Dear readers, I watch a lot of movies. Then again, what else was I supposed to do throughout yet another pandemic year with city-wide lockdowns and curfews? So I set up my home with a big TV and a 55 inch tv stand with mount so I can watch it comfortable. Which is why it was no real struggle at all to think of enough titles to make this list of the 25 best documentaries of 2021. Nor why I do not consider it the least bit excessive. Movies are great, so let’s celebrate them! Each of the films listed are deserving of your eyes, although often for very different reasons—I hope my pseudo-weekly reviews and below captions help explain why.
It was a strong year for films about artists and art more broadly. Nearly half the films on the list below are related to film, music, painting, dance and/or the people to make them. Queer themed docs were also prevalent. The longest film here is 194 minutes. The shortest is 61. There is almost a 50/50 between male and female directors across 25 films that travel the globe from sex doll factories in China to political campaigns in Zimbabwe, a jail cell in Guantanamo Bay and the streets of Harlem…
THE 25 BEST DOCUMENTARIES OF 2020
25. NO STRAIGHT LINES: THE RISE OF QUEER COMICS, Vivian Kleiman On one hand, this is a rather simple doc. Functional and linear. But as I watched this colourfully assembled film, I was struck by how the story of queer comics is just as much the story of a revolution (+ Fun Home). Like the comics themselves, No Straight Lines educates as well as entertains, telling a story of how many found their voice through the fanciful and the erotic, the intergalactic and the down the earth. And, to me, that was something special. [Where to see it: Still in festival rotation; released limited theatrically in November]
24. THE FOREVER PRISONER, Alex Gibney
Alex Gibney’s works are often no fuss—they have to be given how prolific he is—journalistic undertakings where he reveals fact after fact about one form of American crime after another. This one is no different, boldened by first-person illustrations in the place of illegally destroyed evidence about the story of Abu Zubaydah. Used as a guinea pig by the United States government, Gibney traces his story through an embarrassment of shameful revelations. That we sit it comfort hearing about all of this only confounds the effect it has. [Where to see it: Streaming on HBOMax]
23. FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO, Lynne Sachs From my review: It’s a deeply personal work of biography (via autobiography), of course. … Sachs, in fact, builds her own cinematic grammar to help construct an understanding of her father, reckoning with the mistakes that lead to where they all are in 2020. [Where to see it: Streaming on the Criterion Channel]
22. FAYA DAYI, Jessica Beshir
This sombre doc from Ethiopia is perhaps a touch too elliptical in its narrative (if that’s what you could even call it). Nevertheless, Beshir’s own striking black-and-white cinematography really does lend it a quality that feels unique, reconfiguring the way we look at its own story and Africa more broadly. It’s probably no surprise I thought instantly to Ralf Schmerberg’s Hommage á Noir. This is a film of tone and poetry and images that pierce out from the dust, so much so that I am willing to extend some cultural leniency in the process. [Where to see it: Streaming on the Criterion Channel]
21. CIVIL WAR (OR, WHO DO WE THINK WE ARE), Rachel Boynton From my review: Civil War finds interesting crevices within which to explore education and class-driven divides and the way the war’s lessons are taught and absorbed by the next generations. Spoiler alert: it’s not entirely comforting. [Where to see it: Streaming on Peacock, rentable online]
20. CAN YOU BRING IT: BILL T. JONES AND D-MAN IN THE WATERS, Tom Hurwitz, Rosalynde LeBlanc From my review: Where others may glide over entire works like a brisk walk through a gallery, there is far more nuance to be found in the way Can You Bring It illuminates on D-Man’s thorny subtexts and subtle textures. [Where to see it: Rentable online]
19. WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED: A HISTORY OF FOLK HORROR, Kier-La Janisse
3hr+ documentaries about scary movies are surprisingly common, but this dissection of where cinema meets cultural manifestations of violence and horror is probably the best one yet. It’s academic—perhaps too much so for its own good, but this long (194 minutes!) and in-depth history is wonderfully, even wittily assembled, thoroughly detailed and richly educational. [Where to see it: Streaming on Shudder]
18. THE LOST LEONARDO, Andreas Koefoed
Sometimes documentaries can just be really entertaining. Easily the best doc I’ve seen in some time about the world of fine art world—and I have seen a few—because while it luxuriates in much of the scene’s pretentions, it also interrogates them and the absurd clash of money, ego and power that come with it. This isn’t just a film about how great it is to have money, but about what comes from it. It lost me a little bit when it got into Tenet territory, but it’s a exhilirating story. [Where to see it: Rentable online]
17. NO ORDINARY MAN, Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt From my review: It dismantles the very politics of disclosure, and tells its story of self-discovery with empathy and tenderness while utilising film craft in a way that offers genuine inclusive insight. [Where to see it: Rentable online]
16. WITCHES OF THE ORIENT, Julien Faraut In the depths of yet another months-long lockdown, the Tokyo Olympics actually proved to be a surprising diversion. Surprising because recent editions went by without much notice. Nestled alongside those was Witches of the Orient, a spiky (pun unintended) documentary about perhaps the best volleyball team of all time that emerged out of a Japanese factory’s recreation program and took its players to the 1984 Olympics. Julien Faraut (director of another sports doc, John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection) injects a whole lot of style including manga illustrations when he isn’t letting us luxuriate in the company of these lovely, now older champions.
