Wong Kar-wai First Draft

Complete first draft written for Hyperallergic.

Film at Lincoln Center’s virtual retrospective “World of Wong Kar-wai” offers the opportunity not only to see every feature film by one of the greatest directors who ever lived, many in new restorations, but also to shine some light on some of his lesser-seen works. While I will be the first to claim In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express as epochal masterpieces, they have received a surfeit of the attention, and every single one of his movies —even his much-maligned American effort My Blueberry Nights — is essential. To help elucidate this point, here are some further notes on six of the other eight films; I hasten to say that Fallen Angels and Happy Together are just as vital as any of the films listed. Wong’s 1988 debut, As Tears Go By, has often been compared to Mean Streets in its depiction of a gangster (Andy Lau) trying to protect his hot-headed friend (Jacky Cheung), but it bears even more resemblance to the waning crop of Triad films that formed a large part of the Hong Kong New Wave up to that point. In many ways, it is located precisely at a transitional point, equal parts governed by heroic bloodshed melodrama and a hazy, innocent hope embodied by Maggie Cheung. Two years later, Wong produced his first masterwork with Days of Being Wild, tracking the lives of numerous young people and their romantic entanglements and capricious whims, played by a who’s who of great Hong Kong actors, including all three main actors from Tears, Leslie Cheung, and Carina Lau. It is perhaps his most piercing film, overflowing with accumulating loneliness, and it has perhaps the greatest, most mysterious cameo in film history to cap things off. Another era-ending statement came in the form of 1994’s Ashes of Time, presented here in the Redux version that Wong supervised in 2008. A marvel in any form, it reshapes the codes of the wuxia film into a loose collection of stories and fragments, each haunted by past memories. Though its far-flung setting and overt generic framework set it apart from other Wong films, it retains much of the languorous atmosphere, and in the Redux version features some of the most eye-searingly vivid colors ever captured. One of Wong’s most underseen efforts is The Hand, his contribution to the 2003 triptych film Eros, which also featured films by Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni. Presented here in an extended cut running just less than an hour, it is a pas de deux between Chang Chen and Gong Li as a novice tailor and his client. His most forthrightly erotic work, it derives much of its power from a sharp condensation of the years that pass, passing by with even more force than usual. That sense of slippery, uncertain time is in full effect in 2004’s 2046, quite possibly Wong’s most ambitious film, acting as both a sequel to In the Mood for Love, following a series of affairs that Chow (Tony Leung) undergoes, and a quasi-science-fiction tale set on a futuristic train. Even more than most Wongs, it is a film of profound aching and messiness, of unexpected and indelible memories and glorious pain. Wong’s last film to date, The Grandmaster from 2013, was mutilated by The Weinstein Company upon its release, but is presented here in its Hong Kong theatrical cut. Another wholly idiosyncratic wuxia film, it refracts the story of Bruce Lee’s teacher Ip Man through the shifting eras in which he lived, crossing paths with other equally great kung fu practitioners, including Zhang Ziyi in one of her greatest performances.

Spies First Draft

Complete first draft written for MUBI Notebook.

Though Fritz Lang might be best known for the extravagances of Metropolis, he was even more at home when working with the bare essentials, all the better to use his skills at artifice and suggestion. Case in point: the opening sequence of Spies, which uses only a few distinguishable settings, some animated text and drawings, and frenzied faces to thrust the viewer into the middle of the film’s world of crime. It is a realm of blanks and façades, pitting an espionage ring spearheaded by the inscrutable spymaster Haghi (Lang regular Rudolf Klein-Rogge) against the state that stands for order and luxury, primarily embodied by a man going by the nom de guerre Agent 326. Yet none of these people appear in the sequence, where the movement of figures and information is paramount, no trappings of individuality required. This is taken to its limit with the third shot, which serves simultaneously as a moment of clarity, after the first two shots and their sole focus on hands, and as a further obfuscation. For few other shots in film history are so thrillingly artificial, as Lang shoots at an impossibly low angle from below where the wheel would meet the pavement. The viewer knows that there’s no conceivable way the motorcycle is actually moving, either on a road or in a studio, but the deception of this image announces itself so readily that it becomes enthralling. And the rushing wind, steam, and fog; the bug-eyed goggles; above all the wild grin on the criminal, who appears in no other scene but whose pure malice lingers in the mind: like everything in Spies, the actual thing being stolen is of no importance, the act is all that matters. With these elements, Lang distills the dark heart, the mad glee of his visions.

Obayashi First Draft

Complete first draft written for Hyperallergic.

If you know the name Nobuhiko Obayashi, it’s probably because of his 1977 debut feature House, which achieved cult status during its theatrical tour and Criterion Collection disc release in 2010. This veritable canonization, while likely well-intentioned, was also one of the greatest crimes against cinephilia perpetrated during this decade. While House is indeed a marvelous film, both its promotion and reception ogled over surface-level gonzo weirdness, willfully ignoring any deeper reading or appreciation of the film or the titan director who created it. For Obayashi is one of the signal Japanese directors of his era, who made some 40 features over a period of 60 years, in addition to numerous short films, television and advertising work, and film scholarship, none of which have been officially released in the United States, by Criterion or any other boutique label. Against this willful mischaracterization and neglect, a wave of cinephilia has emerged: spearheaded on Twitter in large part by Evan Morgan, Eli Berger, and Esther Rosenfield (full disclosure: I count all of them as very dear friends) over the past few years, Obayashi has achieved far greater renown and recognition in America. Upon his death at 82 in April of this year — after an improbably long battle with lung cancer that allowed him to complete two more features, including his passion project Hanagatami (2017), which had been in development since before House — the appreciation of his work was far more multifaceted and representative than it might have been just three or four years ago. To commemorate his passing, this year’s edition of Japan Cuts is showing his final film, the mammoth Labyrinth of Cinema (2019), along with a documentary about him and his wife and producer and a number of online conversations about his work. Labyrinth of Cinema is a fitting capstone, a riotous tour through the various manifestations of Japanese war cinema through the eyes of four teenagers, who exist both in the audience of a theater’s last picture show and as a host of avatars within the films, who shift between a dizzying number of genres while attempting to outrun histories of violence and destruction. In order to understand what this summative work is actually summing up, it is necessary to look back into Obayashi’s sizable oeuvre for a few of the more apparent commonalities; though of course this article cannot be in any way exhaustive, some of the greatest films of his career do provide a vital lens into his consistent concerns and interests. Foremost among these was Obayashi’s interest in the vitality and dreams of youth. The vast majority of his films heavily feature in some capacity young people, from the anarchic schoolchildren of Bound for the Fields, the Mountains, and the Seacoast (1986) to the biker gangs of His Motorbike, Her Island (1986), frequently in the sun-kissed bliss of summer. Even a film like Beijing Watermelon (1989), which focuses primarily on a shopkeeper who befriends successive classes of Chinese students studying abroad, is careful to ensure that all of the students come alive as individuals in their own right, never merely symbols for a bright future or a far-off culture across the sea. Not that Obayashi is resistant to the symbolism that the young provide: especially in Hanagatami and Labyrinth of Cinema, they stand in for a certain purity and optimism, an innocence that is threatened by the passage of time and the ravages of war. The degree to which this innocence is lost varies from film to film. In perhaps his most straightforwardly optimistic film, The Rocking Horsemen (1992), the cover band of rock-obsessed high schoolers is dismantled upon graduation, but it is never depicted with the thudding strife of traditional music dramas; even before their performance at the school festival, the boys know that this will be their only truly significant show, and simply resolve to enjoy it while they can, playing their hearts out with abandon. That kind of freedom finds its perfect correlative in Obayashi’s sense of form, which is among the most innovative and eye-popping in cinema. It reaches its zenith in the digital extravaganza of his final films, all odd green screens and discomfiting, cramped close-ups, the better to capture the bracing haze of unreality that war brings. In the case of Labyrinth of Cinema, these are further alloyed by an overload of text boxes and obvious digital compositing; the result is something which renders the myriad recreations of something like a dozen different styles of filmmaking deliberately uncanny, a gap which points to the film’s level of metatextual involvement; past, present, and future are indistinguishable inside the projector. But such touches are present even in the less stylistically obtrusive works: the intensely disruptive edits of Labyrinth appear in the otherwise more conventional The Rocking Horsemen; Bound for the Fields features a gorgeous evocation of 1930s Shochiku filmmaking in grainy black-and-white; His Motorbike, Her Island frequently uses a dazzling technique where, in a film that moves with abandon between black-and-white and color, most of the frame is rendered in monochrome save for the center. This willingness to experiment stems in large part from perhaps the most crucial element: Obayashi’s radical sense of humanism. Amid the excesses and chaos of Labyrinth of Cinema, a stark, passionate message emerges: “a movie can change the future if not the past.” Obayashi very clearly believes in the healing potential of cinema, its capability to represent humanity and Japan at its most harmonious and to argue against war and self-destruction. All of his films carry this immovable truth, whether it’s in the virtual uprising of Bound for the Fields, the ebullience of music-making in The Rocking Horsemen, or the complicated, uncertain transcendence of Hanagatami. And the most powerful of these comes in Beijing Watermelon, in circumstances forced by reality: after plans to film the finale in Beijing were dashed by the Tiananmen Square Massacre, Obayashi filmed it on a series of studio sets in Tokyo, repeatedly breaking the fourth wall and characterizing the events as a dream of China, never openly stating the reason but making clear his solidarity with the students and their struggle in both his own voiceover and the to-camera monologue of the main actor. In doing so, he lays bare the illusion of moviemaking and its ability to capture something truly intrinsic and universal: the goodness of his characters, their essential resistance against brutality, and cinema’s power to honor them. Throughout his career, Obayashi never wavered in this conviction, nor his own artistic ability to harness and give life to this idea; there are few other directors as ripe for rediscovery as him.

