Over the Years

The first library that I saw from inside was the Stadtbücherei Euskirchen, a public library in the town where I grew up. It was close to where we lived and on the way from home to school. I passed it on a daily basis, but only later in the nineties I dared to walk in. I remember that they had a video corner on the right hand side, close to the counter where people would cue up to return their books. 

That corner was where I spent most of my childish library times. Every other day, sometimes with several weeks of interruption because something else had caught my attention and occupied it for so long, I would walk in through the heavy glass door and turn right into the video section. I would run my index finger along the empty vhs boxes and look at all the covers, see if there was anything new.

It's funny. In all those years I don't think I checked out a single book, even though it was a library. The place was filled with written adventures and fantastic stories, and I never tried to read any of them. I wasn't much of a reader, I guess. I preferred to watch stuff. It amazed me. TV commercials, Saturday morning cartoons, and later full-length features. And that's when my interest in films first came to life.

These days I like to spend my evenings with a good beer and a great film. Lately I found a special interest in older movies, say from the eighties, some even earlier. The oldest film I've seen must be 12 Angry Men from 1957. And it's interesting to see how much attention I pay to all the things that didn't mean anything to me when I was a kid. Things like perspective, dialogue and rhythm. Things that matter in real life, too.