History of SCFZ

[Umbugbene]

Five years ago this month I joined the Super Champion Film Zone. I had discovered Mubi that summer, which had recently shut down its discussion forums, and somehow I learned that the community had migrated here. I never learned much about the back story or what it was like here before I joined. Would any of the old-timers like to fill in some background for us newcomers and say a few words about SCFZ and its history? Specifically...

Who were the original members here pre-migration?

What do you miss most about the old days at Mubi?

How long ago did the community form?

Have any of you met each other in person?

Who are some of the active members who left the forum? (e.g. Mars in Aries, Penalosa, Kenji...?)

What are your fondest and most lasting memories of Mubi/SCFZ?

How many times has the forum moved? If I recall correctly this domain is the 3rd home since Mubi, Tapatalk being the 2nd.

Any other interesting tidbits, friendly gossip, etc.?

[rischka]

i was member #2. mathew our founder has departed. he was a skater from toronto. that was...spring 2014?

we were commiserating over the impending demise of mubi's forum and mathew said, 'you can make a forum; anyone can' and scfz was born

i believe greg x was member #3, so glad he's still with us sometimes

nrh, wba, magpies, brian d, pabs, javier, john ryan, gylfi, brodeacon, roscoe, mauries, flip, DT were all here at the beginning i think. forgive me if i forget someone.

lencho, mesnalty(?), kanafani, yourself and more recently evelyn and greennui have been strong additions. i miss james and meg. penalosa and pajamas

[thoxans]

1. the original members here and the members pre-migration from mubi are two diff things. og members here are many who still post, including: bd, curtis, flip, greg, nrh, pabs, rischka, sally, wba (this is not a comprehensive list; there are others). then there are og members here who don't post anymore, like mathew (sic), meg, and papa jerry. all these fine folks were on mubi. then pre-migration from mubi, you got a ton of peeps who never really bothered making the forum transition. i will always remember robert w peabody iii fondly. dude was just good old fashioned smart. knowledge bombs were frequent. you also had uli cain. matt parks. jack lehtonen. dimitris. apursansar. arsaib. kenji. kuxa kanema. blue k. dozens more that i'm forgetting right now. it was a crazy good community, but if mubi was coffee, then scfz is espresso, the good stuff with the shit all filtered out

2. the size of the community was nice, but whatcha gonna do? peeps move on sometimes. not everyone feels like posting on a forum forever, and that's ok

3. other than the date of inception of the now-tapatalk forum, nothing else official afaik. seemed a rather organic coming together through a gradual realization of communal acclimation toward a certain appreciation of film...?

4. can't speak to this, being a recluse and all

5. see first response. to the best of my recollection, kenji never made the transition. he was/is on mubi, but never on scfz

6. every time dimitris got into it with someone, especially papa jerry. more seriously, every time i learn something new from one of the brilliant people here who spend a little bit of their time making a post

7. mubi > tapatalk > here

8. bd beat me in a dir cup once, something i harbor to this very day. curtis used to god-tier troll in ways that were really ahead of the times (my personal fav was him invalidating the cinema of most non-western countries cuz they weren't as developed, or something like that). a couple instances of dumbass dudes creeping on the poor girls who just wanted to talk about movies. and i think willa wang posted some weirdo pedo pics at some point, and that shit got shut down real quick. idk. it was the wild west of movie forum days

[Holymanm]

is this the same forum that used to have wigwam and pinhead? jesus christ...

also what's the relationship between this group and ymdb (and the ymdb forums)?

i don't even know. i miss out on a lot on this forum by not being particularly interested in movie criticism

[Umbugbene]

...it was the wild west of movie forum days

That's what I'm talking about I also meant to ask, who's changed their name over the years? I gather that Curtis = bure and Sally = twodeadmagpies, but correct me if I'm wrong. Also I'm sure there was another host between Mubi and Tapatalk, because the forum switched to Tapatalk while I was here.

[brian d]

wow, this is fun nostalgia. i was late to the mubi party, got brought into the fold more or less by laali, who disappeared shortly after. i miss her but appreciate her getting me set up. that was after theauteurs became mubi. kenji tried making the transition but didn't fit in and disappeared, maybe made 20 or 30 posts on tapatalk i think and then was gone. mars popped in occasionally but couldn't stick, not sure if he commented here or just on tapatalk. i wouldn't be shocked if jerry popped in to make a comment or two now, but i'd guess he probably wouldn't stick around for long periods. definitely miss meg, and am always happy when magpies is around for a while.