New York Film Festival Currents

1st (2020/58th):

*The Inheritance (Ephraim Asili)

Program 8: New York Stories

• Drills (Sarah Friedland)
• Object Lessons, or: What Happened Whitsunday (Ricky D'Ambrose)
• Shots in the Dark With David Godlis (Noah Kloster & Lewie Kloster)
• Wild Bill Horsecock (Oliver Shahery) {canceled}
• The Chicken (Sora Neo)
• In Sudden Darkness (Tayler Montague)
• The Isolated (Jay Giampietro)

Fauna (Nicolás Pereda)

Program 1: Remains to Be Seen

• Apparition (Ismaïl Bahri)
• A Revolt Without Images (Pilar Monsell)
• Untitled Sequence of Gaps (Vika Kirchenbauer)
• This Day Won't Last (Mouaad el Salem)
• Hidden (Jafar Panahi)

Her Socialist Smile (John Gianvito)

Program 2: Free Radicals

• King of Sanwi (Akousua Adoma Owusu)
• - force - (Simon Liu & Jennie MaryTai Liu)
• To the Harbour (Anonymous) {replaced with Letter From Your Far-Off Country}
• Trust Study #1 (Shobun Baile)
• Ekphrasis (Riccardo Giacconi)

The Tango of the Widower and Its Distorting Mirror (Raúl Ruiz & Valeria Sarmiento)

Program 3: Letters From Home

• Malembe (Luis Arnías)
• Notes, Imprints (On Love): Part 1 (Alexandra Cuesta)
• Glimpses From a Visit to Orkney in Summer 1995 (Ute Aurand)
• Correspondence (Carla Simón & Dominga Sotomayor)
• Claudette's Star (Ayo Akingbade)
• Episodes - spring 2018 (Mathilde Girard)

There are not thirty-six ways of showing a man getting on a horse. (Nicolás Zukerfeld)%
Stump the Guesser (Guy Maddin & Evan & Galen Johnson)%

Program 4: There Are Other Worlds They Have Not Told You Of

• Labor of Love (Sylvia Schedelbauer)
• Look Then Below (Ben Rivers)
• Figure Minus Fact (Mary Helena Clark)
• While Cursed by Specters (Burak Çevik)
• In the Air Tonight (Andrew Norman Wilson)

My Mexican Bretzel (Nuria Giménez)
Her Name Was Europa (Anja Dornieden & Juan David González Monroy)%
A Night at the Opera (Sergei Loznitsa)%

Program 5: The Medium Is the Message

• An Arrow Pointing to a Hole (Steve Reinke)
• Single Copy (Hsu Che-yu)
• Letter From Your Far-Off Country (Suneil Sanzgiri) {moved to Program 2}
• Once Removed (Lawrence Abu Hamdan)

The Last City (Heinz Emigholz)
The Lobby (Heinz Emigholz)

Program 6: Here and Elsewhere

• Extractions (Thirza Cuthand)
• Aquí y allá (Melisa Liebenthal)
• Sanfield (Kevin Jerome Everson)
• Apiyemiyekî (Ana Vaz)

Program 7: Code Unknown

• Humongous! (Kawazoe Aya)
• The End of Suffering (a proposal) (Jacqueline Lentzou)
• Point and Line to Plane (Sofia Bohdanowicz)
• The Unseen River (Lân Phạm Ngọc)
• August 22, This Year (Graham Foy)

Ouvertures (Louis Henderson & Olivier Marboeuf)
The Plastic House (Allison Chhorn)%
Autoficción (Laida Lertxundi)%
See You in My Dreams (Ikezoe Shun)%
The Year of the Discovery (Luis López Carrasco)
Slow Machine (Joe DeNardo & Paul Felten)%
Hard, Cracked the Wind (Mark Jenkin)%
The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) (C. W. Winter & Anders Edström)

2nd (2021/59th):

El gran movimiento (Kiro Russo)
*The Tsugua Diaries (Maureen Fazendeiro & Miguel Gomes)
All About My Sisters (Wang Qiong)
Social Hygiene (Denis Côté)
Prism (Eléonore Yameogo & An van. Dienderen & Rosine Mbakam)
Outside Noise (Ted Fendt)
A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces (Zhu Shengze)
I Want to Talk About Duras (Claire Simon)
Haruhara-san's Recorder (Sugita Kyoshi)
The Tale of King Crab (Alessio Rigo de Righi & Matteo Zoppis)

Program 1: Acts of Seeing

• Day Is Done (Zhang Dalei)
• 38 (Daniel Chew & Micaela Durand)
• ELLE (Luise Donschen)
• Sycorax (Lois Patiño & Matías Piñeiro)

