Quiet, Personal Movies
All my greatest inspirations have always been movies. From an early age, I was drawn to those that told a slow story, more about feelings than facts, everything happening easy enough to notice. A couple hours long isn't much room to breathe, just enough time to draw you down and feel real. As a kid, I was often disappointed when the plot came along, and interrupted the depth of feeling existing on screen. We didn't grow up with TV in my house, so when we finally got a VCR in the mid-90s, whatever tapes we rented, bought, or borrowed from the neighbours held real sway. I never got distracted or looked away, no matter how much or how little I loved what was happening on screen. I remember watching films that were new at the time, like The Secret Garden or Driving Miss Daisy, straightforward stories that made me believe in the world they created. Back then, my scale of time was greater, when days felt like weeks, and hours like days. Every time a movie was over, it seemed like I'd lived it with the characters, got sucked in and lost along the way. All these years later, and I still see the edges blurring when I let them.
When I became a photographer, I was inspired by the films that made a frame have meaning, making ordinary life into a series of honest compositions. Instead of the endless possibilities of modern cinema, they looked back and took the notion of "moving picture" seriously. Putting a border around these worlds helped me understand the boundaries of my own, made me feel safer in being myself. In my late teens, I started digging deeper, watched hundreds of VHS and DVDs a year, and found a meaning that was missing in me. I first saw Never Cry Wolf in the mid-2000s, and it soon became my favourite film of all time, a framework for everything I loved on screen. The stark loneliness and sparseness, mixed with a whole lot of hope, made me understand beauty in a way I never fully perceived before. There are a lot of different themes in these films, covering a range of genres and approaches, strong sadness and incredible joy. Some are widely-known and well-loved movies, and others are hard to find and hopelessly obscure. Boiling under the surface is a compelling and restrained quality, a deeply human and unifying factor – a quiet, heartwaking understanding of people and their place. This list is the result of a lifetime of film watching, searching, discovering, loving. If you're looking for something new to move you, I hope you might find it here.
– Steve Skafte
instagram.com/steveskafte
facebook.com/berserkerpoetry
youtube.com/berserkerpoetry
When I became a photographer, I was inspired by the films that made a frame have meaning, making ordinary life into a series of honest compositions. Instead of the endless possibilities of modern cinema, they looked back and took the notion of "moving picture" seriously. Putting a border around these worlds helped me understand the boundaries of my own, made me feel safer in being myself. In my late teens, I started digging deeper, watched hundreds of VHS and DVDs a year, and found a meaning that was missing in me. I first saw Never Cry Wolf in the mid-2000s, and it soon became my favourite film of all time, a framework for everything I loved on screen. The stark loneliness and sparseness, mixed with a whole lot of hope, made me understand beauty in a way I never fully perceived before. There are a lot of different themes in these films, covering a range of genres and approaches, strong sadness and incredible joy. Some are widely-known and well-loved movies, and others are hard to find and hopelessly obscure. Boiling under the surface is a compelling and restrained quality, a deeply human and unifying factor – a quiet, heartwaking understanding of people and their place. This list is the result of a lifetime of film watching, searching, discovering, loving. If you're looking for something new to move you, I hope you might find it here.
– Steve Skafte
instagram.com/steveskafte
facebook.com/berserkerpoetry
youtube.com/berserkerpoetry
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