Not only can I pinpoint that pivotal of moments but I can name the film it started with and the scene within that film.
I was 15 and no stranger to the cinematic. My childhood had been a diet of television and rented videos. Indeed, I have quite a clear memory of the purchase of our first family VCR. The astounded joy of being able to watch and rewatch films at will seemed a godly power.
From infancy, films had been entertainment, comfort, connection with others, educators and friends. They were the medium through which I knew how to emotionally navigate the world. Yet, at the age of 15, a filmic epiphany occurred.
I'd like to say it was through Godard or Antonioni or the great German director, Fritz Lang but it was actually through one of the chaps most associated with the phenomenon known as Cinema Du Look. You see, I'd recently developed a BIT of a crush on Gary Oldman and had watched Leon over and over again. I'd enjoyed it so much I did a bit of research on the bloke who'd made it. Apparently it was a foreign director, French actually, named Luc Besson. Strangely I had made it all the way to middle of my teenage years without ever having watched a non-English speaking film so I thought, "Hey!Why not?!"
I made my way to my local video and dvd rental shop armed with a few film titles I had written down after using the computers in the school library.
There I saw it:
In the film there is a scene just after Nikita is "killed". She wakes up in an all white room and as she sits up she turns so that her feet are dangling over the edge of the bed.
At this moment, the camera shot comes in from below the bed and all you see are her two little feet dangling.
It was here....at this precise moment.....that I first made the realisation that film was intentional and artistic and not just a bunch of entertaining stories.
The vulnerability distilled in that one particular choice of camera angle. That is where mere enjoyment became obsessive, undying passion.
My cinematic education has blossomed since then. I have done workshops and short courses and recently graduated a BA (Hons) Film Studies degree with a First but just as importantly I have expanded my viewing horizons. I still hold a soft spot for Besson and the beginnings of it all but I have also discovered the joys of some of his fellow countrymen - from Jeunet to Bresson to Varda to Marker. I have found great enduring loves like Cassavetes and Chaplin and filmmakers who I admire but who represent a challenge like Godard and Polanski. I have discovered that you don't have to be posh to enjoy artist film and my film family now includes the beautiful Marie Menken. I have also discovered a part of my own self identity as a feminist through the works of filmmakers like Lis Rhodes, Kelly Reichardt and the discovery of the first ever female director, Alice Guy Blache.
The exciting thing about a life in film is that there are always things to discover, things to become passionate about, to be excited about and a community of people who understand such excitement and will revel in it alongside you.
What matters, in the end, is not how it begins...that thing that makes life about living and not just existing....but that it does and that at some point, perhaps not always straight away, but at some point, that you recognise it, you cherish it and you hold onto it as tight as you can.
