Fashion mag Tank launches film platform 'to broaden and expand our cultural understanding'

The films are curated into different seasons, five of which have been released so far, which are selected by guest curators and the Tank team. Each film is accompanied by editorialised texts that look to offer further context and insights into their cultural significance. A new film is released each week, with previous seasons available to rent and stream alongside the new additions.

"As Martin Scorsese recently outlined the art of cinema is being damaged by algorithms that recommend films based on what you’ve already seen, treating the viewer purely as a consumer," says Tank, adding that its "exploration of the treasures of world cinema... aims to broaden and expand our cultural understanding."

The most recent and fifth season, Metamorphosis includes 10 films that span seven decades. According to Tank, each film "expresses something of humanity's capacity for change, adaption, renewal, as much as a picture of our past as it is a blueprint for our future." Among the films included are Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty, Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped and Gabriel Axel's Babette's Feast.

The platform's debut season was Beyond Varda, which examines how the work of French director Agnés Varda influenced contemporary female filmmakers such as Joanna Hogg and Alice Rohrwacher. A definite highlight is Andrea Arnold's very dark and very brilliant Fish Tank.

That tranche was followed by Growing Pains, a season thematically dealing with childhood through the lenses of 12 different directors. Films in this season include Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood, and Ashgar Farhadi's A Separation.

Tarkovsky takes centre stage in Season 3, Sculpting in Time. The season title refers to the Russian director's “distinctive approach to filmmaking,” according to Tank, through a collection of films directed by the likes of Abbas Kiarostami, Paolo Sorrentino, Agnés Varda, Yorgos Lanthimos and Roy Andersson spanning over five decades. Each approaches time "in a profound way… From the hyper-real to the arcane, each provides its own portal into what Tarkovsky described as the ‘inner, moral qualities essentially inherent in time itself,'" Tank adds.

If time is a slippery concept, reality is equally as tricksy; but that's not stopped Tank theming the fourth season On Verisimilitude  around "radical ways filmmakers have represented reality." These 12 films were created by the likes of Michael Haneke, Louis Malle, Peter Stickland, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Mia Hansen-Løve.

For every season, the platform's Afterthoughts section features conversations between invited guests in which they discuss the films they've seen.