ART IN ANY FORM TELLS A STORY
I don't know if my parents were intentional about introducing us to cinema, but whatever they were doing worked 'cause I and my brother are now absolute cinema junkies.
I remember watching movies like Face Off, Ghost, Titanic and shows like Merlin, Lost and Prison Break at a very young age.
At that stage I was just taking in whatever I was seeing, without understanding any of it. I did feel emotions like amusement, fear and sadness while watching those films.
I remember crying to The Passion of The Christ and my mother explained that they were just actors and that I'd see them again in another film tomorrow.
But my naive and undeveloped mind still couldn't comprehend how someone would die on television, I would often think that it was their last film and that their families would never see them again.
My tween/teenage years were full of many nights of us watching movies together.
We would judge all the inconsistencies and the entire production of a Nollywood film, we would complain about how much they danced in Bollywood movies and laugh embarrassingly at the excessive sexual content in Telenovelas.
I remember my father saying "Films are a representation of life" I don't remember what led to the conversation, but we usually discussed as we watched movies together.
And that will stick with me for as long as I live. That was why I fell in love with movies, it is literally one of the things that educate and unite people.
It births fandoms, isn't it wonderful to belong to a group of people who share your interests?
Most of my knowledge of the history of the world, I got them from seeing films, even my understanding of certain phenomena are from films.
It's truly amazing how much knowledge one can gather from literature, cinema and art.
Many people are so cut off from reality that they could only possibly know the truth only if they consume any piece of media.
So you don't just watch a movie, look at a piece of art or read a book for mere entertainment all of the time, but also to gain interpretations of this life we live because sometimes they're the only things that make life make sense.
I wrote this because I was watching 'If Beale Street Could Talk' and I thought about how James Baldwin depicted the life of thousands or even millions of black people and in such a bittersweet, perfect and blunt way, in his book of course.
The film was written and directed by the amazing Barry Jenkins.
Thank you for reading 🤍