Re: What sources shaped your knowledge/appreciation of film?
 

200 films a month (if you're watching them all in full which I get the impression you do) is like 14 hours every single day of your life watching films.
With a bit of time out for getting some lunch etc, that's 8am-11pm every single day of your life.
I struggle to believe that anybody can do that.
I have been through intense periods of film watching, maybe even 14 hours a day, but after 10 days or so you have to take a break for a couple of days.

All sources related to film that I have been exposed to since the age of six.

Ngl, there are moments that I wish I was more "pure" when facing a film... I still can rate them high - and love, here and there - what I'm seeing but I'm approaching them more objectively (to the point that I can) than *completely* emotional - which still has it's form of fun, but one misses that feeling of just drowning in bliss of a fine work... maybe this Tarr dude can do it to me ; )

A few things:
1. Over 200 is my last month's result. I imagine it's less than that for other months. Maybe around 150. Should've used that number instead, I guess.
2. This number includes short films, too.
3. And for features, assuming that an average feature is 2 hours long is quite liberal. Plenty of films clock in at 90 minutes or less.
4. It's just a matter of persevering through the initial jadedness. If you succeed, you can watch films endlessly. I'd say 150-180 is perfect and manageable. With more than that, I'd recommend against it as a sort of deep exhaustion enters the picture, where you watch the film and end up not sure what you watched and if you liked it, which ultimately defeats the purpose of watching it. My strategy was to just go to sleep when this sort of thing set in so that I would wake up earlier the next day and watch more films with a fresh mind.

Count me as different than everybody else, once again;) I did NOT grow up watching movies. We had one TV back when I was a little kid in the 1960s & early 70s and my parents usually picked the TV shows to watch. The only movies I seen were something like The Ten Commandments which we watched as it had fighting and ancient Egyptians so seemed cool to a kid. But stuff that most kids watched like Disney movies or even The Wizard of Oz, I never seen until I joined MoFo.

So when I say my own mind shaped my interest and knowledge of movies, I literally mean it as no one else influenced me to watch movies.

How many hours per day do you spend watching those 150-180 films on average?

This varies. 6-7 on normal days. More than twice as many on weekends.

On a typical day, on average, how many of those are featured films and how many are shorts? I struggle with watching two movies back to back as so many of the films I watch are long. Especially musicals that I've been watching are running 2.5 to 3 hours in length.

This varies. I usually try to take it easy with shorts, but not today. Today I watched 4 full-lengths and 11 shorts, for example. Time for bed!

I can marathon-watch an addictive TV series but it's different with films, especially if it's a very good one. Every film is a whole new universe with new characters,therefore I like it to linger on and worm its way into my mental library.
Unless I want to forget about it as soon as possible :D

Re: What sources shaped your knowledge/appreciation of film?
 

Once I get more freed up down the road, I might try to increase my intake from one film a weekday to two. Nowadays, I still shoot for at least 11 films a week. That's all I have time for.