One year ago today I took a leap into the unknown and started writing Nobody Knows Anybody. Sixty-six films and an Almodóvathon later, here we are.
I don't know that the blog has turned out quite the way that I envisaged, but it has fulfilled its primary function of getting me writing again and kickstarting my brain. I haven't posted as many in-depth pieces as I originally intended (mainly due to my acquiring a (temporary) second job last September), but the blog has made me re-engage with film and probably also caused me to watch a broader variety of films than may otherwise have been the case. Although the shorter posts (either in the Random Viewing strand or short(ish) considerations of particular films) are likely to be the norm for the time being (my current work commitments last at least until the end of June), in the last few months I have started thinking about ideas for longer, more academic, pieces -thinking is as far as I've got in most instances due to lack of time, but just getting to that stage is a major step forward from where I was this time last year. It's exciting to experience the thrill of having an idea again -and to actually want to think something through and see where I can take it. [Although at the moment there is also an element of frustration due to the combination of my two shift patterns not being particularly conducive to anything that requires sustained thinking] I don't know whether these ideas will pan out, or whether they will end up on here -although some of them have already been mentioned in passing because they relate to things that I've said that I'm going to write that then haven't materialised- but it seems likely that they'll put in an appearance in some way because the ideas have sparked because of things I've watched or read to write about for Nobody Knows Anybody. Either way, writing this blog has been a constructive thing for me to do and I intend to keep it up.
The other intention with Nobody Knows Anybody was to start a conversation in English about Spanish cinema. I haven't been overly successful on that side of things (although my heartfelt thanks to those of you who have either commented on here or chatted to me on twitter), but I don't feel too downcast about it because I can see that the posts are being read and visitor numbers have been steadily increasing. Someone once told me that a study had revealed that the average journal article takes six months to write and is then read by an average of two people (factor in that one of those is likely to be your mother, and that's not exactly a wide audience) -if I thought I was posting stuff into an abyss, I might feel differently, but that isn't the case. So thanks for stopping by!
Anyway, this is just a short post to mark Nobody Knows Anybody's first birthday. On a similar theme, I thought that later in the week I might post something about the first Spanish film I ever saw (I'll keep you in suspense as to what it was / is. Clue: it is twenty years old this year).