Program 2: Critical Mass

• Do Not Circulate (Tiffany Sia)
• Dreams Under Confinement (Christopher Harris)
• In Flow of Words (Eliane Esther Bots)
• All of Your Stars Are But Dust on My Shoes (Haig Aivazian)
• Kindertotenlieder (Virgil Vernier)

Program 3: Free Form

• Personality Test (Justin Jinsoo Kim)
• Dog Star Descending (Aykan Safoğlu)
• Homage to the Work of Philip Henry Gosse (Pablo Martín Weber)
• (No Subject) (Guillermo Moncayo)

A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia)

Program 4: Still Life

• The Capacity for Adequate Anger (Vika Kirchenbauer)
• A Human Certainty (Morgan Quaintance)
• Home When You Return (Carl Elsaesser)

Program 5: Pattern Language

• Cutting the Mushroom (Mike Crane)
• Estuary (Ross Meckfessel)
• The Canyon (Zachary Epcar)
• Reach Capacity (Ericka Beckman)

Program 6: Camera Lucida

• Here Is the Imagination of the Black Radical (Rhea Storr)
• Strange Object (Miranda Pennell)
• To Pick a Flower (Shireen Seno)
• South (Morgan Quaintance)

Program 7: New Sensations

• May June July (Kevin Jerome Everson)
• Grandma's Scissors (Erica Sheu)
• Blind Body (Allison Chhorn)
• If I could name you myself (I would hold you forever) (Hope Strickland)
• What is it that you said? (Ikezoe Shun)
• In and Out a Window (Richard Tuohy)
• Night Colonies (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Program 8: Vibrant Matter

• earthearthearth (Saïto Daïchi)
• Tonalli (Los Ingrávidos)
• Fictions (Manuela de Laborde)
• Six Seventy-Two Variations, Variation 1 (Nishikawa Tomonari)

La Nature (Artavazd Peleshyan)%
2 Pasolini (Andrei Ujică)%
Returning to Reims (Jean-Gabriel Périot)
Just a Movement (Vincent Meessen)
Ste. Anne (Rhayne Vermette)

3rd (2022/60th):

The Unstable Object II (Daniel Eisenberg)
Queens of the Qing Dynasty (Ashley McKenzie)
The Dam (Ali Cherri)
You Have to Come and See It (Jonás Trueba)%
Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (Pedro Neves Marques)%
Coma (Bertrand Bonello)
*Will-o'-the-Wisp (João Pedro Rodrigues)
Mutzenbacher (Ruth Beckermann)
Tales of the Purple House (Abbas Fahdel)

Program 1: Field Trips

• Flora (Nicolás Pereda)
• Underground Rivers (Simón Vélez)
• Watch the Fire or Burn Inside It (Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel)
• Aribada (Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau & Natalia Escobar)

Program 2: Fault Lines

• Quarries (Ellie Ga)
• 45th Parallel (Lawrence Abu Hamdan)
• Tiger Strike Red (Sophia Al-Maria)

Program 3: Action Figures

• Fingerpicking (Riccardo Giacconi)
• Glass Life (Sara Cwynar)
• F1ghting Looks Different 2 Me Now (Fox Maxy)
• IF REVOLUTION IS A SICKNESS (Diane Severin Nguyen)

Program 4: Vital Signs

• Exhibition (Mary Helena Clark)
• Rememberance: A Portrait Study (Edward Owens)
• PEAK HEAVEN LOVE FOREVER (Jordan Strafer)
• NE CORRIDOR (Joshua Gen Solondz)
• Qualities of Life: Living in the Radiant Cold (James Richards)

Program 5: After Utopia

• Adaptation (Josh Kline)
• urban solutions (Arne Hector & Luciana Mazeto & Minze Tummescheit & Vinícius Lopes)
• Life on the CAPS (Meriem Bennani)

Program 6: Inside Voices

• Bigger on the Inside (Angelo Madsen Minax)
• The Sky's In There (Dani & Sheilah ReStack)
• Lesser Choices (Courtney Stephens)
• Diana, Diana (Kim Salac)
• It Smells Like Springtime (Mackie Mallison)
• Into the Violet Belly (Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi)

Program 7: Ordinary Devotion

• The Demands of Ordinary Devotion (Eva Giolo)
• Renate (Ute Aurand)
• Lungta (Alexandra Cuesta)
• The Newest Olds (Pablo Mazzolo)
• Devil's Peak (Simon Liu)

Program 8: Time Out of Mind

• Against Time (Ben Russell)
• In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun (Sylvia Schedelbauer)
• What Rules the Invisible (Tiffany Sia)
• The Sower of Stars (Lois Patiño)

Slaughterhouses of Modernity (Heinz Emigholz)
Rewind & Play (Alain Gomis)%
Maria Schneider, 1983 (Elisabeth Subrin)%
Dry Ground Burning (Joana Pimenta & Adirley Queirós)
Human Flowers of Flesh (Helena Wittmann)

Program 9: New York Shorts

• Same Old (Lloyd Lee Choi)
• Trust Exercises (Sarah Friedland)
• 29 Hour Long Birthday (Mark Jenkin)
• Magic Ring (Alex Ashe)
• Little Jerry (Charlotte Ercoli)
• as time passes (Jamil McGinnis)

Remote (Mika Rottenberg & Mahyad Tousi)%
A Short Story (Bi Gan)%
The Adventures of Gigi the Law (Alessandro Comodin)
Three Tidy Tigers Tied a Tie Tighter (Gustavo Vinagre)

4th (2023/61st):

Nowhere Near (Miko Revereza)
A Prince (Pierre Creton)
*The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo Williams)
The Night Visitors (Michael Gitlin)%
When We Encounter the World (Leonardo Pirondi & Zazie Ray-Trapido)%
Jean-Luc Godard + Wang Bing + Pedro Costa [Trailer of a Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars, Man in Black, The Daughters of Fire] (Jean-Luc Godard, Wang Bing, Pedro Costa)
Mangosteen (Tulapop Saenjaroen)@
We Don't Talk Like We Used To (Joshua Gen Solondz)@
Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Phạm Thiên Ân)

Program 1: Surface Tension

• Abbatoir U.S.A.! (Aria Dean)
• Mercurial Currents (Carolina Fusilier)
• Sensitive Content (Narges Kalhor)
• Dau:añcut (Moving Along Image) (Adam Piron)
• Nameless Syndrome (Cha Jae-min)

The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow)%
Unhappy Hour (Ted Fendt)%

Program 2: Stranger Than Paradise

• Live From the Clouds (Mackie Mallison)
• Shrooms (Jorge Jácome)
• The Far and Near (Justin Jinsoo Kim)
• Slow Shift (Shambhavi Kaul)
• Solo la Luna comprenderá (Kim Torres)

Program 3: Inside Out

• Larry (Murata Takeshi & Christopher Rutledge)
• Bold Eagle (Whammy Alcazaren)
• LOOPHOLE (Jordan Strafer)
• False Wife (Jamie Crewe)
• Sundown (Steve Reinke)

Last Things (Deborah Stratman)%
Laberint Sequences (Blake Williams)%

Program 4: Close Encounters

• Intersection (Richard Tuohy & Dianna Barrie)
• Mast-del (Maryam Tafakory)
• Disappearances (James Edmonds)
• If You Don't Watch the Way You Move (Kevin Jerome Everson)
• N'Importe Quoi (for Brunhild) (Luke Fowler)
• Spark From a Falling Star (Ross Meckfessel)

