While not every movie buff has one, the film collection is often one of the distinguishing features that separates those who are more serious about movies and those who are not. This is not to say that people who aren’t film savvy won’t have a film collection, but they probably don’t go to the length of developing a collection as the serious movie buff. For a movie buff, it’s not about having more films than a casual movie watcher; it’s about the concept of having an accumulation of films that become a sort of physical cannon for the individual, a curated set of films that represent the films the individual believes are favorites and important.
And I do see some value in the personal collection, I’ve done that over the years, accumulating a substantial library of titles that I believe is a strong representation of my tastes. My movie collection is perhaps the closest I’ve come to comprising anything close that represents who I am as a person. And yet, knowing myself, I can’t help but find the entire collection a bit contrary to who I am and what I believe as a person.
As time goes on, I’ve grown to hate the physical accumulation of stuff. Just the other day I threw out this entire stack of papers, homework projects, tests and quizzes that constitute my undergraduate work. It’s been sitting on one of my shelves for a couple of years now and I’ve no reason to keep any of it now that I have a diploma in hand.
My primary distain for the stack isn’t the wastefulness of paper, although that does bug me, it’s that I never got any use from having it around. I never poured over notes from last class and practically every paper I have stored digitally. This stack of paper served no real function other than insurance in case some record of classwork was lost before I graduated. After a while I forgot about it, it was just there.
I’ve come to face the same problem with my book collection. Before film, I was much more of a reader and collected a number of books, most in hardback. But after six years in higher education, I realized that I forgot about most of these books. They’ve been collecting dust. I’ve re-read maybe fifteen of them in the past six years. I’ve spent far more time reading new books, both for school and for personal pleasure.
All of this is a roundabout way of coming back to my film collection, which is I think it’s come to represent the same thing. A lot of it has become dusty insurance, an investment that I might want to watch one of these films on a whim. While I understand a lot of film buffs often get those desires to revisit old favorites, I’ve slowly come to realize when it comes to films and literature, I’m not that kind of person.
I much prefer the excitement of discovering a new favorite or digging into something new and fresh than the safety of an old favorite. I’ll still go back, but in the past six years, I’ve become a lot picker about what books and films I feel are worth revisiting, meaning that most of my collection is gathering dust. This would probably not bug most people, I get that a lot of people like collecting things and looking what they’ve gathered together, but I’ve always been a bit of a pragmatic person, and I find a lot of my collection has become worthless to me. Why do I bother to own something I probably won’t use for years, if at all?
Therefore, I’ve decided two things. The first is that I’m slowly beginning to purge a lot of my film collection, both selling and giving away a substantial portion of the films. I’ve determined what to get rid of through a second decision: I’m going to start only owning films that I feel I will want to revisit in the next five years. I’m still tentatively holding onto some titles that are in a bit of a limbo, I’m also purging the titles in waves, I’ve had one group I’ve been selling over several months and another group I decided to simply give away to those interested and I’ll probably look at donating the rest.
Going forward, I’m working down my collection to 100 titles. On average, I rewatch about 20 films a year from my personal collection and, by those numbers, 100 titles are about all I can justify having. Once again, I’m thinking about this much more pragmatically, because that’s the kind of person I am.
Yes, it’s nice to have that impressive library where you own every film by your favorite director or have the complete trilogy of your favorite franchises. I get that draw, I will even keep a hold of my Matrix box-set even though I will probably only ever rewatch the first two. With the growing access to films both in libraries and through Netflix, and a growing interest in films I haven’t seen before, I’m finding less and less of a reason to have sprawling collection.
© 2013 James Blake Ewing
I have a fairly small personal collection. I’m not much of a buyer, (although I would be if I could be), especially since there are a lot of movies I love on Netflix Instant.
Netflix Instant, in particular, has been one of the biggest changes since I started my collection. Now, owning those movies is less appealing. Still, sometimes the image quality can be worth the purchase, especially blurays of older films.
I totally get where you’re coming from. I try very hard to keep my collection limited to movies I know I want to rewatch. Nonetheless, it currently stands at 588 films. If you take out the ones that I own only because they’re in box sets with other stuff I like, it’s probably closer to around 520, but that’s still a lot. I’ve pledged to rewatch anything I haven’t watched in at least 5 years. As of today, that’s about 35 films I need to catch up on. By the end of the year it’ll be up to 120 or so. I don’t know if I can keep up that pace… in fact I know I can’t. The temptation to watch something new instead is too great.
You gotta be careful purging, though. The purge is fantastic, I love doing it. But those choices can come back to haunt you. Today alone I’ve regretted selling off FOR ALL MANKIND, SIN CITY and TWENTY-FOUR EYES. All films I felt I’d seen enough of and wouldn’t want to revisit… and now I do. On the other hand, as you point out, there’s always the library or Netflix to satisfy those urges. So happy purging!
I’m mostly purging my DVDs and I figure if I ever get the hankering to watch some of these films again, I can always pick up the Blus.
For now, I’m taking it slow, only getting rid of the films I know I haven’t watched in the last 5 years and figure I won’t watch in the next year or two. In some cases, that means films I bought that I never even watched after buying.
I see six DVDs that you have that I own. The Malicks, the Kieslowskis, Certified Copy, and Close-Up. The latter 2 are blind-buys as I have yet to see them which I will do definitely this year.
Both of those are great films. That’s just a very small slice of my collection. I tried taking a picture of the whole collection, but the light in my room plus the size made it washed out and hard to recognize the titles.
I can sympathize and frequently take a look at my film, books, and CD collections and try to pare them down. I’m not that successful, but I don’t feel like I have a crazy amount of extra stuff. I know some movie fans who are constantly buying new titles and don’t even watch them for years. I’ve avoided falling into that trap, though I do have probably 400 or so titles if you count TV sets. Cutting it down to 100 would be challenging, but I do see your point about re-watches. I don’t really revisit that many movies at this point, so it’s probably smart.