Welcome to the Silver Museum

Welcome to the Silver Museum, a blog for me to share my love for audiovisual media, particularly regarding pop culture and fandom.

Just a bit about what to expect:

I have formal education as a filmmaker, and I've participated in a few projects, but my main focus has been academic: I served as a professor at University for over five years, and I loved the classroom experience.

Unfortunately, political turmoil in the country I used to live in resulted in me moving away and having to leave many things behind, including my teaching post. Luckily, I have found other outlets for the different aspects of that role, but I've been missing a space to "geek out" a bit, as I often did with my students after class. As much as I enjoy mostly any kind of film and discussing them among professionals as high art, I have to confess I'm also a sucker for the pop culture side of it, and I've always been fascinated about how certain pieces of cinema transcend the form to become, essentialy, a lifestyle for many of us.

That's why, while a few of the articles might be slightly more academic, the main purpose of this blog is to discuss and share my views on those products of pop culture I'm particularly passionate about and which sometimes don't have a place inside a classroom. This will be a place for me to be less formal about filmmaking and talk about things I enjoy as hobbies.

With that in mind, here's a list of some of the regular features I'm thinking of including in the blog:

-The Special Exhibit: A weekly recomendation of a film or a TV show. There' so much to see and so little time! It's imposible to truly see everything of importance, but one tries. I've watched my share of audiovisual products, and as far as I can tell, they're more than the average viewer. So I'll use this regular feature to share something that I think you should watch for one reason or another. My aim will be to select items that aren't necessarily as popular as other properties I'll discuss on the blog.

-The Silver Gallery: A mostly visual space, featuring schematic material about varios topics like the evolution of a film costume or character, or how to explain a franchise to your non-fan friends.

-The Curator's Log: My personal opinion on a given topic or product,

-The Wish List: Things I want to see in future releases.

-Dissecting the Artifact: As the name suggest, these would be more detailed analysis of an ítem. Something that might feature regularly here would be dissections of original scores or soundtracks. There could be other technical aspects to discuss, like production design or cinematography.

-The Bodycount Catalog: A section created mostly for fun. Just how deadly are our favorite movies?

The blog idea is still pretty young, so expect more sections to pop out as I think of them.

Something I want to make clear right off the bat is that this is supposed to be a safe place for me and the visitors to share our love, never hate. Fandom has been becoming terribly toxic. It's very hard to find a civilized discussion on the internet that doesn't quickly escalate into a mountain of madness thanks to some pseudo-fans who don't have anything better to do than spewing venom at everything and everyone. One is perfectly entitled to dislike a film or an aspect of it, but it is my view that voicing disagreement can be done constructively, and that hate should be reserved for truly hateful things, not innocuous stuff like not liking the quality of a screenplay's dialogue.

In short: Harvey Weinstein molesting people is a monstrous act, and it rightfuly deserves your wrath. A movie being subpar (in your opinion) simply can't rank in the same category of despicability, so if you want to rant in the same terms of hate, this is not a place for you. Intolerance won't be tolerated, and I'll simply delete and block those who try to disrupt our peace.

Something else to take into account: As you've probably noticed, English is not my first language, so my writting might not be perfect. Nevertheless, I think it's adequate enough, so you might point any mistakes, but please be gentle and take into consideration that I'm not a native speaker.

For now, I'll stop boring you with the introductory post, as the actual content is what really matters. Seeing as I'm just starting and I don't have any readers as of yet, I still haven't decided on a posting schedule. I will start producing material as a hobby in my free time and I'll probably focus more on it if people actually read it.

I hope you enjoy visiting the Museum. I'll certainly enjoy putting it together.