SCFZ Sight & Sound Poll 2022

[greennui]

Good for Chantal, but yeah, Dielmann would just about make my top 10 of fav Akerman films.

The wrong portrait of a girl made the list.

1. Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 60s in Brussels
2. The Meetings of Anna
3. The Captive
4. News from Home
5. No Home Movie
6. Je, Tu, Il, Elle 1
7. Almayer’s Folly
8. Hotel Monterey
9. Jeanne Dielman
10. Golden Eighties

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Jeanne Dielman in first?? Wow! Was not expecting that—such a huge jump, from 38 to 1st—though in retrospect, not a surprise, since it's sorta the canonical new-NotYourGrandfather'sCanon-canonical pick.

I'd prefer Vertigo or Kane, myself, but then that's no surprise This list made me feel old even though I'm not old

[rischka]

https://twitter.com/TLegoude/status/159 ... 2pBrsJo0mA

[wba]

come on - if we did a poll here on SCFZ we would easily get a better list than the S&S Top 100.
And we're just a bunch of random filmfans...

This list is a total embarassment, and as you all said the exact opposite of what has been available digitally on the net over the last 10 years for everybody to watch - the opposite of KG and all the myriads of opportunities to watch the obscurest films from all around the world.
What kind of lazy-assed so-called "critics" did they poll????

I'm not arguing against Sciamma or against anything and anyone on the list per se, but seriously: Sciamma on 30? Get Out in the list? This is still a completely western-centric "europeanized" list, with all the usual laziness regarding viewing habits reinforced once again. That's not a cinephiles list, that's not a list I want to be a part of! In fact that's not even a list I would want to be associated with...

Look at Rischka's list, that's a real list!!! A list of someone actually interested in what film history has to offer.

青蛇/Green Snake 1993
Bildnis einer Trinkerin 1979
大阪の宿/An Inn at Osaka1954
만다라/Mandala 1981
Vredens dag 1943
Viaggio in Italia 1954
माटी मानस/Mind of Clay 1985
Wagon Master 1950
At Sea 2007
Dishonored 1931

If I were an editor at S&S I would be embarrased to publish this lazy excuse of a list. And Akerman on the No. 1 spot can't cover this up.

[RenaultR]

I'd say I mostly share this forum's disillusionment with the new S&S list. Admittedly, my own top ten would probably be more "conventional" than that of many people on this forum (Vertigo and L'Avventura would both be in there, for instance), but all the same.

I probably don't rely on KG as much as some others, although I do have an account there. I guess my reluctance to torrent is more about avoiding getting caught in the cookie jar and less of a moral stance. Even the offerings on the Criterion Channel of films they haven't released physically can be overwhelming and disorienting for me at times. Hehe.

Interestingly, for all the talk of availability affecting the poll results, some of the selections were probably "KG films" and/or obscure "Mubian pet favorites" in the first half of the 2010s. I'm thinking of Daisies and Touki Bouki to use two examples, or even La Cienaga, which is in the directors top 100. The Martel was initially a KG discovery for me, and I initially found out about Daisies, Touki Bouki, and probably Black Girl as well through Mubians preaching for expansion of the canon to include more neglected regions of the world, and this forum is after all an offshoot of the old Mubi forum.

On a side note, I'm still baffled by the neglect of Monteiro's work. You'd think his films would at least have available HD masters by this point.

[sally]

MOST PEOPLE DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO KG THO!!!! so 'digital availability' is nonsense & some people will grow up as cinephiles not even aware that it exists, so will not even be aware that thousands of films exist if they aren't on bluray....and now that central forums like mubi are gone (fuck you mubi forever and ever), they will never even become aware.


you want a better list, you need films everyone can access and a central place to discuss them. not a thousand inaccessible niche ghettoes where everyone gradually loses a real knowledge of film history...(hence the lack of even western classics like bunuel, hawks, rohmer etc)

[RenaultR]

Well I think Letterboxd is in theory intended to be that "central place".

My own two cents: The 2012 critics list represented the Mubi-fication of the film canon while the 2022 list represents the Letterboxd-ification of the film canon.

[wba]

MOST PEOPLE DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO KG THO!!!! so 'digital availability' is nonsense & some people will grow up as cinephiles not even aware that it exists,

Yeah, but that was before 2012. Since then you have dozens of other sites on the net all over the world which offer the same (or even more!) films than KG and without the need of signing up or torrenting or whatever. Mostly you can watch them on the likes of Youtube and such. My mention of KG (which itself is totally outdated today - though i still love it of course) was just a stand-in for the myriads of possibilities the internet nowadays offers to anyone who has access to it to watch thousands of obscure movies you couldusually only see at select cinemas in the 20th century or get your hands on in "elite" clubs like KG in the 2000s.