[forgot to mention, augusto was another who was on mubi and who made the transition, though he's not around as much and has done a name change or two. really miss his posts. he did some excellent intros to ghatak films when he represented him in a cup way back when.]

the best thing about mubi when i was there was the cups because there were a ton more people involved in them, though even then i missed the heyday. but there was more long-form stuff on tapatalk and there's not as much of that here. i'm glad st gload and nrh have recently started posts that are dedicated to filmmakers, i always like that stuff even if i don't know or focus much on the films their posts are about. there's 100% less arguing about stupid shit on here so that's a definite improvement.

i'd have forgotten about beating thoxans in a cup if he didn't bring it up still but i do remember that rischka beat me the next round because i showed a pirate/lighthouse movie that for some reason didn't go over as well. i do remember some of those bad interactions that thoxans mentions above, a few others that i won't get into at all, but that stuff didn't carry over into scfz, it was pretty much all with mubi. there were concerns a few years ago that this might not last, but for the 25 or so of us who post regularly or semi-regularly it's a good group.

[thoxans]

also meant to ask

the og scfz host server sold out to tapatalk, thus that 'migration.' nothing formal on our respective parts though. yeah, bure is curtis, and sally is tdm. i've changed my sn quite frequently, but haven't since the migration to this particular venue. don't think many others have changed a bunch. flip used to be flip trotsky, and joks trois used to be just joks, so maybe a slight variation here and there

[rischka]

damn i forgot bure AND thoxans -- and joks i suppose. and karl: he was at mubi so he must have been here early on

omg willa wang i had long forgotten. uli_cain also joined here just to pop in and call us filn snobs now and again

HI ULI. there really was too much drama at mubi lol

kenji didn't get along with several of us, won't mention any names...

[rischka]

is this the same forum that used to have wigwam and pinhead? jesus christ...

also what's the relationship between this group and ymdb (and the ymdb forums)?

i don't even know. i miss out on a lot on this forum by not being particularly interested in movie criticism

i think you're talking about the life cinematic... what's ymdb

[thoxans]

if he didn't bring it up still

i. will. never. forget. that shit will be in my obit, so help me gawd

[flip]

i joined near the end of mubi, my brother was actually on mubi for a while before me, not sure if he posted much though, so not sure if anyone here would have talked with him at all. he didn't follow us to scfz. i can't remember who was part of the mubi diaspora, and who joined scfz later, but there are a few people i remember who aren't around any more - m penalosa, james, meg, whitenyte, mars, brad s, and others who were mentioned above, and also aaron(?), the philosophy prof i think (i'm bad remembering names, so i might get these wrong), unjustified j(?) who i think was in the northwest us, and soybean who was really into film noir. and there were a couple of mubi emigrés who got banned, but no reason to rehash all of that.

the best part about mubi was that it was big, with lots of people into lots of film niches, so anything you were interested in, there was someone who knew a ton about it. and they could hold big cups and things because there were enough people for it. but the worst part about mubi was that it was big - so there was politics and infighting and weird dramas that i was only ever peripherally aware of. and it was mubi, and we learned that mubi sucks, so i'm happy we're out of there.

i feel like tastes at scfz overlapped a lot more in the early days than they do now. there were directors like eric rohmer, hong sang-soo, johnnie to, jacques tourneur, raul ruiz, mikio naruse, that seemed to have a lot of admirers back when scfz first split off from mubi. that's not to say that everyone used to like the same films or anything, just that there were enough people who liked certain directors that you could be sure to have a long conversation about them if you wanted to. now i find the scfz 'identity' is more diffuse - i'd have a harder time now listing a few directors that feel 'representative' of the community. that's neither good nor bad, just different. but it does mean one of us is often introducing a director or a film they really like to other people here, which is one of the best things that happens in this community (some of the director polls i think have done that, along with the pair-up game).

i've met one scfzer in real life, bure, a year or two ago in toronto, awesome guy. i'd be happy to meet with anyone else here, so if anyone's in montreal and wants to meet up, let me know (post-pandemic, i'm quaranteaming with my partner right now so i'm not hanging out with anyone else for a while)

i think this feels like our 3rd home because tapatalk bought out (maybe? took over? something like that) zetaboards, so our previous home had two different owners, but it was in the same place the whole time.

