The Vintage Association of Motion Picture Blogs

It was about a month ago that several of we classic film bloggers on Twitter were discussing the need for a blog association exclusively for blogs devoted to older movies. Most associations of film bloggers that currently exist are either devoted to film in general or simply did not suit many of those in our discussion for whatever reason. At one point in the discussion one of us, I don't remember whom, suggested that we form our own association for blogs devoted to older films. I believe it was myself who suggested the name the Vintage Association of Motion Picture Blogs, or VAMP for short.

My thought in choosing the word "vintage" rather than "classic" is that not every old film is a "classic." Classic implies a level of greatness, a level of respect, that age does not always endow. As an example, I once wrote a blog post on Doctor Doolittle (1967), a film that many would consider old enough to be a classic, but very few would could consider good enough to be a classic. The word "vintage" was then selected as it implied age, but not necessarily quality. As to using the abbreviation VAMP, that is a happy coincidence of a movie associated with the Silent Era fitting the name of the new association. Given VAMP is the association's abbreviation, Theda Bara, the vamp of the Silent Era, is our mascot.

As to what would qualify a blog as a vintage film blog, we determined a cut off point of 1980. While many of us would set the cut off point earlier, we figured that would give a little more leeway than if we set the cutoff point at 1970 or even 1960. Admittedly, 1980 was 32 years ago, which for many might be sufficient time for them to consider a movie "old."

As of today VAMP is operational. We have a blog, which can be reached by clicking the following link: the Vintage Association of Motion Picture Blogs.  We also have a Twitter set up at VAMPBlogs. If you would like to join VAMP, leave a comment at the blog (along with your blog URL), tweet at us, or send an email to thevampb at gmail.com.