15. LISTENING TO KENNY G, Penny Lane From my review: What makes Listening to Kenny G so invigorating of a watch is because of the greater story within which this narrative is placed. One that interrogates the controversial anti-populous appeal of the multi-instrumentalist’s smooth jazz stylings from all angles. [Where to see it: Streaming on HBOMax]
14. MOMENTS LIKE THIS NEVER LAST, Cheryl Dunn
Cheryl Dunn’s second feature in ten years is a portrait of an artist who, it seems, was a complete dickhead. Which is what lends it a fascinating friction. Capturing a strange post-9/11 commercialisation of contemporary punk, it straddles a really fine line of celebrating Dash Snow, while also wanting to get underneath. Like another artist portrait further up the list, Cheryl Dunn’s follow-up to 2013’s Everybody Street is cut with the ferocious spirit of its subject, making copious use of archival footage and Dunn’s own material that, like the art world money that came his way, intoxicates. Was Snow for real, though? Who can tell…? [Where to see it: Streaming on MUBI, rentable online]
13. THE VELVET QUEEN, Marie Amigut
A nature documentary that is more concerned with patience and waiting than it is Attenborough style up-close education or the biographical anthropomorphising of last year’s unconventional Oscar winner My Octopus Teacher. Beautifully shot (although, as good as it is, Warren Ellis and Nick Cave’s score gets in the way of the sounds of nature from time to time) and richly rewarding in its conclusion. I was surprised by Marie Amigut’s debut feature. It just won the Lumière in France. [Where to see it: Currently in limited theatrical release]
12. NORTH BY CURRENT, Angelo Madsen Minax From my review: Minax tells the story of his family in sombre tones but with affection as well as a keen eye to collage and even a slight avant-garde sensibility. [Where to see it: Streaming on PBS; still in festival rotation]
11. SUMMER OF SOUL (…OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED), Questlove From my review: …Questlove has used this opportunity (his first as a director) to not just string together the material filmed over those six weeks. Rather, he has used it to explore what made those six weeks so special in the first place. [Where to see it: Streaming on Hulu and Disney+]
10. PRESIDENT, Camilla Nielsson
Camilla Nielsson’s earlier feature, Democrats, about the political plights of Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe, was mere preparation for President, a compelling film of two starkly differing halves. In one, the hope of a new dawn for the African nation is on the horizon. Both politically and visually, it evokes the era of Obama as Nielsson’s camera captures the emphatic crowds and playbooking. Its second half, is a legal thriller that bolds, italicises and underlines just why the first half was so important. Impeccable work. [Where to see it: Currently in limited theatrical release]
9. THE VELVET UNDERGROUND, Todd Haynes From my review: Haynes pushes the concept of a conventional bio-doc about as far as he can while remaining something your average punter might potentially watch on Apple TV+… But its Haynes’ eye as a master stylist within his knack for heightened drama that gives The Velvet Underground what makes it special. [Where to see it: Streaming on AppleTV+]
8. FLEE, Jonas Poher Rasmussen From my review: The key to the success of Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s film is that it embraces traditional documentary form as much as it pushes it… [Where to see it: Currently in limited theatrical release]
7. LITTLE GIRL, Sébastien Lifshitz The most recent discovery and latest addition to the list; sorry Questlove, maybe an Oscar will have to suffice instead of a place in this top ten. Sébastien Lifshitz’s direction here is among the very top highlights of the entire list, following moments major and minor in the life of Sasha, an eight-year-old transgender child. The filmmaker quite masterfully observes with humane patience and deep empathy for this family of just very nice people as they confront an all-too-unforgiving society head on. Heartbreaking and inspiring. [Where to see it: Rentable online]
6. WOJNAROWICZ: F**K YOU F*GGOT F**KER, Chris McKim From my review: Big, boldly stylized and defiantly queer; it’s a documentary about an artist that, for once, feels truly in sync with its subject’s style. “I’m not gay as in ‘I love you’, I’m queer as in fuck off!” [Where to see it: Rentable online]
5. THE ANNOTATED FIELD GUIDE OF ULYSSES S. GRANT, Jim Finn From my review: …Finn mixes narrated passages like Ken Burns, an avant-garde musical soundtrack, and playful battle recreations using roadside tourist trap trinkets, board games and playing cards. I found it an entrancing and divine work of experimental historical documentary. [Where to see it: Streaming on OVID]
4. ASCENSION, Jessica Kingdon Finds stark yet cinematically witty ways to portray China’s economic shift. From sex doll factories to butler school and the pomp and circumstance of performative capitalistic excess, Kingdon uses cinematography, editing and music in some really extraordinary ways. Hard to believe this is the filmmaker’s first feature given how precise and refined it is. And in a sea of films about China, it stands tallest. [Where to see it: Streaming on Paramount+]
3. BULLETPROOF, Todd Chandler From my review: Handler’s quite remarkable film takes something of a more removed tactic with its subject—the scourge of mass shootings in American high schools and the efforts made to avert such disasters happening in the future.
