In 2014 I created Papiro & Mint to talk about the photography books I started buying while I was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Ten years have now passed and the blog has become something entirely different. More than talking about movies through personalized lists, covering photographic books and editorials, and indicating bands and record stores throughout Europe, Papiro & Mint became a portrait of who I was from 2014 to 2024, mirroring not only my personal taste and ideas at the time but also the physical location of where I was living. It’s funny and sometimes embarrassing to read my first posts in the blog, and how I mentioned the same movies over and over again.
But the world has changed and so has I, so after re-editing all the articles I wrote during the past decade, I decided to highlight some of my favorite posts with new comments and intakes as a celebration of these last 10 years of Papiro & Mint, and what the website has become. More than that, it’s a nice way to close a decade and start a new one! Here are some special articles I wrote:
“My Top 10 Criterion Collection”
Written in July of 2014, My Top 10 Criterion Collections article not only gathered my top 10 picks of the Criterion catalog but it was also my first ever post about films here in the blog. Since then, Criterion has released and re-released numerous titles, making my current list change to the following: The 400 Blows (1959) by François Truffaut, Blow Up (1966) by Michelangelo Antonioni, Death in Venice (1971) by Luchino Visconti, Teorema (1968) by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Army of Shadows (1969) de Jean-Pierre Melville, Salo or 120 Days of Sodom (1975) de Pier Paolo Pasolini, The Night of the Hunter (1955) de Charles Laughton, The Moment of Truth (1965) by Francesco Rosi, La Promesse (1996) de Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, and Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) by Béla Tarr.
“18 Questions For Cinephiles”
Written in October of 2015, 18 Questions For Cinephiles was literally 18 questions about cinema that I found on a Tumblr page and decided to share in the blog. Despite not being a very well-known article, I love how it represented me when I was only 22 years old and living in the United States, with probably not so many watched movies in my count. Still, I’m pretty satisfied with most of my answers, and I’d love it if you could share your own in the comments!
“Lars Von Trier’s Paintings References”
Another article that was born due to images I found on Tumblr, Lars Von Trier’s Painting References might be one of the most famous articles I ever wrote on Papiro & Mint. Even after I wrote it, I kept searching for more similar articles online and ended up finding several new ones that were using my post as a reference, which was pretty cool. There was a small upgrade in 2019 with Lars Von Trier’s new movie, The House That Jack Built.
“14 Movies to Watch Before You Turn 14”
Written in February of 2017, 14 Movies to Watch Before You Turn 14 was inspired by the famous BFI list featuring 50 Movies You Should Watch Before You Turn 14. More than loving these fourteen titles, it’s a list in which its themes are perpetuated through all my articles on Papiro & Mint during the years.
“10 Movies That Prove 1959 Was the Best Year in Film History”
Being one of my favorite articles on Papiro & Mint, 10 Movies That Prove 1959 Was The Best Year in Film History was written after I realized how many incredible titles were released that year. Despite being published in 2017, I still believe 1959 was the best year for cinema, and I could easily add more movies to this list such as Pillow Talk by Michael Gordon, Imitation of Life by Douglas Sirk, Suddenly Last Summer by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and Day of the Outlaw by André de Toth.
“20 Horror Movies to Watch or Revisit This Halloween Season”
When I wrote this article back in 2018, the year was marked with several incredible horror movies such as Suspiria, Hereditary, A Quiet Place, Climax, Knife and Heart, and the TV show The Haunting of Hill House. This was probably the reason why I became so inspired to write one of the longest movie-list recommendations on the website. I have to say I’m pretty proud of this one for featuring my favorite horror films of all time, and every year I think about updating it with new titles. Who knows if it will finally happen next Halloween?
“The Art of Collecting Films”
When I finished the article The Art of Collecting Films, I mentioned I had 619 movies in my collection. Now I have nothing less than 1.177, and you can check all of them out in My Film Collection link, a new feature in Papiro & Mint where you have access to my Letterboxd lists. Jokes aside, this was an incredibly important article for me to write because it helped me to put into words what it really means to buy movies and have a film collection, which also helped me to understand not only who I am but also try to share one of my greatest passions with the readers.
“Rohmer en Scene: An Analysis of Eric Rohmer’s Mise en Scene”
This is probably the closest article I wrote that can be compared to a film study, and despite having had a lot of fun doing it, it took way too long for me to write it, which is probably why I haven’t made another similar text exploring other directors. I keep thinking about doing one about Gaspar Noé, but while this doesn’t happen, you can have fun with this interesting article that analyzes Eric Rohmer’s mise en scene, which is probably one of the best texts on the website.
“Where to Begin With Silent Films?”
Where to Begin With Silent Films isn’t just an excellent guide to incredible silent movies from the 1910s and 1920s, but it also contains my all-time favorite movies from the silent era. Written in a more recent year, this was at the beginning of post-COVID-19, a time that I took the opportunity to watch all the movies that had been on my watchlist for years. Writing this article was one of the many results from that, and I can’t highlight the movies mentioned in this article enough.
“The Ultimate Blu-Ray Box Set Guide that Every Cinephile Should Have”
Another pretty popular article I wrote on Papiro & Mint, The Ultimate Blu-Ray Box Set Guide that Every Cinephile Should Have, features eight incredible releases that I think are essential to everybody who likes collecting movies like myself. Hopefully, I will write more of them now that we keep having incredible new releases.
To conclude this article, I’d like to thank everybody who has been reading this blog since and after it started. I spent two and a half years neglecting Papiro & Mint because I was too busy working in Paris, but now things have changed and I’m planning to bring Papiro & Mint back with exciting new things. Thank you for the first ten years and I hope to see you here with me throughout the next 10!