The old-school passion for tracking down and watching great — and rumored-to-be-great — film masterworks largely has faded, filmmaker C.J. Leigh writes in The Believer.

The piece is titled “Contemplating the New Physicality of Cinema: Mourning the Death of the Fetid, Human Way We Used to Interact with Movies.”

Here’s what Leigh means by all that: “… the physical act of seeking out and consuming great or hallowed or mythical films was as obsessive as our need to experience these films, when and if we found them.”

Read the rest of the piece here.

Leigh’s column is part of the mag’s 2009 Film Issue, now on newsstands.

I’ve yet to pick up the mag at the newsstand, but I noticed that the entire Mike Leigh interview is available online, along with “teasers” of interviews with Sam Mendes,  John Sayles and Julie Delpy.