ALLENSWORTH (James Benning)%
Air Force Two (Kevin Jerome Everson)%
Boyd v. Denton (Kevin Jerome Everson)%

Program 5: Burden of Dreams

• Dildotectónica (Tomás Paula Marques)
• and so it came about (A Tale of Consequential Dormancy) (Charlotte Pryce)
• Coral (Sonia Oleniak)
• Nocturne for a Forest (Catarina Vasconcelos)
• The Rays of a Storm (Julio Hernández Cordón)

Mambar Pierrette (Rosine Mbakam)

Program 6: Site Specific

• Projekt (Dane Komljen)
• The Fist (Ayo Akingbade)
• Ungentle (Huw Lemmey & Onyeka Igwe)

5th (2024/62nd):

Jimmy (Yashaddai Owens)
7 Walks With Mark Brown (Pierre Creton & Vincent Barré)
bluish (Lilith Kraxner & Milena Czernovsky)
The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire (Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich)
Fire of Wind (Marta Mateus)
Lázaro at Night (Nicolás Pereda)
exergue—on documenta 14 (Dimitris Athiridis)
You Burn Me (Matías Piñeiro)

Program 1: The Will to Change

• Black Glass (Adam Piron)
• Man number 4 (Miranda Pennell)
• An All-Around Feel Good (Jordan Lord)
• The Deep West Assembly (Cauleen Smith)

Program 2: Identification Marks

• Track_ing (Lee Chan-yeol & Hanna Cho & Samgar Rakym & Ali Tynybekov)
• I Remember (depth of flatten cruelty) (James Richards & Tolia Astakhishvili)
• Efforts of Nature (Morgan Quaintance)
• Being John Smith (John Smith)

Program 3: Signal to Noise

• Grandmamauntsistercat (Zuza Banasińska)
• Jizai (Endo Maiko)
• Like an Outburst (Sebastián Schjaer)
• Hemel (Danielle Dean)

Program 4: Space Is the Place

• Revolving Rounds (Christina Jauernik & Johann Lurf)
• ESP (Laura Kraning)
• re-engraved (Lei Lei)
• A Black Screen Too (Rhayne Vermette)
• The Land at Night (Richard Tuohy & Dianna Barrie)
• Archipelago of Earthen Bones—To Bunya (Malena Szlam)

Program 5: Material Worlds

• Vibrant Matter (Pablo Marín)
• Towards the Sun, Far From the Center (Pascal Viveros & Luciana Merino)
• No Spank (Jordan Strafer)
• Sinking Feeling (Zachary Epcar)
• The Invisible Worm (Rosalind Nashashibi)

*Little, Big, and Far (Jem Cohen)
The Suit (Heinz Emigholz)

Program 6: Poetry Is Not a Luxury

• Refuse Room (Simon Liu)
• Machine Boys (Karimah Ashadu)
• Razeh-del (Maryam Tafakory)
• Practice, Practice, Practice (Kevin Jerome Everson)
• October Noon (Francisco Rodríguez Teare)

Universal Language (Matthew Rankin)
DIRECT ACTION (Guillaume Cailleau & Ben Russell)

6th (2025/63rd):

Back Home (Tsai Ming-liang)@
Ecce Mole (Heinz Emigholz)@
Dracula (Radu Jude)
Windward (Sharon Lockhart)
Bouchra (Orian Barki & Meriem Bennani)
Pin de Fartie (Alejo Moguillansky)
Escape (Adachi Masao)
Evidence (Lee Anne Schmitt)
Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze)
Hair, Paper, Water... (Trương Minh Quý & Nicolas Graux)
Drunken Noodles (Lucio Castro)
*Mare's Nest (Ben Rivers)
Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes (Gabriel Azorín)

Program 1: Below the Surface

• Morning Circle (Basma al-Sharif)
• Tigers Can Be Seen in the Rain (Oscar Ruiz Navia)
• Dooni (Claudrena N. Harold & Kevin Jerome Everson)
• A Real Christmas (Justin Jinsoo Kim)
• Daria's Night Flowers (Maryam Tafakory)

Program 2: Afterimages

• As Told by a Corpse (Yace Sula)
• Time Life Volume 15. Monument to a Period of Time in Which I Lived (Mungo Thomson)
• A Metamorphosis (Lin Htet Aung)
• 09/05/1982 (Jorge Caballero & Camilo Restrepo)
• Slet 1988 (Marta Popivoda)
• Water Sports (Whammy Alcazaren)

Barrio triste (Stillz)

Program 3: Common Ground

• Jacob's House (Lucas Kane)
• Anoka (Karthik Pandian)
• Give It Back: Crimes Against Realty (New Red Order)

little boy (James Benning)

Program 4: Model Behaviors

• Acetone Reality (Sara Magenheimer & Michael Bell-Smith)
• Their Eyes (Nicolas Gourault)
• And If the Body (Toby Lee)
• Fiction Contract (Carolyn Lazard)

With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari)
Levers (Rhayne Vermette)

Program 5: Fields of Vision

• FELT (Blake Williams)
• Lover, Lovers, Loving, Love (Jodie Mack)
• Keyhole Conversation (Peter Larsson)
• toward a fundamental theory of physics (Victor Van Rossem)
• As a Tree Walks to Its Forest (Chen Jiayi)

7th (2026/64th):

Program 1: The Hidden Dimension

• Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness (Zhang Yixuan)
• A Correspondence (Josh Weissbach & Ben Balcom)
• Chronicle of Tiredness (Natalia Marín)
• Rebecca's Mess (Jamie Crewe)
• Harmony (Aoki Tatsu)

A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra (Jacqueline Lentzou)
Life of Jorge Luis Borges (Mariano Llinás)
London (Sebastian Brameshuber)

Program 2: The Visible Invisible

• Fevers (James Richards)
• The End (Artavazd Peleshyan)
• Forever...Forever (Johann Lurf)
• Screening Room (Morgan Fisher)

Program 3: Surface Noise

• Procedures (Simon Liu)
• Practice Towards Light (Jonathan Seung-joon Lee)
• Interwoven Intervals (Laura Kraning)
• Flim Flam (Siegfried A. Fruhauf)
• Moored Shadow (Karissa Hahn)
• Day One (Cameron Worden)

Heil Jupiter! (Carlos Reygadas)

Program 4: The Real World

• Certainties (Calum Walter)
• RW-LO (Martine Syms)
• Placeholder (Jesse McLean)
• Moon Palace (Yu Jiaqi)

Program 5: The Material Ghost

• The Wayfinders (Peggy Ahwesh)
• National Seating (Kevin Jerome Everson)
• The Flesh of the Mountain (Adam Piron)
• Elegy for the Forgotten, On an Endless War (Bani Khoshnoudi)

Program 6: Out of the Present

• They're Here (Laura Poitras & Rachel Lauren Mueller)
• Another Earth (Ben Russell)
• This Suffocating Now (Vika Kirchenbauer)
• Morne Fortune (Mara Chavez & doris duhennois)

Foreign Travel (Ted Fendt)
*Bardi (Tala Hadid)
Tomorrow a Long Time Ago (Luise Donschen)
The Remotes (John Torres)
Overt Listening (Tiffany Sia)
Suicide Note (Fred Camper)
What Can't Be Mentioned (Dan Sallitt)@
Sounds From Home (Nathan Silver)@
At Night (Beatrice Gibson)
For the Moon (Éric Baudelaire)
Fire Flower (Ana Vaz)
Red Rocks (Bruno Dumont)

