What's Film Twitter?

Readers of the blog know that I quit Twitter a while back, after using my account to do little more than post updates for this blog. I never got the hang of using it to have real conversations with other people, though I found it a good way to keep up with various film critics and filmmakers. That was five years ago, which is practically ancient times the way the internet works. I think I may want to give Twitter another try sometime soon.

Over the past few years I've been hearing repeated references to "Film Twitter," which refers to the community of film critics, film academics, and various cinephiles who are active on Twitter. It's a big, shapeless, moveable feast of film discussion that you need to keep up with if you want to stay current on what's going on in film circles. This includes the discussion of films, film news, interviews, reviews, opinion and reaction pieces, and good, old fashioned gossip. I, not having time to read all the tweets generated by the handful of film critics I used to follow, let alone the dozens and dozens of film professionals that make up Film Twitter, have no hope of actually participating in any of these conversations. Still, it looks like it would be awfully fun to follow along.

Film Twitter is only one of many different Twitter communities. There's Politics Twitter, Music Twitter, Sports Twitter, and of course the endless amusement of Fast Food Twitter. When I hear mention of Film Twitter, it's usually through one of the participants, referencing prior or ongoing conversations. The concept of Film Twitter has been around since at least 2015, and has been steadily becoming more and more visible. First reactions to films are often gauged from tweets after early screenings, and major film festivals like Cannes are often accompanied by a flurry of increased activity. Last year there was a push to amplify more female voices. Some have tried to prognosticate box office returns and award season favorites based on Film Twitter trends - which are usually doomed to failure, of course, because the critics almost never reflect popular sentiment. Hype, however, can sometimes be generated or amplified there.

Lately I've started hearing Film Twitter referred to by some as a sort of monolithic entity, usually by those who are critical of the participants. There's a certain breed of film enthusiast who just loves writing off the perceived critical establishment as a bunch of pretentious phonies. Film Twitter provides a handy aggregate, so now it's regularly being accused of all sorts of things, like being smug, or being mean, or overreacting. This says more about the bellyachers than it does about the Film Twitter community, but I think it's also a sign of how Film Twitter is quietly growing in influence. For certain online critics, participation almost feels obligatory. And that's slightly worrisome, especially if you don't think that 140 character tweets are really the best format to be conveying nuanced opinions about cinema with.

Film Twitter remains fairly removed from the mainstream and has a certain degree of exclusivity because the major discussions often require that you have access to media at the time that it's released, or even earlier in the case of films playing the festival circuit or making the rounds via screeners. Right now, this definitely isn't the case for me and won't be for the foreseeable future. I watch nearly everything after it hits the second window viewing options - namely VOD and home media. By that point, everyone's moved on to other topics. I've gotten very used to catching up on film discussions months after they've happened, usually through articles and podcasts.

But even though I'm not a part of Film Twitter, I'm very, very comforted to know that it exists. After seeing so many of the old film discussion message boards on various sites shut down in recent years, and failing to find any good replacements, I'm happy to know that there is a forum for nerdy, critical film discussion out there on the internet. Nobody is going to shut down Twitter in a hurry. And that the film nerds are out there, somewhere, just waiting to geek out over the latest marvel blockbuster or Hirokazu Koreeda joint with.
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