Here here...learning is, in my mind, the primary reason for human existence. And since films are my passion, it stands to reason that I love to learn about films.

I don't quite share your optimism about my generation carrying the torch for cineastes. Of course I don't really have much of a reference point (i.e. I wasn't alive in 1970 to see whether or not twenty year-olds were well-versed in film history), but I would say that at least 95% of the people I've met are ignorant about film. That doesn't mean that their opinions are invalid or even ill-informed, just that they are ignorant about film, in the same way that I am ignorant about literature, food, wine, and many other things.

Why is this the age of the Cinephile? It isn't quality of modern film or that of formal film critique; and because this drop-off maybe there aren't any remaining giants of cinema. Rather the access to so many films on DVD we take for granted and the burgeoning underground dialog that is taking place on the internet, thanks to Scanners etc. Even as the routine cinema experience has been largely reduced to excess prices and gimmickry, the forces, i.e. Netfilx, that have caused these changes are the reason cinema will survive. Film is now self study.

Perlstein's article elucidates a major problem with current American education systems, particularly college.

College I guess is a different experience for everybody. By the time someone gets to college her/his views and education is moreorless completely established. At 18-years-old, many individuals have already constructed a reality to which they are responding, further validating that reailty, or that system, situating everything they experience within the parameters of that world. More and more, it seems, this is true. And so college becomes a means by which an individual can learn the particular rules of a given workplace system so as to be more effective at it.

Ironically, I should mention that one of the most provocative and influential bits of wisdom I have come across was by Roger Ebert, who said that college students typically break into one of two molds: those that want to learn, and those who want to make money. Unfortunately, those two "types" are not very conducive to one another, and real education is largely discouraged in favor of priming students for enterting a particular market. Those who do want to learn are often unsure of what they want to do with their careers, and are thus scolded for it. Institutions are geared towards choosing something, excelling at it, and never really thinking about or feeling anything. One could argue our entire education system is not about real education, but knowing how to understand the language of a given system, recognize how to be successfully work within it, and execute. This starts with the simple idea of getting good grades, class rankings, and the horrendously outdated teaching paradigm of The Lecture, which positions teachers as authority figures and students as insignifcant.

Me, I'm glad I asked questions. I had some wonderful teachers in high school who opened me up to the possibility of thinking outside that which was laid out for me. I was prepared to embrace college in that sense. When I was in college (Villanova) just a few years ago, it was only a great experience because I actively pursued classes and experiences that I wasn't quite sure about but that intrigued me. Sure, some classes were boring and reductive, but many in the liberal arts were so stimulating that I found myself thinking about things I hadn't even considered in the past, about how I live my life and what constitutes my life and the lives of those around me.

College can still provide that for the individual. But the "culture" of learning, challenging cultural norms, and actively questioning accepted values is all but vanquished on the undergraduate level. I am more than fortunate to still continue my education at the graduate level, where that culture can still exist, but is still throttled in many ways. Nevertheless, I feel more comfortable with those around me who are interested in actually learning.

I think the same can said for the internet. Let's be honest: there's a lot of sludge out there, even for film blogs. Much of what I read promotes sameness and complacency, much in the same way that the culture of college does. However, to really exploit this medium's strengths, the individual must actively seek out quality writing and worthwhile sites. Unlike college, however, one can partake in an ever-growing culture of participants on the internet and film blogs. Although my own blog is but a blip in the film blogging world, I feel that I am in a small way contributing to that larger discourse and that we can make a difference in the future of film studies.

The problem with engaging these "cultures" is that too many of us are shaped at a younger age to accept the dominant norms and ideologies of college culture, internet culture, and much of pop culture that we cannot recognize that which is innovative and we cannot know how to engage in responsible discourse about anything. That's what really scares me.

As Joss said, "Film is now self study." Boy isn't that the truth. I think it's wonderful for the most part (about 90% of me) but a small part of me (that would be the other 10%) longs for the days when access was more limited. I know, it sounds crazy, but I have such fond memories of reading as much as I could about film because the actual movies were so hard to come by. The Focus On... series, Haunted Cinema, microfilm reviews from the thirties, forties and fifties, Sarris, Kael, Farber and on. It helped me understand the language of film and opened me up to well thought out interpretations that acted as counterweights to my own thoughts. Blogs do fill this need in many ways but I fear many young cinephiles will allow Rotten Tomatometer Ratings and current reviews to make up the majority of their reading in their self-learning of film. There's nothing wrong with filling your Netflix queue with whatever film gets covered at someone elses blog (I do it myself) but there's something to be said for structered learning, and by that I don't mean going to college. I mean watching movies from specific periods or genres while you read everything you can on those periods and genres and then writing about it on your own blog to crystallize your thoughts. I've noticed many great blogs out there do precisely that. I only hope it continues. Otherwise it's all just dilettantism.

