The Thoughts That Once We Had

(Thom Andersen, US 2015, 108 min., DCP)

Rochester Premiere. Described in an opening text as a “personal history of cinema, partially inspired by Gilles Deleuze,” The Thoughts That Once We Had from master cinematic essayist Thom Andersen (Los Angeles Plays Itself) is a richly digressive journey through cinema. A found-footage film composed entirely of unidentified, yet often recognizable film clips and concise intertitles written by Andersen, Thoughts leaps associatively across a vast territory spanning from Griffith to Godard, using dynamically cinematic images and sequences not to explain, but to embody Deleuzian ideas in all their rich ambiguity and nuance.