2. STATE FUNERAL, Sergei Loznitsa One of my favourite directors delivered once again with this beast of a documentary and a true feat of editing. Perhaps even better than The Event, which I ranked as the 7th best doc of the last decade, so… you know. That’s pretty damn good! Masterfully connects the mourning for Stalin across the USSR in ways that captures both the pomp and the absurdity and the mundanity. It will most likely not be for many people, but if you have jived to Loznitsa’s wavelengths before, don’t miss it. [Where to see it: Streaming on MUBI, Rentable online]
1. PROCESSION, Robert Greene From my review: It’s become somewhat predictable that a new Robert Greene will challenge an audience as much as it enthrals. He doesn’t exactly pick the most digestible of subject matter, but the way he comes at them is always so interesting and refreshingly unique that it becomes more than just a dour excursion into humanity’s darkest corners…. His latest, the Netflix-distributed Catholic Church abuse drama Procession is no different. More so, it’s the best documentary of the year. [Where to see it: Streaming on Netflix]
And there you go, folks. Another year of documentaries down. You can follow me on Letterboxd to see everything I watch and keep following Doc Corner for (usually) weekly reviews.
In
2021, Mimesis held its first-ever hybrid (in-person + virtual) Documentary
Festival, hosted in August by the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder, Colorado with
major support from the Stewart Family Foundation. An event attended by hundreds
of artists, students, scholars, and members of the community, MDF showcased
almost 100 works by some of the most dynamic voices in documentary and
ethnographic media exploring the pressures and possibilities of contemporary
global culture. This year’s Festival also included Day Residue –
a workshop with Opening Night Artist Lynne Sachs, a Masterclass with Featured
Artist Pedro Costa, and the latest edition of Flaherty x Boulder entitled
Solace in the Shadows.
Programming
at MDF 2021 was described by attendees as “tremendous – always illuminating,
rigorous, and thoughtful” and “excellent–thought-provoking, boundary-pushing,
and enjoyable.” This could not have beenaccomplished without the
tireless work of our dedicated programming team who crafted programs that
brought important ideas together to amplify artists’ voices. Thank you, Sarah
Biagini, Luiza Parvu, Laurids Sonne, and Michelle Rupprecht. Your work is
deeply appreciated.
The
technical and administrative execution of the festival was made possible by the
indefatigable Festival Director Curt Heiner, Assistant Michelle Rupprecht,
Social Media Manager Sophia Schelle, Documentary Arts Coordinator Nima
Bahrehmand, Copywriter Morgan Murphy, and staffer Diana Wilson. Thank you so
much for all your work.
Thank
you to all the staff at the Dairy, with a special mention to Glenn Webb and
Shay Wescott. And a very special thanks to Flaherty x Boulder programmers
Kelsey White, and L u m i a for two wonderful programs.
And
most of all, thank you to Mimesis artists, who contributed their work to our
community and who traveled to Boulder, either virtually or in person, to be
together in this difficult time. Your work and your presence are what make this
event so special.
Jury Awards A House in Pieces – Best Documentary One Image, Two Acts – Best Short Documentary A New England Document – Emerging Artist The Mississippi – Documentary Arts
Audience Awards Film About a Father Who – Best Feature Documentary The Whelming Sea – Best Short Documentary The Final Touch – Emerging Artist Blowback – Documentary Arts
Thank
you to the MDF 2021 Jury for their thoughtful consideration of these
outstanding works. This year’s jurors were Jessica Oreck, Priyanka Chhabra,
Toma Peiu, Kelly Sears, Jim Supanick, Rachel Chanoff, Maura Axelrod, L u m i a,
and Kelsey White.