[wba]

Interestingly, for all the talk of availability affecting the poll results, some of the selections were probably "KG films" and/or obscure "Mubian pet favorites" in the first half of the 2010s. I'm thinking of Daisies and Touki Bouki to use two examples, or even La Cienaga, which is in the directors top 100. The Martel was initially a KG discovery for me, and I initially found out about Daisies, Touki Bouki, and probably Black Girl as well through Mubians preaching for expansion of the canon to include more neglected regions of the world, and this forum is after all an offshoot of the old Mubi forum.

Not really, as Touki Bouki and Daisies are two classics of "counter-cinema" post-68 from the 80s and 90s (as canonical as it gets - Black Girl as well) and La Cienaga was touted as the hottest shit ever amongst cinephiles when it was released (and people still went to the cinemas) in 2001. KG is of course a quite elitist space and place as well (but that's for another discussion).

[rischka]

https://twitter.com/BBCWorld/status/159 ... tdHnkgeOaA

[Marketa]

I don’t have too much problem with Jeanne Dielman at 1 because it’s an upgrade at least on Vertigo and Citizen Kane and I’m happy for Akerman to get some love but it’s not my favourite of hers.

Even accounting for what’s available on blu-ray in the UK & US, it’s a very weak, largely ignorant list.

It's really baffling to see no Bunuel, Rohmer or Resnais make the cut and The Portrait of a Lady on Fire is the only one of the recent films that I thought was any good, but it is of course ludicrous to have it at 30 and Get Out, Moonlight and Parasite should be nowhere near that list.

I had hoped Marketa might make the cut given its long availability on Criterion but that was always a long shot I guess.

[...]

It's such a narrow method of coming up with a list that it virtually ensures certain outcomes, but not all for the bad, I mean the whole idea of a "canon", even one as poorly constructed as this, does rely on the idea of commonality of acceptance from those who are informed on the subject and this list covers that via the body of films most widely available under the general umbrella of wide spread acclaim. It obviously could be better, but it is at least improved in the sense of moving beyond some out-dated notions of "what" is acceptable as worthy.

That's a big hurdle that needed to be overcome before better winnowing the options, then there is the need to find better paths to distribution/availability that people will adopt in a wider pattern. Baby steps more than a huge jump, but the right direction at least. (Okay, I sorta screwed up the hurdle element of the metaphor with the baby steps reference, but, seriously, asking people to pick only ten movies out of film history as best is unavoidably fucked up and getting a list of pure individual taste isn't a better answer, though, sure, maybe fun in a different way, just not fitting the goal.)

[karl]

An embarrassing but hardly surprising showing of how critical standards keep slipping: or, what happens when you let "bloggers" and such vote in these polls.

[rischka]

https://twitter.com/thejoshl

josh lewis has some of the director ballots on his profile

[nrh]

this is somehow the funniest of the director lists

https://twitter.com/thejoshl/status/159 ... 64ITxan1Gg

[rischka]

https://twitter.com/thejoshl/status/159 ... 5Tc0BT3B7g

and here's a man who remembers where he comes from ♥

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Ti West gave 10 American films, so I was stoked to see Koberidze confidently give 6 Georgian ones.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2022/12/m ... ound-list/

[rischka]

i'm generally down with JRo but i feel like i need to watch AI again

[nrh]

i'm generally down with JRo but i feel like i need to watch AI again

he's right about ai

[...]

Yeah, the Spielberg/Kubrick influences really do balance out to something remarkable. Deceptively immediate, but with a lot of cross currents underneath the surface.

[rischka]

only saw it once and it was soon after it came out. i remember being deeply disturbed by the scene where they left haley joel osment in the woods

[wba]

https://twitter.com/thejoshl/status/159 ... 5Tc0BT3B7g

and here's a man who remembers where he comes from ♥

Finally a decent list from a filmmaker!

[rischka]

https://twitter.com/nelkendahl/status/1 ... XV7asBDjEQ

this is my favorite ballot i've seen ♥♥♥

[wba]

looks better than most, yes.

[greennui]

She's a good follow on

[Curtis, baby]

jeanne dielman is #1? somehow that bores me. and i rly love that movie. its just... uh, whys it always some predictable prestige shit? u could tell at akerman's passing that she was going to be elevated in the eyes of canon, b/c the "timing was right" or whatever. seeing sight and sound lists makes me feel icky being a film fan

[rischka]

Remember the great mubi consensus list

[flip]

i have a completely unformed idea that we might do a poll in response to this s+s list, where we exclusively vote for films we feel are undervalued whether because they aren't widely available, or because of biases among s+s voters, etc. if that sounds interesting to enough people we can work out if we need any rules

[wba]

I'm always in for a list.
But the concept needs to be fleshed out a bit, I think. Undervalued sounds a bit vague.