SCFZ Sight & Sound Poll 2022

[sally]

yeah at the moment it sounds like angel's doubling the canon poll

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

That would be fun

[Angel]

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

Something like this, perhaps?
http://100evenings.blogspot.com/2013/01 ... newly.html
http://obscureforgottenunloved.blogspot.com/

yeah at the moment it sounds like angel's doubling the canon poll

I have a dream, a DtC's spin-off for next year: A poll were NONE of the +4000 films appeared on Sight & Sound lists were eligible.

[...]

Dielman getting the top slot this time around doesn't bother me because the poll only captures the moment among a certain set of film nuts, as that's all it can do. The demand is ridiculous, ten films from all of film history set apart as better than all the remaining possibilities. It makes no sense on the face of it if you were gonna take the concept too literally as a real canon since there is no design to it and it relies on competing whims of desired recognition. No one voter can really shape the poll with so many others involved, just try and seed it towards an end that one either hopes others will likewise be doing or act idiosyncratically and accept one's choices won't end up on the final list. The latter might seem the more reasonable, but it is a different kind of dead end, where there is no consensus over film history and thus its all flux. Fine if you feel that way, but there's no point to participating in a poll if you do other than self promoting your taste.

Dielman likely won't stay at the top next time, but as a signal towards recognizing things that have been slighted more than they should have been, it's a fine top choice. It's an end of the line film, in a way, a culminating idea rigorously followed with great success. It is a major influence on subsequent film history and in itself a reaction to the history of film before it that is now being questioned more than it ever has been. It's one of the best choices to serve as signal choice because it is a summation film, which makes it easier for the groups of voters to find commonality on than other choices. Once, or if, the people who care about movies really better take in the vast possibilities of film and move away from the Hollywoodized history towards seeing differences, then these kinds of polls will also open to new concepts of value as the demand for more thorough appreciation sets in and more "obscurities" get notice. It takes time, a lot of the voters are relatively young and have only been browsing the so-called greats and current stuff, so there is a lot they just can't have seen. Social media feeds the best and worst aspects of this for the need for self promotion and maintaining audience on the latter end, but with the pushback and demand of more and better attention on the former. I mean, christ, SCFZ is an outlier even in film circles for how much time we spent looking at movies that no one talks about from every era.

[flip]

there's a nyt article up, really a dialogue between their two top critics, about the s+s poll, asking whether it is too 'tasteful', and bemoaning the lack of genre films, avant-garde film, and pre-1920 film. not a mention of, e.g., the lack of indian film mentioned in this thread, though i agree with their complaints if it's only a partial list of issues

not sure exactly what the rules of a poll would be -- it could either just be a dtc-type exercise, but with a scfz flavour, or we could identify just what kinds of films are underrepped in all of these kinds of lists (dtc included) and just vote for films of those kinds

[nrh]

all of this will also shift when we get to see the individual ballots and the 100-250 slots; the list will feel very different if that range is full of expressive esoterica, hawks westerns, and non western classics like pyaasa and spring in a small town (conversely we could end up with the shawkshank redemption at 101).

the underrepped or underrated polls are always interesting because you run into the wall of what to do with something like awaara which is a major classic outside of the west (mao's favorite movie!) and almost totally outside of the canon in the english speaking world. the sort of existential question that doesn't really have an easy approach.

[sally]

https://twitter.com/matthewcr/status/16 ... 9659684864

[cinesmith]

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.

Oh dear. I dread this is a far, far too simplified idea of which gathering of fandom is at fault for such antics.

I guess I can only argue that being on LBX myself. It's a far cry from making that much of a movement in effecting the outcomes of the critics and directors. I mean Amazon now owns IMDB but I don't know if that has effected the way in which people are drawn to mainstream features over any other global films. (The face that overhauled the page layouts making it impossible to copy text data is infuriating but that's another story)

Don't get me wrong though. I have LOTS of issues with LBX for other reasons that I find the interface very flawed and problematic for how anyone is even get noticed in a sea of accounts that may service no one. (I doubt they have any efforts to remove abandoned/unused accounts)

For starters, it's really the subscription formula that even allows them to operate and with that there's more of an effort to use it as an application add-on for other social media models. (ie. adding ones 10,000 twitter followers to your posts of a snarky five word comment equates as being more significant status of popularity over any other well thought out review. Then, there's both the professional and amateur critics who post partial reviews but stake readers to go to a paywall on another website to get their full access to their material. The place is full of holes via it's content control as it acts on various levels as being a personal watch counter versus any sort of interactions.

Not unlike fb, it's outline is intended to be set on this all encompassing and adjustable tool but I find the swiss army knife conjecture to be mostly frustrating. I think of it this way. where fb was first set on connecting you with the people you know. LBX sets things in a fashion where you're not really set on 'connecting' with every soul you come across (although some fools do) but presuming that you'll track towards those who are of a more selective opinion. (ex. are you likely to follow the noob who rates everything with 5 stars or the more unusual character who draws on more obscure details or films that are less known to you?

Admittedly, it's still a mighty frustrating ordeal most of the time because it's still bloated with the pedestrian antics of the majority.
There was effort at one point to create a greatest 250 poll not unlike the Sight and Sound roster and the rule was they voters were invite only and they had to have 250 films in their submission. It still turned into something equal to that of the IMDB/Metacritic/Rotten Tomatoes fanfare because the higher counts usually fall to the lowest common denominator of choices.

[cinesmith]

As for my take on this new list. I'd argue it was effected by those films that were made available and it has more to do with Criterion than it does MUBI.
Given that Akerman's sudden heightened acknowledgement on the roster IS because that film was made widely available in the last decade. The same can be said for Close Up, Shoah, and Daisies. The majority of the entries haven't changed that much. The inclusion are more contemporary items may seem disturbing but they usually don't last long either. There's always been some movement over time of the popularity of some directors over another and some other sense of the significant names getting snubbed.

Once people see the individual votes is when you can see who is taking it seriously or in some cases where some entries just don't make any sense at all. There was a critic in the past who just voted on ten porn films and they just tabulated then like anyone else's. Another voted for the favorite films of that year or that decade being unclear on the concept. It's always baffling hodge-podge of results. It just happened to be a stunner when a new entry shot up to the top but the reality is that it was seen by more eyes and thus it made a greater impression to the majority of voters.