Cinema Scope Top Tens of the Decade (2000s)

1. Platform (2000, Jia Zhangke)
2. In Vanda's Room (2001, Pedro Costa)
3. La libertad (2001, Lisandro Alonso)
4. Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003, Thom Andersen)
5. 13 Lakes (2004, James Benning)
6. Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004, Lav Diaz)
7. Yi Yi (2000, Edward Yang)
8. Black Book (2006, Paul Verhoeven)
9. Memories of Murder (2003, Bong Joon-ho)
10. Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch)

Honourable Mentions: Colossal Youth (2006, Pedro Costa), The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005, Cristi Puiu), In the City of Sylvia (2007, José Luis Guerín), L'intrus (2004, Claire Denis), Three Times (2005, Hou Hsiao-hsien), Syndromes and a Century (2006, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Thom Andersen

1. Platform (2000, Jia Zhangke)
2. Colossal Youth (2006, Pedro Costa)
3. Three Times (2005, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
4. La libertad (2001, Lisandro Alonso)
5. The Son (2002, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
6. Tie Xi Qu: West of the Dracks (2003, Wang Bing)
7. Itinéraire de Jean Bricard (2008, Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet)
8. It Felt Like a Kiss (2009, Adam Curtis)
9. Syndromes and a Century (2006, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
10. Shara (2003, Kawase Naomi)

Jason Anderson

1. Blissfully Yours (2002, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
2. Songs From the Second Floor (2000, Roy Andersson)
3. The Son (2002, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
4. Russian Ark (2002, Alexander Sokurov)
5. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001, Zacharias Kunuk & Norman Cohn)
6. Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch)
7. Old Joy (2006, Kelly Reichardt)
8. An Injury to One (2002, Travis Wilkerson)
9. Oasis (2002, Lee Chang-dong)
10. Let the Right One In (2008, Tomas Alfredson)

Cameron Bailey

1. Daratt (2006, Mahamet-Saleh Haroun)
2. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005, Cristi Puiu)
3. Elephant (2003, Gus Van Sant)
4. A History of Violence (2005, David Cronenberg)
5. Iraq in Fragments (2006, James Longley)
6. Liberia: An Uncivil War (2004, Jonathan Stack & James Brabazon)
7. Paradise Now (2005, Hany Abu-Assad)
8. The Road to Guantanamo (2006, Michael Winterbottom)
9. Saddam Hussein Execution Video (2006, Unknown)
10. 13 Tzameti (2005, Gela Babluani)

Serge Bozon

1. War of the Worlds (2005, Steven Spielberg)
2. Woman of Breakwater (2002, Mario O'Hara)
3. Flying With One Wing (2002, Asoka Handagama)
4. Un petit cas de conscience (2002, Marie-Claude Treilhou)
5. L'adolescent (2000, Pierre Léon)
6. Around a Small Mountain (2009, Jacques Rivette)
7. Lady in the Water (2006, M. Night Shyamalan)
8. Crying Fist (2005, Ryoo Seung-wan)
9. Je ne suis pas morte (2009, Jean-Charles Fitoussi)
10. Mansion by the Lake (2003, Lester James Peries)

Tom Charity

1. Platform (2000, Jia Zhangke)
2. Yi Yi (2000, Edward Yang)
3. Code Unknown (2000, Michael Haneke)
4. Three Times (2005, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
5. 13 Lakes (2004, James Benning)
6. In the City of Sylvia (2007, José Luis Guerín)
7. Syndromes and a Century (2006, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
8. L'Enfant (2005, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
9. Opera Jawa (2006, Garin Nugroho)
10. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001, Steven Spielberg)

John Gianvito

• La Commune (Paris, 1871) (2000, Peter Watkins)
• Demons (2000, Mario O'Hara)
• An Injury to One (2002, Travis Wilkerson)
• Friday Night (2002, Claire Denis)
• Café Lumière (2003, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
• Saraband (2003, Ingmar Bergman)
• Deux (2006, Werner Schroeter)
• Colossal Youth (2006, Pedro Costa)
• When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006, Spike Lee)
• These Encounters of Theirs (2005, Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet)
• The Sky, the Earth, and the Rain (2008, José Luis Torres Leiva)

Plus three shorts: Phantom Limb (2005, Jay Rosenblatt), P.S. Beirut, Chapter One (2008, Michael Shamberg), Boundary (2009, Devin Horan)

Miguel Gomes

• In Vanda's Room (2000, Pedro Costa)
• Eureka (2000, Aoyama Shinji)
• Toutes les nuits (2001, Eugène Green)
• La libertad (2001, Lisandro Alonso)
• The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, Wes Anderson)
• Gerry (2001, Gus Van Sant)
• Be My Star (2001, Valeska Grisebach)
• Tropical Malady (2004, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
• The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004, Wes Anderson)
• The New World (2005, Terrence Malick)

Steve Gravestock

1. La Ciénaga (2001, Lucrecia Martel)
2. Dogville (2003, Lars von Trier)
   Manderlay (2005, Lars von Trier)
3. Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004, Lav Diaz)
4. A Cock and Bull Story (2005, Michael Winterbottom)
5. Lights in the Dusk (2006, Aki Kaurismäki)
6. Mariages (2001, Catherine Martin)
7. My Winnipeg (2007, Guy Maddin)
8. La Neuvaine (2005, Bernard Emond)
   Contre Tout Esperance (2007, Bernard Emond)
   La Donation (2009, Bernard Emond)
9. Pusher (1996, Nicolas Winding Refn)
   With Blood on My Hands (2004, Nicolas Winding Refn)
   I'm the Angel of Death (2005, Nicolas Winding Refn)
10. A Tale of a Naughty Girl (2002, Buddhadeb Dasgupta)

Christoph Huber & Olaf Möller
The Ferroni Brigade's Eleven Marginalized Friends

1. Notes From the Basement (2000, Rainer Frimmel)
2. Le deuxième souffle (2007, Alain Corneau)
3. The Fine Art of Love (2005, John Irvin)
4. Hanan (2004, Makrand Deshpande)
5. Jogo de Cena (2007, Eduardo Coutinho)
6. Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (2005, Albert Brooks)
7. Matka (2007, Anastasia Lapsui & Markku Lehmuskallio)
8. Një Milion Euro (2005, Halil Budakova)
9. The Order (2001, Sheldon Lettich)
10. Penal Battalion (2004, Nikolai Dostal)
11. Perhaps Love (2005, Peter Chan)
12. Shinsengumi (2000, Ichikawa Kon)

Johnny Ray Huston

1. Pulse (2001, Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
2. Blissfully Yours (2002, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
3. The House of Mirth (2000, Terence Davies)
4. Harmful Insect (2001, Shiota Akihiko)
5. SpaceDisco One (2007, Damon Packard)
6. The Host (2006, Bong Joon-ho)
7. To Die Like a Man (2009, João Pedro Rodrigues)
8. Agua (2006, Verónica Chen)
9. Light Is Waiting (2007, Michael Robinson)
10. Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story (2000, Shelly Dunn Fremont & Vincent Fremont)

