I should have been a film professional. I didn't know that in the beginning, when I was starting out in the university. Although I wouldn't be listening unless people shouted "down with something!", if someone had just hinted that maybe I should shift to film journalism or something that is connected with film, I think I would have seriously considered it. Except at that time a popular actor named Richard Gomes was also in film class. I was so repelled by this actor, who was nowhere as attractive as my brother or cousins, I didn't join the class for fear of being branded a film enrolee after his attentions. During his term in college the film class swelled to four times its normal size! Of course there were also students who turned out to be well respected broadcasters and film directors with whom I was proudly acquainted in that department. But at that time yes, they were thought to have taken up film because they are fans. True, they had a unique courage to endure that kind of humiliation.
Almost twenty years hence I have not lost my interest in watching good films despite my brain's unfortunate lack of memory space to recall all the endings. Provided with almost every opportunity and convenience to go to a spa or a bar after work hours, my first impulse would still be to line up at the cinema.
Before reaching my teens we had our first betamax machine. My father immediately spent most of his small salary purchasing many classic films. Most of them he had wanted to see when he was young but was too poor to afford the cinema. My sister and I would cuddle up beside him and watch one after another until we fell asleep, but this was only done during weekends when school was out. Gradually betamax was replaced by laser disks and then VCDs then DVDs. My Dad's betamax tapes had molded over a long time ago. And before he could change the machine he had already retired. Years later when he visited me in my workplace outside the country, he saw the same films now in DVDs in my collection. He was so happy I remembered the titles, and that works of favourites like Alfred Hitchkock Mysteries and the Pink Panther had been so readily available.
It is one of my regrets that I do not work in this industry. Film has changed the world in a decade more than radio or print did in fifty. It continues to depict the realities of life in its most beautiful and terrible faces, while giving flight to humanity's greatest dreams. The so-called idiot box has become the one mass educator for people who could not go to school. It has connected us in more ways than we can imagine. Generations before could not have "pictured" a future where watching a movie in the palm of one's hand can be done while writing a letter and chatting with friends at the same time -- on the same machine. Yet this was the subject of early film makers' so called "science fiction" themes wasn't it?
So I decided that if I wasn't going to be one of its creators I could surely be an avid spectator. And keep to what I know-- writing about it.