Congratulations
to the 2021 Festival winners!
Honorable
mentions were given by the MDF jury to Sean Hanley for The Whelming Sea,
Elizabeth Brun for 3xShapes of Home, and Jennifer Boles for The
Reversal.
Throughout the month of February, the Madrid cultural center presents a cycle in which the filmmakers themselves and their families are the protagonists of the films.
The permanent program of contemporary cinema at La Casa Encendida (Madrid) will focus, throughout the month of February, on family film albums. Thus, the films in the Family Album cycle “explore the domestic memory of their protagonists, delving into the space of everyday life, either from the present or resorting to archives from the past, materials, the latter, which were initially conceived for their intimate enjoyment, but now they are resignified, transforming those memories of family life into images that appeal to the collective”.
In the series, two filmmakers, Lynne Sachs in Film About a Father Who and Mercedes Gaviria in Like the Sky After It Rained , study their relationships with their respective fathers, both men with powerful and absorbing personalities. For her part, in Esquirlas , Natalia Garayalde reconstructs a tragic event that occurred 25 years ago, based on videos she recorded as a child; and Aitor Merino portrays his family in Fantasia, a reflection on the passage of time that converts, precisely, that lived time into cinematographic time. Four films in which, as in any family album, the images collected in them will survive the bodies. The cycle of La Casa Encendida is made with the collaboration of Enrique Piñuel.
Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 February: Fantasy , by Aitor Merino (Spain, 2021).The cruise ship, one of the (not) most fictional places in reality, where time is suspended in a kind of dreamlike limbo and which in this case, as if that were not enough, bears the name of Fantasy, becomes a machine of the time in which the brothers Aitor and Amaia, who are close to turning fifty, are once again the children of parents who, due to their age, should be grandparents. This scenario serves to begin to unfold a choreography of family life, which already in the daily life of the home makes present the reality of the passage of time, reflecting on life as a couple, relationships, memory, old age, the future and the fear of absence A portrait as tender as it is rigorous, of a family that also serves Aitor Merino (director of Asier ETA biok) to establish a genealogy of their ancestors, transcending the domestic to become universal.
Saturday, February 12 and Sunday, February 13 : Like the sky after it rained , by Mercedes Gaviria (Colombia, 2020) . Mercedes Gaviria returns to her hometown, Medellín, to work on the filming of La mujer del animal, the last film by his father, the legendary Colombian filmmaker Víctor Gaviria, a director who for years, between shooting and shooting, spent his domestic life filming his family, now providing an immense archive to work on. The coexistence of these two generations of filmmakers provides an intimate look at family relationships, presences and absences, memories and silences that reflect the contradictions of every family. Throughout the film, the distance between father and daughter is evident in several situations, although the shared passion for cinema is above all else.
Saturday, February 19 and Sunday, February 20 : Esquirlas , by Natalia Garayalde (Argentina, 2020). On November 3, 1995, the military factory in Río Tercero, a town in Córdoba where the Garayalde family lived, exploded, causing thousands of projectiles to be fired, leaving behind seven dead and dozens injured and homeless. Natalia and her sister, from the innocence of childhood, recorded the moments after the explosion, as well as the daily life of the town, marked by the tragedy, in the following days. Over time, what was presumed to be an accident was uncovered as one of the most terrifying events in recent Argentine history, with the illegal sale of weapons destined for the Balkan war by the government of Carlos Menem and state terrorism. to hide evidence. 25 years later, the director reappropriates her own material to resignify it,
Saturday, February 26 and Sunday, February 27: Film About a Father Who , by Lynne Sachs (United States, 2020).A kaleidoscopic portrait filmed, between 1984 and 2019, in multiple formats, Super 8, 16mm, VHS, HD, in which Lynne Sachs delves into the controversial figure of her father, Ira Sachs Sr., a bon vivant from Utah, Extravagant in appearance, an entrepreneur in the hotel industry, manipulative, selfish and charismatic seducer, he led a life full of secrets, had nine children (among them is also the filmmaker Ira Sachs Jr.) with five women, some of whom remained hidden. for the rest of the family for years. The film reflects on the life of this man and how his decisions affected the entire family, and is also a suggestive study of the passage of time both in form and substance.
At Seventh Row, we pride ourselves on seeking out the best hidden gems that nobody’s talking about to ensure that our readers never miss a great film again.
