dC Blog: Chair Chats with Amy Lesher

     I grew up watching movies that have become classics, that have shaped the culture. With my family, we stood in long lines to see Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of Jedi, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. By the time I was in my early 20s my tastes began to change from the big summer popcorn movies to small, independent and foreign films. I would stay up late, waiting for my family to go to bed before I began watching these movies.

  As I grew older I began to crave movies that reflected the plots and character development of the classics produced under the Hayes office. Movies that had to be subversive. Movies that knew how to be silent rather than sound that rattled the world, that hurt the ears and did not enlarge our understanding of each other. That’s when I dove fully into foreign and independent films. My family couldn’t understand my taste in movies and so I would hide or wait for everyone to go to bed so that I could fall into these movies. Sitting in the dark, reading subtitles and discovering how alike we are and delving deeper into who I was and what I could become.

  Something that I crave when I watch movies is silence. Watching people deeply involved in their tasks without the need to talk, to fill the world with more noise. In The Taste of Things and Eat, Drink, Man, Woman the movies open with chefs creating meals. Either working together in a silent choreography in the kitchen or working alone they are deeply involved in their work. In Evil Does Not Exist and Perfect Days the characters are simply going about their lives.

 We expect lots of noise. Trying to find the quiet in our lives is getting to be more difficult. Sitting in a movie watching someone going about their life in quiet is a rarity. Something that I find I crave more and more.