An opening text in the latest essay film by Thom Andersen (Red Hollywood, Los Angeles Plays Itself) introduces it as a “personal history of cinema, partially inspired by Gilles Deleuze.” But the film, composed of clips by directors from Griffith to Godard, doesn’t explicate the French philosopher’s dense texts. Rather, The Thoughts That Once We Had “is less a lecture than a wordless, associative, haunted journey—sometimes rueful and sobering, sometimes very funny—not just through the history of cinematic innovation, but through the 20th century itself” (Sukhdev Sandhu, The Guardian).