We spent a large part of 2021 writing an ebook called Subjective realities: The art of creative nonfiction. Seventh Row as a publication has always been interested in nonfiction cinema, but it wasn’t until Subjective realities that we realised just how much vital work is being done right now in the documentary landscape.
You’ll see on this list films like Still Processing, Procession, and North by Current, that question how filmmaking can be a tool to help people process grief and trauma. You’ll find films like No Ordinary Man and John Ware Reclaimed, which use documentary as a way to reclaim historical narratives about marginalised people. There’s films on this list that interrogate family bonds, colonialism, and immigration, all in innovative and deeply empathetic ways. They prove that there’s no greater tool than nonfiction to question how stories are told, and to tell new ones.
Film About a Father Who is one of the best documentaries of 2021.
From the introduction to our profile of Lynne Sachs: “In the 1980s, documentary filmmaker Lynne Sachs started filming her father, Ira Sachs, a gregarious, womanising businessman. Now, three decades later, she’s finally finished making Film About a Father Who, a sprawling chronicle of her father’s life, and the children, wives, and girlfriends he left in his wake. That includes Lynne, her sister Dana, and her brother Ira Jr. (also a filmmaker). It also includes the six other children that their father had with various different women.
Film About a Father Who feels like a culmination of a career of family-focused work; it’s ambitious, attempting to take in the whole scope of Ira Sachs Sr.’s life. In non-chronological fragments, through footage spanning from the present day back to 1965, Sachs seeks to understand the complicated, unknowable figure of her father. In the end, the film doesn’t aim to be a comprehensive character study of Ira Sachs Sr.; Sachs realises that she has only so much access to her father’s mind, especially now that his declining health means that he can’t speak that much. Instead, she works with what she does have: access to herself, and to an extent, her siblings, to examine the bruises that a father leaves on his children, and how they attempt to heal.” Read the full profile.
Film About a Father Who is streaming on Criterion Channel in Canada and the US. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on where it’s streaming.
A selection of poll ballots from filmmakers, including Megan Griffiths, Lloyd Kaufman and Sandi Tan, choosing their best of 2021.
Late last year, Talkhouse Film contributors and a select few friends of the site voted on their favorite theatrical releases of 2021; the aggregated results will be published on Talkhouse tomorrow. Below are ballots from a selection of the filmmakers who took part in the voting process.
Michael Gallagher 1. Pig 2. Licorice Pizza 3. Some Kind of Heaven 4. Shiva Baby 5. Old Henry 6. Film About A Father Who 7. The Killing of Two Lovers 8. King Richard 9. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar 10. Zola
Gillian Wallace Horvat 1. Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar 2. Old 3. Zola 4. Film About A Father Who (this was on my list last year but it got a theatrical release this year so happy to have it back on) 5. The Trouble With Being Born 6. Ema 7. The Last Duel 8. Chaos Walking (with the original Charlie Kaufman script that I can only imagine) 9. Things Heard & Seen 10. Paul Schrader says it’s disingenuous not to put your own film on your year end list if you like it, and I like it and I live in fear of contradicting Paul Schrader so: I Blame Society
Notes
2021 was the year of go big or go home. If in this year of straitened resources and universal misery you weren’t trying something new, wild, or insane… I honestly don’t think you should be doing this job. This is not the time to play it safe. While some of the films on my list weren’t perfect, I respected their scope and the director’s fortitude to hold on to their vision in spite of what I’m sure were copious notes. There’s a lot of films that I expect would go in the list that I haven’t watched like Titane, Benedetta and Zeros and Ones, and there’s a lot that hasn’t come out in L.A. and is not available to a non-critic non-guild member but I’m sure I would have included The Worst Person in the World and Bad Luck Banging if I had the chance to see them.
FULL LIST
Vashti Anderson
1. Judas and the Black Messiah dir. Shaka King
2. Titane dir. Julia Doucournau
3. The Green Knight dir. David Lowery
4. Lamb dir. Valdemar Johansson
5. Annette dir. Leos Carax
6. Licorice Pizza dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
7. Concrete Cowboy dir. Ricky Staub
8. Perfume de Gardenias dir. Gisela Rosario
9. King Richard dir. Reinaldo Marcus Green
10. Want to see: Memoria dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Notes Titane – At first, I found the body horror hard to bear, especially because of the profound violence to the female protagonist’s body in particular. What kept me watching was the fact that it was directed by a woman, and I was interested in Doucournau’s vision and where she was going with it. In the end, the intensely visceral storytelling stayed with me, made me think about our impulses, our bodies, our pain. It seems to pull from one of my favorite documentaries, The Imposter, where humans bypass truth for a whiff of happiness.
