ABOUT FILMANALYTIC
Not just a film club.
A salon built around film.
We are not trying to help people differentiate a "good" film from a "bad" film. We are trying to build the temporal and spatial contexts under which a film can be genuinely related to, and thought about — between any given "Self," and "Other."
The Idea
We watch together, we think together — with people who were trained to notice the idiosyncratic of everyday living.
An evening begins with a screening: a full film, or a set of scenes chosen from said film, will be screened as the conversation starter. Then, invited panelists from separate disciplines will engage in a discussion; and the audience will have the chance to join in. There is wine, there is food, and a chance to engage in a discussion with other likeminded cinephiles.
It is closer to a European literary salon, or an evening in a historic home, than to a lecture hall, or a cinema. Small by design — the intimacy is the point, as it will lend itself to more engaging discussions about each film.
Our inaugural evening arrives on Saturday, October 3. The earliest members of this community will help shape what the salon becomes.
Cinema, seen from many intellectual "camera angles."
- Psychology & Psychoanalysis
- What the film knows about the unconscious, desire, resistances and defenses.
- Philosophy
- The questions exploring different ideologies posed by the film.
- Literature
- Structure, tone, adaptation, and explored through the idiosyncratic use of language.
- Politics & History
- The world the film was made in, and the world it imagined. Its spatial and temporal context as it relates to the possible interpretation the moviegoer will have of the film.
- Art & Architecture
- Composition, colour, space, and how a room can carry meaning.
- Music & Sound
- What we hear before we understand it.
- Science
- Perception, attention, and the strange machinery of watching.
- Filmmaking
- The cinematographic, and directorial decisions from screenplay to the final cut of the editing process.
Our Philosophy
Why we think an evening like this matters.
- I
Great films deserve thoughtful conversation
Most of what a film gives us arrives after the credits — in the walk home, the argument, the thing we notice a week later. We are building the room where that happens intentionally rather than by happenstance.
- II
Cinema is one of the richest forms of storytelling
It holds image, sound, performance, architecture, music, politics and time all at once. No single discipline can account for its significance fully, which is precisely why it makes such generous common ground.
- III
Different disciplines illuminate different dimensions
A clinician hears a defense, a historian hears a decade, and where a composer hears a key change. Put them in one room and the film gets larger, not smaller.
- IV
Conversation transforms watching into understanding
Watching is private; understanding is usually collaborative. Something happens when your "Self" gets to interact with any given "Other," and collaborate in exploring the relational component present in the film; insofar as film reflects human-human relationality.
- V
Community forms around shared curiosity
Not around expertise, credentials or agreement. The graduate student, and the professor arrive on the same footing, and both leave with some "Thing" that they didn't initially arrive with.
Intellectual Generosity
“Nobody has ever changed their mind on an empty stomach — or in a room where they were afraid to be wrong.”Join the Community