[Umbugbene]

i've met one scfzer in real life, bure, a year or two ago in toronto, awesome guy. i'd be happy to meet with anyone else here, so if anyone's in montreal and wants to meet up, let me know (post-pandemic, i'm quaranteaming with my partner right now so i'm not hanging out with anyone else for a while)

i think this feels like our 3rd home because tapatalk bought out (maybe? took over? something like that) zetaboards, so our previous home had two different owners, but it was in the same place the whole time.

That's it... it was zetaboards when I joined, which morphed into tapatalk, so I stand corrected, this is really the third home. Fascinating to read everyone's memories.

I'm also happy to meet anyone after the pandemic. I'm currently living on a remote island, but I'll probably resume moving around & traveling next year if things get better.

[nrh]

if i remember i joined mubi forum around 2013, since that was when i was working my first and hopefully last night job (6 at night to 4 or so in the morning) for a really dreadful reality tv show and needed something to kill the time. i remember at the time it was when that lunatic forum poll game was going on, where you'd be able to vote things up and down, and everybody was scandalized that the filipino kids made a dedicated voting block to promote some actually pretty great movies.

the interesting thing about mubi killing its forums was that a lot of people i think worked pretty hard to keep communication going on twitter and with the limited social options on letterboxd; in hindsight it was a really remarkable effort from a few people. i remember hanging out with polarisdib in brooklyn and telling him how many folks actually migrated to the first scfz forum and he was shocked how successful it was, just in terms of people committing to making it work. have no idea where polaris sir is but we're still here!

so really the forum history was mubi closing -->everybody trying really hard with letterboxd to keep a kind of community together--->matthew kid making the first tapatalk forum. without that weird in between phase, which i really have to credit flip and rishcka mostly, everything would have been up in smoke.

actually just got really sad realizing hanging out with curtis in our neighborhood and getting beers and smoking cigarettes was one of the last real hanging out experiences i've had before the whole world kind of shut down.

augusto is still out there on twitter when his work schedule allows! roujin still checks in i know, eli was an active member on the old forum and hasn't moved over to the new one now that he's popular on twitter (and is a really sweet guy in real life). a lot of the mubi kids like lehtonen, cj, kurt, etc ended up on twitter but never really made it to the forums. seema doesn't post much but still reads and gets mad at me when i don't tell her there's an interesting poll going on. james still likes things on letterboxd occasionally...

[sally]

ugh. i should never indulge nostalgia, but can't not read. also not sure i can resist a rant about fucking money-grubbing ex-goldman sachs exploiter efe pretending to like film because he once saw a wong kar wai movie. and it was so short sighted - you kill the main forum in the world for people to talk about (aka discover) movies and where are the kids going to find out about film now? there's what, KG? a closed community? fewer people creating a space for people to discover a love for cinema means less customers in the future, idiot. sure, the kids will find new things but a whole history will be forgotten.

also mubi was a stupid name then and is a stupid name now. i joined when it was theauteurs.

the best thing about *there* was the different ways of interacting. there was the forum, there were PM's and there was a wall on your profile page where you and your friends could chat. i used the last two most, because the forum meant you were essentially shouting at strangers and there was always the risk bure et al. would attack you or something.

people i miss that didn't make it, oh laali was a beautiful soul, still sad about her. and eva of various names, my romanian gal, chasing butterflies (who was the one that drew me in first, made me feel so at home, and turned out to be amongst other things a rather good photographer and you can buy a print of his if you have lots of money) and karthik and seamus. also i loved dimitris, don't care. and rus, and myra with her chinese film knowledge, apursansar (can't see that pic of baudelaire and think anything else) and everyone else already mentioned. (special mention to arsaib who was great until he turned out to be a psycho)

thoxans i could never keep track of with the million different names, but are we all forgetting rischka? i've never grasped this new-fangled handle - she's always ruby to me, in my head

[sally]

I forgot blue k! Would we have ever known Korean cinema had such a rich history without him? He's still....somewhere tho, isn't he?

