About a month ago, I came across a Twitter page that I haven't been able to get out of my head for weeks. @1000_films, or Ethan Kalman from Montreal uses his Twitter to keep a record of his progress on what he calls the 1000 Film Challenge. He describes the parameters of the challenge on his profile: "The 1000 Film Challenge: 1000 films, 365 days, 1 goal, 0 social life. The life and times of a full-time film student with one crazy idea".

Intrigued by the premise, I followed the link on his profile to 1000filmchallenge.com/ and was taken to a simple black and white website. I quickly discovered what prompted the young Ethan Kalman to set such a difficult goal for himself. On his website he notes:

"On Wednesday my Film Aesthetics teacher, John Locke, stated that he kept records of every film he watched over the past year. He said his list has almost 600 movies on it.

I’ve decided to take this as a challenge, retracing my steps back to the 1st of October (7 days ago) and listing every movie I’ve watched since then".

Although Ethan's described motivation is simple, I was especially fascinated by what comes next:

"The catch is that it must be a minimum of 45 minutes long; and the users of this website and the Facebook group must tell me what I can watch. I was at first only going to be watching my choice of films, but that kind of defeats the purpose of this project. I will only watch what you want me to watch. If you recommend me something that is supposed to be really bad, I’ll even watch that."

I was surprised by the fact that Ethan Kalman knowingly decided to give over all control in what would normally be considered a strict and regimented manner of watching movies. By allowing others to choose what films he has to watch, Kalman's objective becomes more than a simple personal challenge. Instead, he relinquishes control, making his quest an opportunity to truly discover the range and variety within film history.

Since stumbling upon Kalman's Twitter page and website, I have not been able to get his challenge out of my mind. Perhaps that is because I've been keeping a detailed record of all of the films that I've watched for the past three or four years. For me, keeping this record has been a matter of routine, and up until now, I haven't had the chance to reflect on why I do this. Maybe I list these films so that I can transform the mammoth task of understanding film history into something that I can accomplish one movie at a time. Maybe I feel that I have something to prove. Or maybe I subconsciously want to turn the arguably passive activity of watching a movie into something slightly more active.

Whatever the case, I am now going to make more of an effort of surrendering control. Rather than dismissing movies that I suspect I won't like, in the same spirit as Kalman's project I am going to open myself up to watching anything and everything . Give me your recommendations and I'll add them to the top of my Netflix queue (seriously, comment on this blog and I'll do it). I might not count 1000 by the end of the year, but I'll do my best to see everything that's out there.


Ethan has currently seen 117 films since October 1st. Keep track of his progress here: thefilms.tumblr.com/