Cauleen Smith

“With my tote bag reaching up to get Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. This is so hard because like you know everybody wants like the whole closet to come home, but one must choose.”

“Okay, so this is an Ozu film I haven't seen, but I saw the title and it just washed over me. The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice. I'll let you know, I'll let you know what I think about that one.”

“And I am really happy to have this. Stalker, Tarkovsky. It's like you know, but Stalker is my jam, my jam.”

“Blow-Up, it has like a crazy energy and the mystery is like just hovering and there's just so much like tension and misunderstanding. And it's like a film I watch, it's like a train wreck. I don't even know like what I'm waiting for sometimes. So I'm gonna take it home and watch it again and try and figure it out.”

“So this is a visual poem, this film. I don't know, I think I randomly found it in a library, took it home, watched it, didn't know what I was watching. Definitely changed my understanding of how to make an image for a film frame. And then like a few years ago I was in Rotterdam at the film festival and they had like his outtakes of stuff that's not in the film. Oh, it just took my breath away all over again. So I'm really excited to revisit Parajanov's The Color of Pomegranates, because man, there's this film is like nothing I've ever seen.”

“Whenever someone asked me like which Sembène film to watch, there are many, but this one I think is just so close to my heart. I just thought maybe like the first film I ever saw that really focused on a Black Girl, period. And so I just absolutely love this film and its biting commentary.”

“And in that vein, I remember like the title sequence of To Sleep with Anger is ridiculously cool. It is just enthralling, exciting, and sets you up for like this incred- this really intense, thoughtful family drama. Which the entire the acting, the performance, it was so exciting when it came out to see this, such a breath of fresh air. But for some reason it's the title sequence that is just seared into my mind.”

“This film, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, is that I'm a teacher and it is always my great pleasure to introduce my students to this film to talk to them about 1968 and like a different time. And their responses every year as I grow older and they grow younger change. The language gets like uncomfortable, people have to do trigger alerts and stuff. And I love this movie. I love the way people talk to each other. I love the mutiny, I love the crew struggling, I love Bill Greaves doing this thing like.”

“Oh, where's Princess Bride? So you know like whenever someone starts quoting from this film, it's like you know you've met family, right? This film, this is like this is the bonding comedy. I've seen this film 25 times and I'm always sent into like total fits of giggles. I don't know what it is about this movie, I wish someone could explain it to me, like why, why it never stops being funny. But it just looks like it was fun to make, fun to be in, like it's just the fun is just so contagious. I'm really excited about, look at this beautiful storybook cover.”

“And so I'm gonna go back to my school days and get a Chris Marker, La Jetée. This is important.”

“I'm taking home Jean-Pierre Gorin because I worked with the guy at UC San Diego for several years and I'm quite fond of him and I think his films are like nothing else I've ever seen. So I'm really happy to have them in my collection.”