Also restored/previously unreleased work: The Exiles (1961, Kent Mackenzie)
Honorable mentions: Battle in Heaven (2005, Carlos Reygadas), Glue (2006, Alexis dos Santos), Odete (2005, João Pedro Rodrigues), Syndromes and a Century (2006, Apichatpong Weerasethakul), This Charming Girl (2004, Lee Yoon-ki), Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2007, Philippe Parreno & Douglas Gordon)

Robert Koehler

1. In Vanda's Room (2000, Pedro Costa)
2. La libertad (2001, Lisandro Alonso)
3. Syndromes and a Century (2006, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
4. In the City of Sylvia (2007, José Luis Guerín)
5. L'Intrus (2004, Claire Denis)
6. Platform (2000, Jia Zhangke)
7. Unknown Pleasures (2002, Jia Zhangke)
8. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005, Cristi Puiu)
9. Colossal Youth (2006, Pedro Costa)
10. RR (2008, James Benning)

Michael Koresky

1. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001, Steven Spielberg)
2. Faat Kiné (2000, Ousmane Sembène)
3. Femme Fatale (2002, Brian De Palma)
4. Flight of the Red Balloon (2007, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
5. The House of Mirth (2000, Terence Davies)
6. L'Intrus (2004, Claire Denis)
7. Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch)
8. Regular Lovers (2005, Philippe Garrel)
9. Twentynine Palms (2003, Bruno Dumont)
10. What Time Is It There? (2001, Tsai Ming-liang)

Jay Kuehner

1. In the City of Sylvia (2007, José Luis Guerín)
2. La blessure (2004, Nicolas Klotz)
3. Syndromes and a Century (2006, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
4. La Ciénaga (2001, Lucrecia Martel)
5. L'Intrus (2004, Claire Denis)
6. Platform (2000, Jia Zhangke)
7. The Son (2002, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
8. Profils paysans (2001-2008, Raymond Depardon)
9. Distance (2001, Koreeda Hirokazu)
10. Yi Yi (2000, Edward Yang)
11. In the Mood for Love (2000, Wong Kar-wai)
12. RR (2008, James Benning)
13. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2007, Cristian Mungiu)
14. Café Lumière (2003, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
15. Kings and Queen (2004, Arnaud Desplechin)
16. On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate (2002, Hong Sang-soo)
17. Liverpool (2008, Lisandro Alonso)

Dennis Lim

1. Platform (2000, Jia Zhangke)
2. Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch)
3. Esther Kahn (2000, Arnaud Desplechin)
4. Café Lumière (2003, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
5. Punch-Drunk Love (2002, Paul Thomas Anderson)
6. Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch)
7. There Will Be Blood (2007, Paul Thomas Anderson)
8. Colossal Youth (2006, Pedro Costa)
9. Syndromes and a Century (2006, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
10. The Trap (2007, Adam Curtis)

Charles Mudede

1. Sleep Dealer (2000, Alex Rivera)
2. Silent Light (2007, Carlos Reygadas)
3. Daratt (2006, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun)
4. Russian Ark (2002, Alexander Sokurov)
5. In the Mood for Love (2000, Wong Kar-wai)
6. Climates (2006, Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
7. Children of Men (2006, Alfonso Cuarón)
8. Friday Night (2002, Claire Denis)
9. The Sun (2005, Alexander Sokurov)
10. Medicine for Melancholy (2008, Barry Jenkins)

Adam Nayman

1. Black Book (2006, Paul Verhoeven)
2. Dying at Grace (2003, Allan King)
3. The Son (2002, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
4. L'Intrus (2004, Claire Denis)
5. Liverpool (2008, Lisandro Alonso)
6. Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003, Thom Andersen)
7. Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch)
8. Old Joy (2006, Kelly Reichardt)
9. Platform (2000, Jia Zhangke)
10. Yi Yi (2000, Edward Yang)

Cyril Neyrat

• In Vanda's Room (2000, Pedro Costa)
• The Brown Bunny (2003, Vincent Gallo)
• Tropical Malady (2004, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
• These Encounters of Theirs (2005, Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet)
• The Sun (2005, Alexander Sokurov)
• Honor of the Knights (2006, Albert Serra)
• Death Proof (2007, Quentin Tarantino)
• RR (2007, James Benning)
• De son appartement (2007, Jean-Claude Rousseau)
• L'Heure du berger (2008, Pierre Creton)

Raya Martin

• Yi Yi (2000, Edward Yang)
• Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, Tarr Béla and Hranitzky Ágnes)
• Blissfully Yours (2002, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002, Peter Jackson)
• Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004, Lav Diaz)
• The Taste of Tea (2004, Ishii Katsuhito)
• Colossal Youth (2006, Pedro Costa)
• Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch)
• The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008, Mark Waters)

Olivier Pére

1. Russian Ark (2002, Alexander Sokurov)
2. Black Book (2006, Paul Verhoeven)
3. Death Proof (2007, Quentin Tarantino)
4. The Brown Bunny (2003, Vincent Gallo)
5. Our Beloved Month of August (2008, Miguel Gomes)
6. Birdsong (2008, Albert Serra)
7. In Vanda's Room (2000, Pedro Costa)
8. The Host (2006, Bong Joon-ho)
9. Los muertos (2004, Lisandro Alonso)
10. The Lady and the Duke (2001, Éric Rohmer)
    Triple Agent (2008, Éric Rohmer)
    The Romance of Astrée and Céladon (2007, Éric Rohmer)

Richard Porton
Best "Political" Films of the Decade

1. The Trap (2007, Adam Curtis)
2. Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (2002, Wang Bing)
3. United Red Army (2007, Wakamatsu Kōji)
4. Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel (2003, Eyal Sivan & Michel Kleifi)
5. La Commune (Paris, 1871) (2000, Peter Watkins)
6. Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003, Thom Andersen)
7. Triple Agent (2004, Eric Rohmer)
8. Police, Adjective (2009, Corneliu Porumboiu)
9. The World (2004, Jia Zhangke)
10. The Case of the Grinning Cat (2004, Chris Marker)

Kong Rithdee

1. Tropical Malady (2004, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
2. Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch)
3. Werckmeister Harmones (2000, Tarr Béla and Hranitzky Ágnes)
4. Yi Yi (2000, Edward Yang)
5. Elephant (2003, Gus Van Sant)
6. The World (2004, Jia Zhangke)
7. Caché (2005, Michael Haneke)
8. Secret Sunshine (2007, Lee Chang-dong)
9. Colossal Youth (2006, Pedro Costa)
10. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003, Tsai Ming-liang)

Jennifer Reeves

1. Lot 63, Grave C (2006, Sam Green)
2. Horizontal Boundaries (2008, Pat O'Neill)
3. Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (2005, Peter Tscherkassky)
4. Tulpan (2008, Sergey Dvortsevoy)
5. Play Pause (2007, Sadie Benning)
6. Bright Star (2009, Jane Campion)
7. Syndromes and a Century (2006, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
8. Footnotes to a House of Love (2007, Laida Lertxundi)
9. Observando el cielo (2007, Jeanne Liotta)
10. Viscera (2005, Leighton Pierce)
11. Last Days in a Lonely Place (2007, Phil Solomon)
12. Persepolis (2007, Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud)
13. Cosmetic Emergency (2007, Martha Colburn)

