About

I'm Daniel Slack. I watch films. I write. And I write about films.

I started this website back in 2016 as a teenager who loved film and was on the path to study it in university. This website captures my love of film, for writing and my development of thought as it concerns art, philosophy and cinema. You can read the old 'about' to get a sense of how things started here.

I started this website with simple intentions to share my writing and thinking, and those intentions remain. The focus has shifted slightly, however, especially after a 2 year hiatus starting in 2020. I aim now to continue to share my thoughts on film, art, philosophy and life, but have a more solidified approach and set of ideas having studied cinema for more than half a decade now.

Captured by this website is my personal philosophy that 'if it affects you, it means something'. I am fascinating by media that can impact and change people and seek to explore that change and share it with like-minded people. I believe that there is depth and substance in that which affects us: it bears meaning that we should pay attention to and explore to extract the most from life. And such is what I hope this website can encourage you to do: to extract as much meaning out of that which impacts and changes you.

Central to this website is the above image: the cinema cycle. I have developed a method of understanding cinema and the world based on the works of Taoist thinkers, Carl Jung and Jean Epstein (among a few others). I wish to demonstrate and share my method of thinking through the analysis of films, art, media and thought generally. It is one of my core beliefs that stories are one of humanity's greatest tools to engage the universe. However, whilst we are taught how to read stories through books and literature in school, and before this must learn how languages function with their grammar, structure, syntax, vocabulary, etc. we are not taught this in regards to the moving image and the stories it can tell. This leaves our cultures vulnerable, missing out on everyday opportunities to engage thought and the spiritual world beyond mere entertainment.

It is one of my personal aims here to develop and popularise a theory on how cinema functions to produce meaningful stories that impact individuals and cultures at large. The product of this theory is a method of breaking down cinema and a philosophy of using and discussing it centred on the evocation and exploration of themes and their meaning. Please check out this introductory post to my method and philosophy:

How Cinema Works

To give you a further idea of who I am and set the tone, these are some of my favourite movies...

Please connect with me on other social media platforms - Letterboxd is great and you can browse much of what this website captures through my page. Share what you enjoy and let me hear your thoughts on how movies and life meaningfully impact you in the comments.

Thanks for reading.

Social Media: