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“Yet if you should forget me for a whileAnd afterwards remember, do not grieveFor if the darkness and corruption leaveA vestige of the thoughts that once we hadBetter by far you should forget and smileThan that you should remember and be sad.”—Christina Rossetti, Remember (1862)An opening title card from director Thom Andesen’s new feature film, The Thoughts That Once We Had, directly identifies the cinematic writings of philosopher Gilles Deleuze as the project's primary subject and inspiration. Deleuze’s two volumes on film, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (1983) and Cinema 2: The Time-Image (1985), are today synonymous with a certain modernist school of thought that, while integrated in academia to such a degree as to be all but understood, remains quite radical. Unquestionably dense and provocatively pedantic, the French empiricist’s filmic texts integrate an array of theories and conceptualizations into a fairly delineated taxonomy, and are therefore fairly conducive...

(Martin Scorsese, 1990; Warner Bros, 18)

The gangster movie began in the silent era with Dw Griffith’s primitive The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), but it was the talkies and their vibrant soundtracks of chattering machine guns, screeching tyres, hardboiled dialogue and thudding fists on yielding flesh that ushered in the first great cycle of gangster flicks. The enforcement of the Hays Office Production Code in 1934 tamed this first wave, but the gradual relaxation of censorship in the 1960s led to a grand revival of the genre focusing on the celebration of crime waves in the past (Bonnie and Clyde) and the criminal underworld of the present (The Godfather).

From the beginning of his film career, Martin Scorsese has been at home with crime both period and contemporary, starting with Boxcar Bertha (1972), a true story of outlaws in the depression, and Mean Streets (1973), which drew on his personal knowledge of Italian-Americans embarking...

It's risky, imperfect, expensive – and the stuff of a thousand classics. As Tacita Dean's tribute to celluloid opens, some noted movie-makers give thanks for film

Steven Spielberg Director

My favourite and preferred step between imagination and image is a strip of photochemistry that can be held, twisted, folded, looked at with the naked eye, or projected on to a surface for others to see. It has a scent and it is imperfect. If you get too close to the moving image, it's like impressionist art. And if you stand back, it can be utterly photorealistic. You can watch the grain, which I like to think of as the visible, erratic molecules of a new creative language. After all, this "stuff" of dreams is mankind's most original medium, and dates back to 1895. Today, its years are numbered, but I will remain loyal to this analogue artform until the last lab closes.

Josef von Sternberg, Charles Chaplin, John Ford: Shasta County Silent Film Festival Friday, October 21 6:00 p.m. Angora Love (1929, Laurel & Hardy). Stanley and Oliver are adopted by a runaway goat, whose noise and aroma in turn get the goat of their suspicious landlord. Attempts to bathe the smelly animal result in a waterlogged free-for-all. Pass the Gravy (1928, Max Davidson). Max Davidson plays a widower father who enjoys raising prize flowers. His neighbor, another widower father, raises prize poultry. The two families spat because the chickens are eating Max's flower seeds. In a Romeo and Juliet-like twist, the men's children decide to marry each other, and the fathers decide to hold a celebratory dinner to show no hard feelings. However, the roast chicken on the table looks very suspicious. It's a Gift (1923, Snub Pollard) Along with a Felix the Cat. A group of oil magnates are trying to think of new ways to attract business.