Cine Club

Photo by Myke Simon on Unsplash

​- What sort of things do you like to do with your mum?
- Lots! But I really like it when we watch classic movies together. From the 80s and the 90s and such. So cool!
Yeah! How lovely of my 13-year-old. And ouch! though.
Experiences do come full circle, time and time again.
I cherish the memories of watching movies with my mum, staying up like a grown-up on Tuesdays because there was no school on Wednesdays, and there were these cycles of "Cine Club" on TV, sometimes double session even, of old and classic movies. We'd watch all the Draculas ever made, and the best of literature adaptations, followed by cowboys, Godzilas, pirates and princesses. Even the musicals she was not a fan of, but I was. Long before we had a VHS or Netflix, we went around the Globe, through the small black and white screen of our 1st Brandt television that lasted far longer than I'd wanted - all my friends already had a colour one - upgraded to a Philips in the mid-80s. There were often sweet treats involved, only for the two of us.
In my mind, the classics still are in black and white, or with those bright technicolour screens with letterboxing, often seen in movies from the 50s to the 70s. It still carries magic.
But technology evolves, user experience changes, and we all adapt to new products and ways to see the world and interact in it.
My kid is technically correct, for him the 80s are the oldies, I just had not seen it through his eyes.
What is the same, though, is the love and memories I now know he will carry with him, as I do the ones with my mum.
The magic was never only in the movies we watched or their format or even the make and model of the TV, but in watching them together. With sweet treats for two.