Archive of Possibilities, February 24, 2021:

I remember a woman who went to the cinema and then, after the film was over, couldn’t remember her name. I also remember hearing about a film that no one had ever seen. The director was blind and the cinematographer, the actors and actresses, and all the crew were blindfolded while working. It became a masterpiece that never entered the canon. I remember that in the late 1950s in Brazil there was supposedly a group of indigenous filmmakers who, with a found camera and some old film stock, documented their daily lives in a way that no outsider could ever have captured. In fact, some footage of magical healings is said to be among those films. Their last given location was in a Polish archive, but their trail is lost after this entry from 1978. I remember a pair of siblings from France who spent their entire lives together, keeping a diary of every film they saw together at the cinema. I remember a statistic that said the amount of porn produced privately in people’s own living rooms was higher in 2020 than ever before. I remember another statistic implying that films in which the colors pink and purple are predominant are remembered less clearly than others. I remember a newspaper story about an American research team, convened to find out when the first video of a plastic bag flying in the wind was shot.

I don’t remember my first film at the cinema. But I do remember crying harder than ever at a film in which a pack of huskies have to winter in the Arctic. I remember my father showing me the films »E.T.« and »Jurassic Park« when I was a kid. I remember watching a film version of »Pride and Prejudice« as a teenager so many times until I could recite the dialogue along with it. I remember the first time my roommate sang the song »Let it go« from »Frozen« to me in 25 languages. I don’t remember my first 3D film. I remember films with violent love scenes. I remember films with that one actress who always looks like she’s about to walk away. I don’t remember if I ever saw a film that could portray a liberated society. I remember a film I once happened to watch on an airplane that was exactly about what had happened to me abroad. I remember watching a film and not realizing until the last five minutes that I had seen it before. I remember watching a film that contains everything I do.

Olivia Golde, writer, Leipzig

A video of the debate can be found here.