C.S. Roy

1. The Rebirth (2007, Kobayashi Masahiro)
2. Honor of the Knights (2006, Albert Serra)
3. The Living World (2003, Eugène Green)
4. Sweetgrass (2009, Ilisa Barbash & Lucien Castaing-Taylor)
5. Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest (2003-2008, Yang Fudong)
6. Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2007, Philippe Parreno & Douglas Gordon)
7. La libertad (2001, Lisandro Alonso)
8. Milky Way (2007, Benedek Fliegauf)
9. Jimmywork (2004, Simon Sauvé)
10. M (2009, Félix Dufour-Laperrière)

Girish Shambu
Ten unjustly forgotten festival films

1. The Long Holiday (2000, Johan van der Keuken)
2. Wild Blue, Notes for Several Voices (2000, Thierry Knauff)
3. Après la réconciliation (2000, Anne-Marie Mieville)
4. Pine Flat (2005, Sharon Lockhart)
5. Tomorrow We Move (2004, Chantal Akerman)
6. The Orphan of Anyang (2001, Wang Chao)
7. Pin Boy (2004, Ana Poliak)
8. Through the Forest (2005, Jean Paul Civeyrac)
9. A Dog's Day (2001, Murali Nair)
10. Four Women (2007, Adoor Gopalakrishnan)

Chuck Stephens

• demonlover (2002, Olivier Assayas)
• Face (2000, Sakamoto Junji)
• Gerry (2002, Gus Van Sant)
• Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003, Tsai Ming-liang)
• House of a Thousand Corpses (2002, Rob Zombie)
• I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006, Tsai Ming-liang)
• In the City of Sylvia (2007, José Luis Guerín)
• In the Mood for Love (2000, Wong Kar-wai)
• Irreversible (2002, Gaspar Noé)
• Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004, Quentin Tarantino)
• Kings of Power: 4 Billion% (2008, Paul Robertson)
• Memories of Murder (2003, Bong Joon-ho)
• Millennium Mambo (2001, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
• Los muertos (2004, Lisandro Alonso)
• Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch)
• Mysterious Object at Noon (2000, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
• Primer (2004, Shane Carruth)
• Secret Sunshine (2007, Lee Chang-dong)
• Team America: World Police (2004, Trey Parker)
• Tropical Malady (2004, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
• Trouble Every Day (2001, Claire Denis)
• Unknown Pleasures (2002, Jia Zhangke)
• What Time Is It There? (2001, Tsai Ming-liang)
• The Wire (2002-2008, David Simon)
• Zodiac (2007, David Fincher)

Michael Sicinski
Underseen, Underdiscussed Films

• Hybrid (2000, Monteith McCollum)
• Harmful Insect (2001, Shiota Akihiko)
• Group (2002, Marilyn Freedman)
• A Thousand Clouds of Peace... (2003, Julián Hernández)
• The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004, Asia Argento)
• Tokyo Magic Hour (2005, Amir Muhammad)
• Valery's Ankle (2006, Brett Kashmere)
• SpaceDisco One (2007, Damon Packard)
• Definitely, Maybe (2008, Adam Brooks)
• uncertain camera (grained time vol. 1) (2009, Goshima Kazuhiro)

Bart Testa

1. Yi Yi (2000, Edward Yang)
2. Still Life (2006, Jia Zhangke)
3. In the Mood for Love (2000, Wong Kar-wai)
4. Infernal Affairs (2002, Andrew Lau & Alan Mak)
   Infernal Affairs II (2003, Andrew Lau & Alan Mak)
   Infernal Affairs III (2003, Andrew Lau & Alan Mak)
5. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006, Tsai Ming-liang)
6. L'Intrus (2004, Claire Denis)
7. Volver (2006, Pedro Almodóvar)
8. Time of the Wolf (2003, Michael Haneke)
9. In Praise of Love (2001, Jean-Luc Godard)
10. Seasons... (2002, Phil Solomon & Stan Brakhage)

Andrew Tracy

• Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004, Adam McKay)
• The Boss of It All (2006, Lars von Trier)
• Crank (2006, Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor)
• Marseille (2004, Angela Schanelec)
  Afternoon (2006, Angela Schanelec)
• Memories of Murder (2003, Bong Joon-ho)
• Shara (2003, Kawase Naomi)
• The 3 Rooms of Melancholia (2004, Pirjo Honkasalo)
• Une vie nouvelle (2002, Philippe Grandrieux)
• Workingman's Death (2005, Michael Glawogger)
• The Yards (2000, James Gray)

Jerry White

1. Daratt (2006, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun)
2. Chunyhang (2000, Im Kwon-taek)
3. L'Enfant (2005, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
4. The Journals of Knud Rassmussen (2006, Zacharias Kunuk & Norman Cohn)
5. Helen (2008, Joe Lawlor & Christine Molloy)
   Joy (2008, Joe Lawlor & Christine Molloy)
6. I'm Not There (2007, Todd Haynes)
7. Itinéraire de Jean Bricard (2008, Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet)
8. Océan (2002, Catherine Martin)
9. Platform (2000, Jia Zhangke)
10. The Wrestlers (2000, Buddhadeb Dasgupta)

Honorable mentions: Best Hollywood film: Good Night and Good Luck (2005, George Clooney); Best television film: Les hôpitaux meurent aussi (2000, Mark Kidel); Best Welsh-language experimental documentary: Sleep Furiously (2008, Gideon Koppel)

C.W. Winter

• Blissfully Yours (2002, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
• Colossal Youth (2006, Pedro Costa)
• *Corpus Callosum (2002, Michael Snow)
• La libertad (2001, Lisandro Alonso)
• Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003, Thom Andersen)
• Notre musique (2004, Jean-Luc Godard)
• Our Beloved Month of August (2008, Miguel Gomes)
• Platform (2000, Jia Zhangke)
• The Son (2002, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
• 13 Lakes (2004, James Benning)

Others: La Commune (Paris, 1871) (2000, Peter Watkins), The Power of Nightmares (2004, Adam Curtis), The Gleaners and I (2000, Agnès Varda)

Filipe Furtado's Lists

This mixes posts on Filipe's blog and on his Letterboxd, though the former is used when a list exists on both sites.

Yearly
1957
1961
1967
1982
1986
1990
2001
2008 Part 1 2 3
2009 Part 1 2 3 4 5
2010 Part 1 2 3 4 5
2011 Part 1 2
2012 Part 1 2
2013 Updated
2014
2015
2016 Updated
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025

First Watches
2013
2014
2015
2016 Part 1 2
2017 Part 1 2 3
2018
2019

Other Yearly
2015 Shorts
2015 New Shorts
2015 Rediscoveries
2016 Brazilian Cinema
2016 Shorts
2016 Rediscoveries
2017 Brazilian Cinema
2017 Shorts
2017 Rediscoveries
2018 Brazilian Cinema
2018 Shorts
2019 Shorts
2019 Rediscoveries

Assorted
A Personal Canon 1929-1949
1990s Favorites
2000s Favorites
2010s Essentials
Best American Westerns
21st Century American Films
21st Century Foreign Films
1990s American Action and Crime Films
Favorite Brazilian Films (Paisa)
Some Favorite Brazilian Films
A Few Favorite Brazilian Films (Filme Cultura)
10 Favorite Brazilian Films From the Past 20 Years
Best Brazilian Documentaries
Favorite Comedies
Best Documentaries
100 Hong Kong Films
Favorite Non-Milkyway Post-Handover Hong Kong Films
Horror Films
100 Italian Films
1960s Westerns

(Segments of) The Chinese Cinema

This list is no longer updated, and can be found on my main site here.