[greennui]

Seeing as everyone is kinda telling their stories:

I used to lurk on the old mubi forums and was kinda peeved when one day I noticed everything was gone. Ended up searching for alternatives but couldn't find one so that was bascially it for me and film forums for a while. Then a few years later as I was getting into watching films again I remember encountering the SCFZ tapatalk site a while before signing up, the name 'super champion film zone', scribbled childlike on the banner coupled with a noticeable inactivity made me not look into it any futher. Joined up the icmforum instead and after a while I caught wind of this forum again after noticing it was rbg/risckha's home base. Ended up inspecting it further this time around and realized that I digged it's overall taste and vibe more than the icmforum's kind of dissonant, moderate, stats obsessed vibe so I ended up making this the forum where I frequent most regularly.

[...]

Yeah, I still kinda miss Mubi. Not that the forum was always great with all the fighting and occasional late night porn drops, but there were enough different users there that most discussions would find some traction and you could just browse the individual movie posts or send messages if the forum was too annoying. I really dug the way the site was set up with so many ways to engage with the site. Apursansar, Kenji and Blue K were always cooking up some sort of big thing, world movie cups or whatnot, and Peabody, Parks, Mike Spence and Jazzaloha were always game to talk about movie aesthetics and how people watch films, even when there was difficulty in finding agreement, people like Grey Daisies, Thrift Store Junkie had lovely individual home pages and lots of interesting choices to explore, Robert Regan, like Kenji, was always making nice lists to comment on, and there was always some lighter stuff on the forums with Uli, PolarisDiB, and so many others I won't go into listing involved. The Garage part of the site was sadly underused, but a nice idea and it all flowed together really well, or could have anyway, but the forums were a bit of a headache with some of the fights, both among the users themselves and with the users going after the site when it changed things and the porn barrages too. It was nice to have people like Ehrenstein and Kasman join the discussions and occasional visits to the site from other folks, like my close personal friend Martin Scorsese (who friended all of us who participated in the first "world cup"), Julie Dash who posted a list and responded to people, James Benning (who dropped by to chide us for watching and discussing Ten Skies online instead of going outside) and the flap about Rappaport's movies being held hostage by Ray Carney which brought in Jon Jost to urge people to sign a petition for their return, among other things.

I didn't know Efe all that well, but I liked how he envisioned the site and how he managed to jump ahead of the later major players like Netflix and Amazon to get it set up. His idea was good, but sadly underfunded and then the forum became a drag on resources once other sites started to compete more in movie streaming, so it got the axe. I volunteered for a brief while in helping set up the catalog of film titles and things like that and, I think, was mooted as a possible employee at one time, Efe sending me a vague email asking me about myself during a time when they were hiring, but nothing came of it, so who knows? Maybe I wasn't living in the right place or just too much of a pain in the ass over choosing the right stills for the film pages or something, but I never heard any more from him about it. But then I did have to drop out from volunteering shortly after the email, so that might have been it for all I know. I would have liked to see what the place would have become if he had managed to get more funding from the start and get better established before Netflix and Amazon took over the market. Doing things like signing Varda to a deal at Cannes was nifty and I would have loved to see more of that, but the timing was a bit off when matched to the funding issue it seems.

I'm more than happy SCFZ exists as a continuation of the old forums, but I wish there were more people involved sometimes, not like the boyzone of the Mubi forums, but just more topics and voices than we have now.

[wba]

Phew, my memory on most things in life has always been atrocious since I was a kid, so much so, that friends often used to tell me anecdotes of things we did together which I couldn't recall even after they described them in detail, and I tend to aks my partner/love interest to tell me stories from our past which she remembers fondly (or not so) cause I always forget most things shortly after they happen. That is just a personal issue (maybe some "autism" thing), but I wanted to write this before I started to write all that mumbo-jumbo I intend to and people were wondering what the fuck I am talking about and why I don't remember nothing as it was or whatever.