The films that effected me the most and guided me down the path of actor/filmmaker I discovered on my own, apart from film school. The thing is I discovered many of these in the late 90's and they were Bergman, Antonioni, Kurosawa, etc etc etc, and I'm still discovering more and more filmmakers that are just as relevant or hard hitting as they would have been to people when they were first released. Why?

Because Hollywood entertainment hasn't changed. The studios continue making versions of the same things, over and over again that whenever anyone who has been a drone to these films for most of there lives discovers something like "Persona" or "L'Avventura" it's like a slap across the face. So long as studios remain the same, these incredible films will hold the same power over audiences of 1000s or one just as they did when they were first released.

And that is how I continue my education, by pushing myself to not write or perform the same thing over and over again. It's reading and studying and watching and observing. It's not throwing your voice around until your brain knows what should be thrown around. You can't break the mold until you understand the mold and how perhaps it's been broken before.

As a 21 year old, I find it reluctantly flattering that some are willing to hand off cinemania to our younger generation; flattered because it makes those of us who breathe film (or at least aspire to) feel somewhat justified in withstanding peer disapproval that we’d rather watch a John Ford film then “Napoleon Dynamite” for the 16th time, reluctant because I feel our generation is a generally ignorant one when it comes to film, growing slowly if at all.

I often recall only a few years ago, at the height of the "Garden State" craze, my classmates crowning it the greatest "indie" film, or, even bolder, the greatest film of our generation. I'm not trying to degrade the film, its fine for what it tries to be, but to bestow such a lofty title seems a little presumptuous. Indie for my generation has become another word for “quirky” or “cool.” The truly indie is either foreign to them or a way to “culture” themselves in a pseudo-intellectual way. One thing that always got to me was the love affair by film students on my campus with Quentin Tarantino. For a vast majority, directing began and ended with the guy. None of them had a desire to seek out silent or foreign films until the professors crammed it down their throats. Lang, Dreyser, Antonioni? Just funny sounding names to some of them. They wouldn’t even seek out more mainstream fare like “Casablanca.” I think it perhaps stems from the Tarantino symbolism, in that he transformed the latter-day director into a modern day pop star, a celebrity who goes on the Tonight Show and hams it up with Jay Leno. From some of my interactions with these people, it seems most of them set out to be like him, to be the hot star without a desire for taste or craft. It was the biggest thing that dissuaded me from majoring in visual arts at my school and, while it was probably an ok decision, I still feel like I’ve missed out on some potentially rewarding technical experience.

Ted alludes appropriately to Ebert’s belief of the college caste system between the moneymakers and the students, although I think there must be a division among students: those who learn because it is required and those who learn as a springboard into their own personal studies. College has been a rather bitter experience for me, unfortunately, in that most students I’ve come across try not to construct a reality, but rather an image, be it of a doctor, a scientist, a welfare artist, a political crusader, without actually engaging information to build their own base of knowledge. Beyond that, there are quite a number of professors who, although well-regarded in their prime, have descended into a detached relationship with students unless a level of hamming occurs. I was fortunate enough to find a film theory class in my literature department which really challenged how I read films, where the professor viewed the students as equal partakers in the joy of cinema as we broke about 10 films a quarter down in shot-by-shot fashion to analyze the movements, the mise-en-scene, etc.

All that said, one big thing about the up-and-coming generation of cinemaniacs, filmmakers, and so on, few as there may be, is that there is an insatiable, ravenous appetite for great film. This is hounded at by things like netflix, and even bootleg copies of films not on DVD that people have smuggled out of university libraries to copy. Before Chris Marker’s “La Jetee” emerged on DVD, I was forced to see it over a surprisingly good internet copy. It’s film by any means necessary, even though we still argue that the true way to see it is on the big screen. Joss is dead-on with the remark: “Film is now self study.” Many of the old institutions are proving ineffectual so film junkies have to get their fix however they can as soon as they can.

I should probably dig up the old Jeopardy thread, but tonight in the "John Wayne" category the super-tough $2000 question was (I am paraphrasing): "Wayne appeared as Ethan Edwards, who searches for his lost niece in this 1956 Western."

Blank stares from all three contestants.

So, you see, we definitely need to find a way to pass on Cinephilia, and DVD-savvy, film-lovin' viewers are the best ones to pick up the mantle.