The Green Knight dir. David Lowery – Instead of Hollywoodizing the original text, Lowery makes it even more curious, more intriguing, and more ambiguous about heroism. It does what most of my favorite films do, which is to take risks and walk the line of genre, in this case horror and epic. Dev Patel, another South Asian man in a prominent leading role (I mentioned Riz Ahmed last year), and Sarita Choudhury in the role she was made to play, are wins for non-conformative casting. Also loved the Jane’s Addiction album cover reference in the opening shot.
Lamb dir. Valdimar Jóhannsson – The opening sequence is absolutely killer; animals start the story, with subtext and point of view, their heightened sense of smell and hearing part of the experience. Humans barely say a thing, but I could feel their deepest desires. Perhaps representative of our collective anxiety about profound loss, the idea of parenting, in some way or another, appears in so many great films this year.
Rod Blackhurst
1. Dune
2. Antlers
3. A Quiet Place Part II
4. In the Heights
5. Titane
6. Pig
7. The Card Counter
8. The Green Knight
9. The Power of the Dog
10. C’mon C’mon
Cheryl Dunn
1. Summer of Soul
2. The Power of the Dog
3. Parallel Mothers
4. Licorice Pizza
5. The Velvet Underground
6. Moments Like This Never Last
7. Paper & Glue
8. The First Wave
9. Spencer
10. Shiva Baby
Ferdinando Cito Filomarino
1. The Card Counter
2. First Cow
3. Annette
4. The Power of The Dog
5. Days
6. Memoria
7. Undine
8. The Hole
9. France
10. Summer of Soul
Notes
Unfortunate amount of films seen at home this year. Many films that came out during the pandemic deserve to be reassessed!
Alex H. Fischer
1. Licorice Pizza
2. The Hand of God
3. Bergman Island
4. The Souvenir Part II
5. The French Dispatch
6. Annette
7. Titane
8. Judas and the Black Messiah
9. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (Sundance)
10. Red Rocket
Notes
ALSO! Mia Hansen-Love’s All is Forgiven (2007, but only released in theaters this year in the U.S.) at Metrograph)
Patrick Forbes
1. No Time to Die
2. The Power of the Dog
3. Belfast
4. Flee
5. The Tender Bar
6. The Rescue
7. Last Night in Soho
8. Licorice Pizza
9. C’mon C’mon
10. The Velvet Underground
Notes
Normally I hate Bond; meaningless stunts, stiff upper lips, and stiffer acting. But I loved No Time to Die. The photography was exquisite. The direction by Cary Fukanaga brilliant, turning Daniel Craig into a compelling, totemic figure, the camera trained on his every flicker of expression. And lo’ the script actually meant something – pain, love, loss, female strength. Not topics that have troubled Bond scriptwriters hitherto. And above all, a brilliant communal experience; a reminder of the power of cinema. The small boy in front of me who spilt his pop-corn in horror as Craig, sorry Bond, died; the gasp as Lea Seydoux said goodbye; the cheer that greeted the final caption, “James Bond will return.” He better had.
Michael Gallagher
1. Pig
2. Licorice Pizza
3. Some Kind of Heaven
4. Shiva Baby
5. Old Henry
6. A Film About A Father Who
7. The Killing of Two Lovers
8. King Richard
9. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar
10. Zola
Jordan Graham
1. Titane
2. The Wanting Mare
3. The French Dispatch
4. Spencer
5. Licorice Pizza
6. C’mon C’mon
7. Red Rocket
8. The Green Knight
9. Lamb
10. My Heart Won’t Beat Unless You Tell It To
Notes
Films I was hoping to see that might have made the list is: Memoria, Vortex, The Worst Person in the World, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Rang Zong.
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
1. The Rescue
2. Summer of Soul
3. King Richard
4. The French Dispatch
5. Spencer
6. No Time to Die
7. The Sparks Brothers
8. Nomadland
9. Minari
10. Dune
Megan Griffiths
1. C’mon C’mon
2. The Lost Daughter
3. Don’t Look Up
4. Drive My Car
5. The Last Duel
6. I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking)
7. No Sudden Move
8. The Novice
9. East of the Mountains
10. King Richard
Chadd Harbold
1. West Side Story (Steven Spielberg)
2. Zeros and Ones (Abel Ferrara)
3. The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion)
4. Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson)
5. The Beatles: Get Back (Peter Jackson)
6. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
7. The Card Counter (Paul Schrader)
8. Old (M. Night Shyamalan)
9. Annette (Leos Carax)
10. NYC Epicenters 9/11➔2021½ (Spike Lee)
Notes
Honorable Mentions: Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Benedetta, Cry Macho, Drive My Car, Dune, F9, The French Dispatch, Keep Punching: The Making of Rocky Vs. Drago by Sylvester Stallone, The Last Duel, Malignant, The Many Saints of Newark, The Matrix Resurrections, Naomi Osaka, No Sudden Move, Procession, Siberia, The Souvenir: Part II, Stillwater, The Velvet Underground, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2021: reRunning Happy Life by Michael M. Bilandic
Chad Hartigan
1. Ema
2. Licorice Pizza
3. Judas and the Black Messiah
4. Annette
5. Little Girl
6. The Last Duel
7. West Side Story
8. Shiva Baby
9. Mandibles
10. The Green Knight
Notes
I am very grateful that I got to see 9 of these top 10 films in a theater with an audience. Long may it continue!