I'm going a bit back in time to explain my position towards MUBI. I started using film forums and participating in them during the late 90s, but first only in the German language. In the early 2000s I wanted to find forums with people who had a broader knowledge of film and film history then I was exposed to back then, so I started looking for sites in the English languages. I found a site called "FOREIGN FILMS" or something similar, and there were some interesting people hanging out like Kenji and arsaib and such, if I remember correctly. But after a while (a year or such?) the forums there were shut or should have been paid for, so a few of us (must have been 2003 or 2004) decided to open up and start a new, "our own" forum, so to speak. I believe Kenji and arsaib and me where part of that group which started the new forum back then in 2004, I think, but I don't recall anymore what it was called. After a few years though (2, maybe 3 or 4) arsaib was the sole(?) but "elected" admin and it turned out that he was somehow a psycho banning people from the site and not letting some others in etc. etc. and all of it kinda blew up, cause he was unwilling to ceed "power" and kept banning people or such and the atmosphere got toxic.
By then I had met a lot of cinephiles in my actual non-online life and befriended many of them (some of whom remain some of my best friends till now) and I was doing numerous other film activities while also being a member of various other internet film forums on the internet (mostly in the German language). But after the demise of "my/our" english-language forum I was still looking for an ersatz-home from time to time, cause IMDB-forums and such didn't really do it for me. When THEAUTEURS opened it seemed like a place to try, and it soon developed into a huge and fascinating community. I loved many people there whose names I have unfortunately forgotten over time (Grey Daisies and DImitris come to mind, though), and it was a nice place to be, but after the name-change to MUBI (which i protested back then and absolutely hated - and everything Sally wrote about that &%$§/?! person named Efe Cakarel above in her post I totally second) the place changed a bit, some people dropped out and it wasn't active as much anymore at first, and I stopped being very active there cause I also had a lot of other stuff to do in my life (busy, busy times, if I remember correctly). Sometime during THEAUTEURS or MUBI I also discovered the very nice and nicely weird forum THE LIFE CINEMATIC which I joined and where I spent (too) many hours which I mostly recall very fondly. Ok, let's say it, I came to LOVE that place after a few years time, but I don't know why: the admin on medication (nothing against that, some of my closest friends were or are on medication...) got a bit out of hand and at one point threw me off "his" site (as I guess he always regarded it) and banned me from entering it again. Shortly after that I remember the site fell completely apart, from what I heard because of more weird behaviour from the admin as he seems to have cancelled/deleted the forum and everything it contained in one mad moment from the internet (maybe bure can shed some light on some of this, for anyone interested). Anyway I have nothing against this admin (other than being a bit angry for being banned and shocked for him deleting/closing the site). He used to register here on SCFZ much later and post for some time and is a nice guy when he's on (the right) medics, I guess (I used to like him very much and enjoyed his many posts for some years, after all).
Aaaaanyways... when MUBI was shut down somehow I got wind of a few people from there hanging out on letterboxd, so I registered there, and then found out that they had put up a place called SUPER CHAMPION FILM ZONE, and the rest is history (whih happened a short while ago and I can therefore remember/recall it a little better, thank god, if not much).
Nowadays I only hang out on this internet forum, nothing forum-like else anymore, nada/finito (not even in the German language). Cause time, and kids and work and stuff. And I haven't been watching much film for the past 2 years, either.

As to your questions Umbugbene:

1. Who were the original members here pre-migration?
- has already been answered I think, I joined a few months later, cause I hadn't known the forum had opened/existed at first

2. What do you miss most about the old days at Mubi?
- I miss THEAUTEURS!!! MUBI not so much, as I wasn't very active during that time there. But what was great was most of the stuff everybody else has already mentioned in this thread: loooots of people of every sort to talk about (almost) everything you wished for. Many many people from different countries with different backgrounds. Enthusiasm and (sometimes) funny infighting (Dimitris!!)