As inspired by Sean Gilman's essential list ranking the Chinese-language films he's seen, I've decided to make my own paltry list. Rankings are inexact, but will be regularly updated.

1. Yi Yi (2000, Edward Yang)
2. A Touch of Zen (1971, King Hu)
3. In the Mood for Love (2000, Wong Kar-wai)
4. A Brighter Summer Day (1991, Edward Yang)
5. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003, Tsai Ming-liang)
6. Platform (2000, Jia Zhangke)
7. Dragon Inn (1967, King Hu)
8. Chungking Express (1994, Wong Kar-wai)
9. Stray Dogs (2013, Tsai Ming-liang)
10. The Hole (1998, Tsai Ming-liang)
11. Mahjong (1996, Edward Yang)
12. A City of Sadness (1989, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
13. Days of Being Wild (1990, Wong Kar-wai)
14. Ashes of Time (1994, Wong Kar-wai)
15. The Terrorizers (1986, Edward Yang)
16. Mountains May Depart (2015, Jia Zhangke)
17. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978, Lau Kar-leung)
18. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, Ang Lee)
19. A Confucian Confusion (1994, Edward Yang)
20. The Assassin (2015, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
21. Long Day's Journey Into Night (2018, Bi Gan)
22. Taipei Story (1985, Edward Yang)
23. Don't Go Breaking My Heart (2011, Johnnie To)
24. That Day, on the Beach (1983, Edward Yang)
25. Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2 (2014, Johnnie To)
26. 2046 (2004, Wong Kar-wai)
27. Hard-Boiled (1992, John Woo)
28. The Fate of Lee Khan (1973, King Hu)
29. Bullet in the Head (1990, John Woo)
30. The River (1997, Tsai Ming-liang)
31. The Grandmaster (2013, Wong Kar-wai)
32. Millennium Mambo (2001, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
33. Still Life (2006, Jia Zhangke)
34. Drug War (2012, Johnnie To)
35. Fallen Angels (1995, Wong Kar-wai)
36. Romancing in Thin Air (2012, Johnnie To)
37. Happy Together (1997, Wong Kar-wai)
38. What Time Is It There? (2001, Tsai Ming-liang)
39. Police Story (1985, Jackie Chan)
40. Nomad (1982, Patrick Tam)
41. Ash Is Purest White (2018, Jia Zhangke)
42. Legend of the Mountain (1979, King Hu)
43. Oxhide II (2009, Liu Jiayin)
44. Dangerous Encounters – First Kind (1980, Tsui Hark)
45. Raining in the Mountain (1979, King Hu)
46. The Killer (1989, John Woo)
47. The World (2004, Jia Zhangke)
48. Hero (2002, Zhang Yimou)
49. An Elephant Sitting Still (2018, Hu Bo)
50. 24 City (2008, Jia Zhangke)
51. Vive L'Amour (1994, Tsai Ming-liang)
52. School on Fire (1988, Ringo Lam)
53. As Tears Go By (1988, Wong Kar-wai)
54. Kaili Blues (2015, Bi Gan)
55. The Hedonists (2016, Jia Zhangke)
56. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006, Tsai Ming-liang)
57. A Touch of Sin (2013, Jia Zhangke)
58. Kung Fu Hustle (2004, Stephen Chow)
59. Green Snake (1993, Tsui Hark)
60. One-Armed Swordsman (1967, Chang Cheh)
61. The Goddess (1934, Wu Yonggang)
62. Blind Detective (2013, Johnnie To)
63. Goodbye South, Goodbye (1996, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
64. Exiled (2006, Johnnie To)
65. To Live (1994, Zhang Yimou)
66. Oxhide (2005, Liu Jiayin)
67. Unknown Pleasures (2002, Jia Zhangke)
68. Face (2009, Tsai Ming-liang)
69. The Odd One Dies (1997, Patrick Yau and Johnnie To)
70. Come Drink With Me (1966, King Hu)
71. The Wayward Cloud (2005, Tsai Ming-liang)
72. Daughter of the Nile (1987, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
73. City on Fire (1987, Ringo Lam)
74. Rebels of the Neon God (1992, Tsai Ming-liang)
75. Expectations (1982, Edward Yang)
76. My Blueberry Nights (2007, Wong Kar-wai)
77. SPL II: A Time for Consequences (2015, Soi Cheang)
78. Xiao Wu (1997, Jia Zhangke)
79. The Midnight After (2014, Fruit Chan)
80. Raise the Red Lantern (1991, Zhang Yimou)
81. The Mission (1999, Johnnie To)
82. A Better Tomorrow (1986, John Woo)
83. House of Flying Daggers (2004, Zhang Yimou)
84. Secret Goldfish (2016, Bi Gan)
85. Office (2015, Johnnie To)
86. Useless (2007, Jia Zhangke)
87. I Am Not Madame Bovary (2016, Feng Xiaogong)
88. Cry Me a River (2008, Jia Zhangke)
89. In the Heat of the Sun (1994, Jiang Wen)
90. I Wish I Knew (2010, Jia Zhangke)
91. Ju Dou (1990, Zhang Yimou)
92. A Family Tour (2018, Ying Liang)
93. Another Year (2016, Shengze Zhu)
94. In Our Time (1982, Tao Te-chen/Edward Yang/Ko I-chen/Chang Yi)
95. The White Storm 2: Drug Lords (2019, Herman Yau)
96. A Chinese Ghost Story (1987, Ching Siu-tung)
97. The Great Buddha+ (2017, Huang Hsin-yao)
98. Police Story 2 (1988, Jackie Chan)
99. The Poet and Singer (2012, Bi Gan)
100. Dong (2006, Jia Zhangke)
101. Three (2016, Johnnie To)
102. The Mermaid (2016, Stephen Chow)
103. Xiao Shan Going Home (1995, Jia Zhangke)
104. Mission: Impossible II (2000, John Woo)
105. Life Without Principle (2011, Johnnie To)
106. Red Sorghum (1987, Zhang Yimou)
107. The Wedding Banquet (1993, Ang Lee)
108. Turn Left, Turn Right (2003, Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai)
109. Red Cliff (2008, John Woo)
110. Red Cliff Part II (2009, John Woo)
111. The Great Wall (2016, Zhang Yimou)
112. Curse of the Golden Flower (2006, Zhang Yimou)
113. The Story of Qiu Ju (1992, Zhang Yimou)
114. A Taste of Killing and Romance (1994, Veronica Chan)
115. Pushing Hands (1991, Ang Lee)
116. Ip Man (2008, Wilson Yip)
117. Shower (1997, Zhang Yang)
118. Ip Man 2 (2010, Wilson Yip)
119. Cape No. 7 (2008, Wei Te-Sheng)
120. Secret (2007, Jay Chou)
121. Happy Times (2000, Zhang Yimou)
122. The Road Home (1999, Zhang Yimou)
123. Shadow (2018, Zhang Yimou)
124. A City Called Macau (2019, Li Shaohong)
125. People's Republic of Desire (2018, Hao Wu)
126. Forever Young (2018, Li Fangfang)
127. The Bucket (2019, Jia Zhangke)
128. Game of Death (1978, Robert Clouse)