Comment by semilin

> A friend of mine has a terrible Instagram addiction, yet has developed for himself a certain degree of cinephilia lately -- we've watched long movies together in theaters and not once has he been on his phone during the screenings. When one has faith that sustained attention might hold more value than that gained by interruption, they tend to prioritize the former.

I'm not convinced that you've fingered the reason. Pulling out your phone at the theater is considered anti-social behavior, comparable to conversing with your seatmate, and that sort of normative pressure can overcome a compulsion. It's like claiming that someone couldn't possibly be an alcoholic because they don't drink on the job.

A better test would be: What does your friend do when you watch a movie at one of your homes, where there's a lesser expectation to tuck away one's phone? Does he still watch the movie attentively, or does he check his phone every so often?

> But the article points out that the students here don't even watch movies themselves -- "students have struggled to name any film" they recently watched. Why are these people even studying film? The inattention is clearly caused by disinterest.

There's a saying around here that roughly goes: few things are as successful in killing one's interest in something as pursuing a formal education about it.

Being innately interested in something is one thing, but then being in an environment when that is now a hard expectation is another.

It's like the difference between wanting to draw something and being forced to draw something. Entirely different playing fields.

Anyone that wants their own private "film school", can invest 10 years or so and work through the "1001 Movies to See Before You Die" [1]. It's a book compiled by several film critics as I understand it. For each of the films there's a page or two explaining the significance of the film (according to the critic that chose it for the list).

My wife and I have been at it for perhaps 6 years now. We probably have 3 years or so to go to finish it.

You do learn, I think, patience. I found long slow films tedious initially but have come to know why some film are that way and I am more willing now to just go with the flow.

To be sure though, any film over two or so hours we might split across two days to watch.

[1] https://1001films.fandom.com/wiki/The_List

That was my thinking too. Not everyone has been or will be interested in (slow) movies, but historically those people wouldn't be studying film. It's not exactly a lucrative field.

how old is your friend? has he been raised with cocomelon from day 1?

Good point. Maybe "film student" is the modern version of "studied art history".

I don't know your friend's situation, but students who've been raised on screens may struggle a lot more to concentrate even on things they like than people who came across screens in adult life.

> When one has faith that sustained attention might hold more value than that gained by interruption, they tend to prioritize the former.

I suspect that attention is naturally tuned to work towards genuine interests which may be orthogonal to conventional value producing tasks

These “film students” are like the people who take computer science just because they like playing video games.

Most of their idea of film is putting together little reels and TikToks. “Absolute Cinema” type stuff. They don’t actually care about movies and the art.

Very little people really care about a hobby. The ones that do are the most visible but the huge mass just isn’t passionate.

You might be extremely interested in a field and yet not find every part of it to be so interesting. Certainly not everything I studied in my computer science degrees was something I cared about deeply. I've never studied film, but I'd wager there are a number of films that are educationally significant to watch but that aren't very entertaining.