3. How long ago did the community form?
- was also answered already, I think.

4. Have any of you met each other in person?
- unfortunately NOT, at least in my case. Would have loved to have met many of the people and would still love to meet any of you. I had the fortune to meet many people from German film forums over the past 20 years though, which was 99% a great experience! Some of those have actually become friends or at least I write with them or meet them on some film event form time to time. I think this shouldn't be different with people from "international" forums (as I use to call them). In my experience most serious film fnas are fun to be with and are nice and fascinating persons who are also interested in many other things (I wouldn't have dreamed of). I exclude most film "nerds" from this observation though, like "gorehounds", "horrorfilmfans", "trash-fans" or such, which i fortunately haven't met that many throughout my cinephile life

5. Who are some of the active members who left the forum? (e.g. Mars in Aries, Penalosa, Kenji...?)
- has also been answered. This is really too bad and a shame, and I would love to have all of them back again at some point in the future. But it might be that people just loose interest in films or talking about films online over time and the film experience just becomes "one particular time or specific phase" in their lives, and they move on to other things. I especially miss meg here, from memory, and some other people I don't recall names anymore (I'm terrible with names, seriously). Lyrical Nitrate, Jerry, Kenji, etc.

6. What are your fondest and most lasting memories of Mubi/SCFZ?
- can't remember anymore (see my explanatory introduction to this post), but there were many. Most of them involve "personal" communication with people like Gray Daisies and Dimitris, which was very good for my (cinephile) soul.
How many times has the forum moved? If I recall correctly this domain is the 3rd home since Mubi, Tapatalk being the 2nd.

7. Any other interesting tidbits, friendly gossip, etc.?
- I have gossiped a lot about my pre-MUBI past, so I hope that suffices for the moment.

[rischka]

i met jerry and dim on flixster around 2009. strange how small the world is

quite a few mubis are active on twitter including jack lehtonen and neil bahadur, otis wheeler, sean gilman, scorpiorising and dana danger

i do miss coming home to a 3 page argument between karthik and shamus on my wall even if i wasn't always sure what they were on about!

[sally]

oh my god, my memory is as crap as WBA's. i vaguely remember that foreign film forum WOW>

altho never posted, or paid that much attention, i wasn't as obsessed with movies back then (that didn't happen until my noisy neighbours made reading of an evening impossible, so had to do something that involved headphones) took me even a year or so lurking on theauteurs to post anything (1st post was about how much i hated woody allen, still do)

it's true there were a lot of people from various countries - i think there was a couple more lithuanians, and who was the terrible joke (they were great) balkan guy...pedja?

and was amazed when i finally watched three years without god to find out it was a good film, it'll always be a bit hilarious tho (and wonderful, that so many filipino film fans existed briefly)

also is this where i discover that that teenage kid in lebanon is actually kanafani?

some of the less patronising (matt parks, oh god, matt parks) more structural film discussions were interesting altho tbh i never understood half of what was said, if its said without reference to eg screenshots and who has the time to do that? s'why i always fondly remember jerry and his groin arrows. but i guess i just don't come from a culture of expository debate and could never really see what was achieved by some of the more abstract ones. no one ever seemed to learn anything, or change their minds. but i suppose it all contributed to 'love of film' feeling that got thru the bickering most times.

also, stop the lists was the best thread.

[kanafani]

also is this where i discover that that teenage kid in lebanon is actually kanafani?

Nope, not me. Never really posted or lurked around any film forum before scfz

[rischka]

pedja was serbian and i remember a few serbian factions there. speaking of, where's mario lately

also dirtybee (who was from kosovo) ended up marrying ultrakebab (germany i think). i also miss eva (romanian bwo moldova), remember her fighting with damian about putin

there were definitely more girls there but i got the impression most of the posters were in college at the time. also some actively hid that they were american which i found absurd

[wba]

oh my god, my memory is as crap as WBA's. i vaguely remember that foreign film forum WOW>

it's true there were a lot of people from various countries - i think there was a couple more lithuanians, and who was the terrible joke (they were great) balkan guy...pedja?

Haha, you remember that one!?!!!???
After the first one "collapsed"/was abandoned because of a paywall or such and we started our own (I still don't recall what it was actually called, but maybe we simply used something similar to "FOREIGN FILMS" again?) we really had very very very few members during the first years, and at times it was like only the same 5 or 6 people were talking/writing to each other.

