them: as long as the new film is where I hoped, I do fine!

[Janice Glesser]

Steve, I totally relate.

[Steve Klare]

I ALMOST had a theme develop last night: the last two films were about the maiden flights of new aircraft, but I only realized that after the fact!

-and as I said: I had one machine rigged for scope and one not, so I picked films based of compatibility with the equipment!

This is NOT showmanship! (It's like basing your meals on which pots and pans are clean!)


If you want to see this on a grand scale, come to CineSea. You may have 15 different people bringing films and three different projectionists trying to weave them into a presentation. The chaos is wonderful!

Once my Super-8 Buccaneer Bunny didn't make it on screen because 15 minutes earlier somebody else's 16mm Buccaneer Bunny got screened!

"Blast your ornery hide!"

[Mathew James]

Hi All,
I have my films in stacks of about 10 or 12 on a wide bookshelf, LH in piles 1 and 2, Lil' Rascals in piles 3 and 4, etc.....
I then put the one i just watched to the bottom of the pile i took from.
The idea was that i would just take from the top and put to the bottom each serving, but like Steve, even doing this method, most times i still stand in front of the fridge for a bit and choose something different to eat depending on the appetite...appetite of the kids mostly these days...
My collection is not huge however, so i can still cycle through pretty well

[Chip Gelmini]

It depends on my mood one thing I do try is not to repeat too many genres too close together if I run animation one week I'll wait several weeks before I run animation again

[Brian Fretwell]

If I find out how I do it, I'll let you know. It is a mystery to me - makes shows more interesting though especially when I find a reel I haven't labelled too well and just watch it. :-)

[Steve Klare]

I have enough that I start to forget them, or confuse them among each other. I haven't reached the point where I get a print, go to shelve it and find a duplicate!

I'm actually resisting it getting that bad: I'm pickier about what I buy these days.

When I can go a couple of months without re-watching a print I like, it's a sign I have enough. It was different earlier on when during the long Winter nights I started to hit bottom: the "What was I thinking?!" class of film prints!

[Graham Ritchie]

I think for me its how I feel at the time

[Trevor Adams]

When exercising the projectors I'm inclined to run,"When the North Wind Blows". Love those tiggers!

[Steve Klare]

One of my favorites, too, Trevor!

'North Wind is traditionally something I put on in the week between Christmas and New Years, and then somewhere during the summer months.

Maybe 10 years ago I did a lot of Googling about this movie and found the website of one of the actors: Jack Ong. He played Alex, one of the young men in the hunting party where Avakum accidentally killed Boris' son.

I e-mailed Jack and we talked for a long time about the movie. Jack was a young actor in his first on-screen role. He was a kid from Phoenix and had never seen snow his entire life, yet suddenly found himself in the Canadian Rockies carrying a stretcher take, after take, after take across a windy, frozen lake! He said that the trainers told him never to turn his back on the tigers because they sometimes attack without any provocation, and we're talking about over 300 pounds of muscle, fangs and claws here!

If you have the 6x400' version, Jack appears on reels 1 and 2. He was written into the later reels, but he was a college student and couldn't get away.

Jack loved having the chance to reminisce about When the North Wind Blows, yet unfortunately it's pretty obscure to people who don't have 8 or 16mm film. A few years ago he passed away: at least somebody out there let him know his first role was appreciated because of my E-bay print!

[Janice Glesser]

Steve Klare What a great story!!! I'm not familiar with the North Wind. I'll have to see if I can locate it. You peaked my curiousity

@ Trevor: I like your term "exercising the projectors." When I'm performing that same task I tend to watch my 400 foot digest of The African Queen.

[Steve Klare]

It's one of the most important unknown films ever!

-For example it was the first on-screen role for Dan Haggerty. He hired on as an animal trainer, but since this was a really budgetty movie, there were a lot of opportunities! If you look at the credits, you find a lot of behind the scenes people had acting roles too. So Dan Haggerty got a role as the leader of a hunting party trying to trap live Siberian tigers for zoos.

At the same time, the story is basically about a man who believes he's being accused of murder retreating into the wilderness to escape undeserved punishment. There he befriends a Siberian tiger and the two team up to survive together. (In this case the man was played by Henry Brandon.)

If the story seems somehow familiar, maybe it should: not very long afterwards they took the same story, moved the setting to the American West from Siberia, subbed Dan Haggerty for Henry Brandon, a big bear for the tiger and thus was born "The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams".

Rare VHSs never showed up when I was looking, and DVDs were region 2 only for a long time.

-this is one basically for Super-8 and 16mm fans!

[Janice Glesser]

Steve Klare Trevor Adams I found it on YouTube. A pretty bad copy but I might be able to make it look a little better to watch.

[Brian Fretwell]

This weekend I feel the time of year will determine my choice. I'm sure that Happy Go Ducky and the cut down of Easter parade will see the light of a halogen lamp.