The beauty of the digital world is that you can find little niches and make them your safe space. For me, there are a number of places online where I can dive into media I love or connect with people who share my interests, but one of my absolute favourites has to be the app Letterboxd.
In a nutshell Letterboxd is like Goodreads but for movies. You can log all the films you’ve watched and keep a list of the ones you want to see. I started using it only last year after I bought myself a monthly subscription for the movie theatres here in the Netherlands (a brilliant invention that sadly hasn’t hit my home country yet ://). I wanted to keep track of all the films I was watching and have a mini movie diary right on my phone.
But Letterboxd isn’t just simply logging what you’ve seen – it’s focus is on sharing the experience and your love for cinema. Users can write reviews for the movies they’ve watched, and these reviews range from simple, offhand thoughts like this one:
to insightful, actually meaningful ones like this one:
One of my favourite features on the app is reading other users’ reviews after I’ve watched a film. There’s something incredibly satisfying about seeing the range of feelings and ideas that movies can convey to their viewers. Reading the different perspectives is fascinating, even when don’t match my opinion (and they’re completely wrong and I’m completely right, of course 😉). One can also rate films from 0 to 5 stars, which adds a fun layer of sharing your personal preference.
Furthermore, every user can showcase their top four favourite films on their profile, like a little introduction to your taste in cinema. On the Letterboxds’ social media, interviewers often ask famous actors to share their “Big Four” (in reference to the astrological big three) – meaning their four all-time favourite movies they would put on their profile. It’s always interesting to hear what people in the industry consider their top picks.
In summary – I adore the app. It’s honestly one of the best places to be if you love movies, but after thinking about it, I realised I never knew much about its origins. I just assumed that a film geek must have created it, which, as it turns out, is not far from the truth.
Letterboxd was developed in New Zealand, by Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow. It was launched privately in 2011 and became publicly available in late 2013. Since then, its user base has grown exponentially, with over 14 million registered users as of June 2024. Pretty wild, right?
Buchanan and von Randow started developing Letterboxd in 2010 as a passion project. They had been working together on various digital projects through their design studio, Cactuslab. As avid film lovers, they saw a gap in the market for a social platform dedicated to cataloguing and sharing film experiences.
Their primary goal was to create a product for movie enthusiasts to track films and share reviews, filling the space between personal movie logs and social interaction. The development began with no significant capital or marketing efforts, relying on organic growth and positive word of mouth from their small but enthusiastic community. The eventual success of the platform allowed Buchanan and von Randow to sell a controlling stake to Tiny, a Canadian investment firm, while they continued to manage the platform’s operations.
The name of the app – “Letterboxd” – comes from the term “letterboxing”, which is a technique used in film and video where black bars are placed at the top and bottom of the screen. This technique ensures the original aspect ratio of a movie is preserved, so viewers experience the film exactly as the director intended. It’s called letterboxing because the resulting shape on screen is similar to a letterbox slot—wider than it is tall, just like the aspect ratio of widescreen films.
The passion for film is embedded in its very name, and that enthusiasm radiates through the entire community. Whether you’re logging your tenth rewatch of a favourite film or discovering a hidden gem through someone else’s review, Letterboxd has this wonderful way of connecting people through the magic of movies.
Sources
Tim Grierson, “We’ve elbowed our way into the industry: Charting the rise of cinephile social platform Letterboxd,” Screen Daily, May 18, 2023. https://www.screendaily.com/features/weve-elbowed-our-way-into-the-industry-charting-the-rise-of-cinephile-social-platform-letterboxd/5191962.article.
Madeleine Slattery, “Letterboxd: The Kiwis behind cinema’s most influential platform,” Idealog, February 2023. https://idealog.co.nz/venture/2023/02/letterboxd-the-kiwis-behind-cinemas-most-influential-platform.
Recent Comments