And funny to read that you (and some others, I suppose) had a similar experience with arsaib later on MUBI as we few had with him much earlier on the forum he helped create. I never had anything bad going on with him personally, and he was always friendly to me, and I even communicated on friendly terms with him on letterboxd (and before that via PM) up to 3 or 4 years ago, when he somehow vanished from there and from my radar, but from everything I heard back then from almost everyone else on the forum and even a close German friend I saw daily and whom I urged to participate on that old forum, he was somehow responsible for a lot of bad blood and somehow psyched out or such or had paranoia, but only after everyone had thought he was a nice guy for years, and also only little by little. I don't know what was going on but it seems he had problems with individual people (at first)and somehow that escalated or such - I never aksed him about it in case he got mad at me... Too bad all that. Haven't been involved in opening up a film forum or doing admin stuff or such since then cause I got a bit burned and had put a lot of my heart into it, only to see it go up in smoke...
But that's so long ago, all of that. Must have been somewhere between 2001 and 2008 mainly.

Pedja rings a bell here as well, though I think I didn't have much contact with him via PM or such, just read the posts. And I remember those Lithuanians, yeah, but no names...

[flip]

oh man, nrh's post reminded me of all kinds of things i'd forgotten about, especially that transition period when we hacked letterboxd to turn it into a 'forum'. we made one-film "lists" on letterboxd just so we could have a place to talk, using the comments - "walls" because they were like the walls on mubi profiles. mine was here, we had a lot of activity, 450+ comments, though that's mainly because it was poll central, not because people wanted to talk to me that much https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list/flips-wall/

i used my wall to run the "wall polls", which i'd forgotten all about! those polls were sometimes bananas. each week someone chose a theme which could be literally anything at all. everyone would nominate a few films (usually by using the list feature to post a ballot on their own 'wall' for the week), and every nominated film ended up on the final list. so in week 1, we polled 'underappreciated films by known directors': https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... ted-films/

and in week 4, we polled 'pirates': https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... 4-pirates/

just as two examples. the voters are all listed there by name, so revisiting those polls reminded me of a few people i used to enjoy talking to (louis, say) and haven't seen in years.

old letterboxd comment threads typically make no sense, as i just discovered looking back at some, because when someone deletes their profile, i think all their comments get deleted too. so i'm seeing lots of non sequitur conversations where one person seems to be talking to a ghost.

[wba]

We should all write a history of Film Forums in the 21st century at some point.

[rischka]

ha my wall is still there too, speaking of history

https://letterboxd.com/rischka/list/nev ... the-lists/

jiri! rohit! lyrical nitrate! whyte nyte, soybean, langston young, fuguette, bob s, tommy and bijoux, JR, astrofisch aspiring zoopraxographer lol

https://letterboxd.com/mathew_sic/ -- here's mathew who unfollowed most of us long ago but is still logging films

good to know arsaib was psycho long before our 'problem'

[wba]

ha my wall is still there too, speaking of history

https://letterboxd.com/rischka/list/nev ... the-lists/

jiri! rohit! lyrical nitrate! whyte nyte, soybean, langston young, fuguette, bob s, tommy and bijoux, JR, astrofisch aspiring zoopraxographer lol

https://letterboxd.com/mathew_sic/ -- here's mathew who unfollowed most of us long ago but is still logging films

good to know arsaib was psycho long before our 'problem'

Found my letterboxd wall, ha! Created for the same purpose of communication.
https://letterboxd.com/wba/list/wbas-wall/


All those names, all those names! Many ring a bell, still, somewhere in my head and in my heart.

Mathew seems to have unfollowed me too. Though I'm not sure I ever knew him (even on Mubi).

The weirdest thing I recall personally from arsaib, is that he sent me a few(!) PMs telling me James (I believe) was dangerous and I should be careful with him, and that he might write to me under various aliases and such. I din't reply to those things directly and tried to let them slip, but wondered what kind of CIA/KGB operation was going on.

But enough gossiping on my part. That's stuff for PMs or private talk, I guess.
I always tried to stay away from any fighting or any such thing on the internet and in my personal life anyway, and never had a bad word with even Dimitris.

[wba]

Your walls' the best, rischka! 897 comments!!!

[roujin]

is this the same forum that used to have wigwam and pinhead? jesus christ...

That was The Life Cinematic. I wonder what olof is up to.

[wba]

is this the same forum that used to have wigwam and pinhead? jesus christ...

That was The Life Cinematic. I wonder what olof is up to.

Yeah, Olof was da best! All my virtual love goes out to him.