Jim Hemphill
1. The Last Duel
2. Bad Trip
3. Cinderella
4. Benedetta
5. The Matrix: Resurrections
6. Licorice Pizza
7. No Time to Die
8. The Card Counter
9. Red Rocket
10. Cry Macho
Notes
In a year that saw several terrific musicals (In the Heights, West Side Story, etc.), the best of the bunch was Kay Cannon’s spectacularly entertaining Cinderella, a deliriously romantic and hilarious pop epic that deserves a lot more credit than it has been given.
Taylor Hess
1. The Power of the Dog
2. Quo Vadis, Aida?
3. The Truffle Hunters
4. Licorice Pizza
5. Bergman Island
6. Ascension
7. King Richard
8. Bo Burnham: Inside
9. Drive My Car
10. Lapsis
Gillian Wallace Horvat
1. Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar
2. Old
3. Zola
4. A Film About A Father Who (this was on my list last year but it got a theatrical release this year so happy to have it back on)
5. The Trouble With Being Born
6. Ema
7. The Last Duel
8. Chaos Walking (with the original Charlie Kaufman script that I can only imagine)
9. Things Heard & Seen
10. Paul Schrader says it’s disingenuous not to put your own film on your year end list if you like it, and I like it and I live in fear of contradicting Paul Schrader so: I Blame Society
Notes
2021 was the year of go big or go home. If in this year of straitened resources and universal misery you weren’t trying something new, wild, or insane… I honestly don’t think you should be doing this job. This is not the time to play it safe. While some of the films on my list weren’t perfect, I respected their scope and the director’s fortitude to hold on to their vision in spite of what I’m sure were copious notes. There’s a lot of films that I expect would go in the list that I haven’t watched like Titane, Benedetta and Zeros and Ones, and there’s a lot that hasn’t come out in L.A. and is not available to a non-critic non-guild member but I’m sure I would have included The Worst Person in the World and Bad Luck Banging if I had the chance to see them.
Jim Hosking
1. Compartment No. 6 (Juho Kuosmanen)
2. The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier)
3. Red Rocket (Sean Baker)
4. The Alpinist (Peter Mortimer & Nick Rosen)
5. In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo)
6. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
7. The Most Beautiful Boy in the World (Kristina Lindström & Kristian Petri)
8. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)
9. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
10. Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar)
Notes:
Most of these films are small-scale human stories exploring unlikely characters, unlikely friendships, unlikely relationships. The most arresting scene was in Memoria when fish-scrubbing Hernán lies down and sleeps / dies momentarily. The most terrifying film was The Alpinist as Marc-André Leclerc goes on insane climb after insane climb with his big ice-stabbing sickles to support him, or whatever they’re called. The biggest laugh was in Red Rocket when the camera zooms in for a half-second on some truly liberated al fresco Texan love-making. Hong Sang-soo always gets in there. It feels like I saw some of these films 58 years ago.
