Ten Films

There’s a social media ‘challenge’ going around where you’re assigned the task of posting images from ten films that had the most personal impact. I’m sure you’ve seen it. Today the gauntlet was thrown in my direction so I must oblige. But rather than responding to the challenge on social media (and spreading it out over the required ten days), I thought I’d post my answers here. I have trouble following rules.

I’m interpreting ‘impact’ as films that changed me in some way. That could mean through mind-altering insights into the world, or an introduction to a new kind of language (not the spoken type), or by sending me down a rabbit hole of other films, artworks, or philosophies. These aren’t necessarily my favorite films (though my favorite film is here, and I doubt it’s the one you think it is). And I’m leaving off anything recent that’s blown me away as these things take time. It’s no surprise that half these movies were first watched before the age of 15.

Some of these images are obvious straight away — and probably show up on everyone else’s lists — and others are more obscure. I’m not supposed to identify the films but each photo has a hyperlink that reveals all.

I guess I’ve ditched the rules at this point so I’ll break the ‘no explanations’ mandate on a couple of them. The first one is what I watched the week of 9/11/01. I had no idea how heavy, affecting, and appropriate it would be for that particular time. And the last one I watched repeatedly while working on Invisible Airline. I related somewhat to the main character (which is not really a good thing), and there is a song on the album named after a magic chant in the film. I could probably tell you a story about all of these — perhaps someday I will.