My Collection (2) - Sydney's premier cinephile David Stratton gives his details

Hi Geoffers

Your thing on collectors spurred me to make a current count of my collection.

As of today it seems that I have 12,520 feature films, all on DVD.  This doesn’t include duplications, as for example both standard DVD and Blu-ray copies of many films.  

Like others, I copied my old VHS tapes and Laserdiscs onto discs long ago (it took three tape-disc machines and the – paid – help of my niece working 14 hours a day two weeks to achieve this).  

Discs are filed in alphabetical order of English titles.  Occasionally a foreign title is so famous (LA DOLCE VITA, L’AVVENTURA) that the disc is filed under that name.  Box sets are filed separately.

Luckily I have quite a bit of space at my disposal, but whenever I acquire new titles that don’t come with ‘official’ packaging – such as discs from Movie Detective – I fit these into a package together with another film lacking official packaging.

Every film in the collection has its own card filled in with basic details (title, director, year, running time) and if a specific title is to be found in a package with another film this is noted.  For example, UNE AUSSI LONGUE ABSENCE is filed under ‘A’ for ‘aussi’, and in the same box is BLOOD BROTHERS (Robert Mulligan). Thus the BLOOD BROTHERS index card contains the information: ‘see UNE AUSSI LONGUE ABSENCE’.  

All titles and info are also computerised as backup, but I find the card system works more speedily for me.  Filing films in this way enables me to locate anything I want very quickly indeed.

I have decided not to upgrade to 4K as I’m perfectly happy with the Blu-ray quality of the films I now have.

I’ve attached a photo.

Hope the above makes sense!

Strat