Letterboxd - How A Single App Transformed My Quarantine
April 2020. A pandemic rages on, and a college student whose new online classes are entirely asynchronous needs something to do to fill the time.
That student was me, and more than being bored I was desperately lonely. Being quarantined had taken a toll on my mental health (as it had on almost everyone I knew). I needed not only an escape, but an emotional outlet.
Movies had always been something I enjoyed in the past, considering myself a movie fan and even holding to the dream that one day I might be able to make one. I had little formal education in filmmaking or film appreciation, and would have had a hard time naming a movie made before 2000 or a film from outside America- but still, I enjoyed the few I had seen.
Enter Letterboxd. A friend of mine who shared my passion for movies shared the app with me, telling me that it was a convenient way to log what I watch, and keep all my favorite movies in one place. What I discovered was even better- an app dedicated to cataloging every movie that has graced the silver screen. I was overwhelmed when I first logged on, there were seemingly hundreds of thousands of movies to see, each with more and more confusing titles or strange descriptions. The highest rated movies tab was made up of movies I had never even heard of before- let alone watched.
Letterboxd is an online social networking service co-founded by Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow in 2011. It was launched as a social app focused on sharing opinions about, and love of, film.
However, given time I got used to the volume of content available to me through the app. I logged all 600 or so movies I had seen to that point in my life- and began my diary journey. That is, my journey of watching all the movies I had been missing out on all these years without Letterboxd to guide me.
I started simple, with goals of watching more A24 movies and past Oscars nominees. Soon, I moved on to international fare to see what the world had to offer to cinema. I was floored by new films occupying my imagination- from Burning to Y Tu Mama Tambien to Portrait Of A Lady On Fire. It wasn’t long before I started watching a movie every day, to watching two, and three, and so on until I was in an eventual rhythm of watching up to eight movies in a single day, averaging three to four a day some months.
With some intake, I eventually began exploring the history of cinema, various film movements, and ‘the classics’. (Highlights being the work of Jean Luc Godard, Iranian New Wave, and Hara Kiri).
I had opened my eyes to a world I had never known existed. With this new world came a new community- friends made through the app that I watch movies with to this day.
Even after quarantine ended, and I began to establish human contact again, movies remained a special part of my life, and Letterboxd has remained integral to my daily routine.
Letterboxd, to me, is more than just an app. It recognizes some of the most beautiful pieces of art that humans have created. And even more than that: it represents a community, a community of people who love movies. Whether one watches a movie every day or a movie every month, there’s a place for them on Letterboxd.
You can find Joshua on Letterboxd @joshuapeinado
You can share some of your current favorites, recently watched, and lists you’ve made.