Featured Member: Joel Currier

[ Joel Currier, popularly known as Screamingjay, is a film-buff from Canada. He has been associated with the torrent archives like 'Karagarga' and 'Pass the Popcorn'. He always stands by our initiatives in terms of promotion. As a forum, we are featuring this friend / member from overseas to express our gratification.

The address of Joel's Art blog is http://joelcuerrier.blogspot.com/ ]

          Joel Currier                  

LFEBF: Tell us, what made you interested in films?

Joël: first film that made a huge impression on me was 2001 A Space Odyssey. I was 14 or so and that's when I started collecting movies and started wanting to register in a creative field in college

I went to cinema first, but I already knew more than they were teaching me

so I switched to literature

Another question?

LFEBF: Tell your story...just the story

Joël: I've collected movies ever since... and books, records, even magazines and pictures of paintings. I'm a pack rat of everything related to culture in general. To create a museum in my home, of world culture

I've discovered my favorite movie around 15-16... and that is "Underground" by Emir Kusturica. It's hard for me to decide of a better movie for me since. It's just such a fascinating exposé of modern history

I've discovered many of my great passions through P2P... like screwball comedies and film noir. Would never have seen that many classic movies without these accesses I had to sites like Karagarga and before that, to Direct Connect hubs like the Grand Hub for Everything that released TCM encodes by the dozen while this channel was not available in Canada

I have around 25000 movies, tv series, shorts, documentaries now, which is more than I will ever have time to watch in all my life. But I don't find this to be the point of my obsession. It is more to have access to all movies, at any time, and watch the full filmography of an actor, a writer, a director or a filmographer if I want to

LFEBF:  Now, why do you stand by unknown filmmakers like us

Joël: I am always curious about new things happening in the world cinema, to see what people are coming up with. The last half-century of cinema have seen the birth of cinema for most the rest of the world. That is to say, you use to have powerhouses like the US, France, UK, Russia, Germany, Italy and so fourth... doing much/most of the cinema. Then since the end of world war 2 and the beginning of the breakup of the Hollywood studios through anti-trust laws. When Orson Welles left Hollywood in 1958, everything went downhill for them... and it haven't totally recovered its past glory every since. Sure, it does make some good movies still, but not in such a large volume ever since. But the downfall of Hollywood opened the gate for the rest of the world to make better cinema. Also helped in large part by European festivals promoting cinema from lesser known regions. Now too with modern technology, many aspiring filmmakers can just get together, invest some of their money and make a movie, which open the possibilities for millions to go ahead and make their movies. Sadly, in America, it seem those cheaper means of production have lead to a flood of very poor, very unartful horror movies. But I'm sure we will see our Citizen Kane of "budget filmmaking". There was a few very successful zero-budget movies through the years, that have made stars of their directors. Like "Clerks" and "El Mariatchi", both produced with mediocre budgets and that went on to become cult movies and turned their directors into successful career from that point on. I'm sure we will always see people like that make it on a shoestring.