Just today, by chance, I met a lovely young woman in the AV department as she was checking our catalog for film holdings. Watching her check off movies I became curious about what she was doing. Turns out she was a student beginning the graduate program in film at Tisch shortly. She'd been provided with a long list of films to see before beginning her program. Films that would be discussed in class or represented a genre or movement that an inspiring film director should appreciate. In other words, great movies.
In her words, she was "in awe" and felt like she had "hit the jackpot!" Our collection included films she could find nowhere else, including other local libraries and through Netflix. While some are so well known as to be iconic, such as The Wild One and Gold Rush, others were not exactly average viewing fare. For example, the Westport Library film library includes the Farsi movie Taste of Cherry and Sweetie an earlier film directed by Jane Champion. This inspiring director went away with an armful of films and a promise to tell others about "how excited" she was by the diversity and depth of the library's collection. I hope someday she will be able to come speak about one of her fillms to an appreciative audience at the Westport Public Library.
