One of the things I enjoyed the most about the Movie Recommendation Challenge I did last year, surprisingly, was not having to think about what movie to watch next. Apparently indecision is a bigger damper on my spirits than lack of agency. Weird. Anyway, because I enjoyed having such a solid schedule of what to watch, I decided to give myself the longest, most focused project I’ve ever attempted – a full chronological watch through film history starting with its very origins.

I was inspired to do this by a friend of mine, Dan, who I met in the Flickcharters Facebook group (BTW, if you use Flickchart and you’re on Facebook, let me know so I can add you to the group, because it’s the best ever film group I’ve ever been in, and I am not even joking about that). He started doing a chronological viewing project several years ago, and he’s up to 1975 now. His experiences and the insights he’s had based on seeing movies in context with each other, seeing them innovate and borrow and build on each other, has been illuminating and I decided I would give it a try as well.

I thought long and hard (in some ways am still thinking!) about how strict a schedule to keep, and how deep into each year to go. Should I just do a limited number from a year then move on, both to keep the pace brisk and to save some films for a second pass through later on? But no, I decided if the thing was worth doing, it was worth doing completely. So I’ve created a watchlist for each year (on Letterboxd), based on various critics lists, directors filmographies I want to complete, and just stuff I’m interested in. I’ve tried to include a lot of variety, documentaries, experimental films, short films, etc. I’ll include rewatches when I think I should reevaluate something, but for the most part, these are new watches for me. These lists are still in progress, by the way – I’ve only worked extra-hard to complete through 1925 or so. I will still be watching other films as they come up, so my watching is not exclusively chrono project, but whenever I don’t have anything else to watch, I’ll just be watching the next film in the chrono list. No indecision to be had.

For this series, I plan to update the blog periodically, not with every film. Certainly at the end of each “year” that I complete, highlighting my favorite films and thoughts about the year as a whole, and how the chrono project has added to my understanding of that year. I may write about individual films if I feel like it, or directors as I progress. I would love feedback on your favorites each year as well!

If you’d like to follow along more closely than that, I have created a Facebook group and will be posting more regularly in that, and including some polls and fun things like that about my watchlists, films I’ve watched, related books I’ve been reading, etc. The group is private, but just drop a comment here and I’ll add you to it on Facebook.

I actually started this in January, and I’ve spent the last five months on a journey through early cinema – more on that in an upcoming post.