Ben Hozie
1. The Beatles: Get Back
2. Kajillionaire
3. The French Dispatch
4. Zola
5. The Card Counter
6. Annette
7. Shirley
8. We Are
9. The Velvet Underground
10. Project Space 13
Notes
There are so many films I haven’t seen yet so this list will surely change very shortly…
Lloyd Kaufman
1. #ShakespearesShitstorm
2. Divide And Conquer
3. Slashening: The Final Beginning
4. Cyrano
5. Jenny 4 Ever (a series)
6. I Need You Dead
That is all I remember…
Amanda Kramer
1. Titane
2. The Card Counter
3. Ema
4. Benedetta
5. Annette
6. Old
7. About Endlessness
8. Saint Narcisse
9. Sweet Thing
10. Zeros and Ones
Mynette Louie
1. Drive My Car
2. Identifying Features
3. The Pink Cloud
4. Last Night in Soho
5. The Worst Person in the World
6. The French Dispatch
7. The Mitchells vs. the Machines
8. Annette
9. Zola
10. Parallel Mothers
Ryan McGlade
1. The Beatles: Get Back (Peter Jackson)
2. About Endlessness (Roy Andersson)
3. Can’t Get You Out of My Head (Adam Curtis)
4. Evangelion: 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon a Time (Hideaki Anno)
5. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
6. A Dim Valley (Brandon Colvin)
7. Procession (Robert Greene)
8. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (Jane Schoenbrun)
9. Old (M. Night Shyamalan)
10. Zeros and Ones (Abel Ferrara)
Notes
Would be remiss not to include that I also loved Annette, Licorice Pizza, Nightmare Alley, The Card Counter, Dune and West Side Story – as well as the standard disclaimer that there were many more films released this year that I still need to see and will no doubt end up on future revisions of my 2021 Top 10.
Crystal Moselle
1. A Chiara
2. You Resemble Me
3. The Worst Person in the World
4. The Lost Daughter
5. Red Rocket
6. Zola
7. Luna Piena
8. How It Ends
Kent Osborne
1. The Beatles: Get Back
2. Pig
3. The Green Knight
4. Bad Trip
5. The French Dispatch
6. Godzilla vs Kong
7. Nuclear Family
8. Cryptozoo
9. Zola
Notes
I haven’t seen Red Rocket, Macbeth or Licorice Pizza yet because I live in the woods
James Ponsoldt
1. Drive My Car
2. The Power of the Dog
3. Licorice Pizza
4. Summer of Soul
5. The Green Knight
6. Titane
7. Listening to Kenny G
8. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
9. Zola
10. C’mon C’mon
Notes
The comfort food I needed at the end of 2021 was season 2 of How to With John Wilson and, of course, The Beatles: Get Back. If I could loop them both and live in them for a while, I probably would.
Cooper Raiff
1. The Souvenir: Part II
2. Pig
3. Drive My Car
4. Petite Maman
5. Parallel Mothers
6. Bergman Island
7. Flee
8. The Lost Daughter
9. Test Pattern
10. The Worst Person in the World
Michael Reich
1. Annette
2. Luca
3. Licorice Pizza
4. Bergman Island
5. Dune
6. The Mitchells vs. The Machines
7. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
8. Summer of Soul
9. Giving Birth To A Butterfly
10. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
Terrie Samundra
1. Drive My Car
2. The Beatles: Get Back
3. The Power of the Dog
4. Titane
5. The Hand of God
6. The Green Knight
7. Lamb
8. Dune
9. Writing with Fire
10. The Medium
Dash Shaw
1. Clay Dream by Evans
2. Circumstantial Pleasures by Klahr
3. Double Wow by Jacobs
4. No. 7 Cherry Lane by Yonfan
5. Dune Part One / The French Dispatch by Villeneuve / Anderson
6. Bad Attitude by Stern
7. El Planeta by Ulman
8. All Light, Everywhere by Anthony
9. Blue Fear by Jacotey and Legrand
10. The Spine of Night by Gelatt and King
Notes
I only listed new movies; my favorite movie was the remastered 1980 Bubble Bath by György Kovásznai. Clay Dream is a documentary about Will Vinton, of “claymation” fame, and it was especially powerful to see it while touring Cryptozoo and thinking about how to continue making unusual animated features in the States. Thanks so much to Marq Evans for making that doc.
Leah Shore
1. West Side Story
2. Dune
3. Annette
4. Fear Street Trilogy
5. Swan Song
6. Bo Burnham: Inside
7. Titane
8. Halston
9. Sisters With Transistors
10. Superdeep
Chelsea Stardust
1. The Night House (Dir. David Bruckner)
2. Nomadland (Dir Chloe Zhao)
3. The Fear Street Trilogy (Dir. Leigh Janiak)
4. King Richard (Dir. Renaldo Marcus Green)
5. Lucky (Dir. Natasha Kermani)
6. Moxie (Dir. Amy Poehler)
7. Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings (Dir. Destin Daniel Cretton)
8. Censor (Dir. Prano Bailey-Bond)
9. The Stylist (Dir. Jill Gevargizian)
10. The Beatles: Get Back (Dir. Peter Jackson)
Notes
I was way behind this year—I’m just now catching up on most of the award consideration films (just got my screeners for everything!) but these ones all come to mind when thinking of my top 10 of films I’ve seen so far. The Night House was my favorite theater-going experience of 2021. This film is best seen on a large screen, with the volume up and the lights out. It’s beautifully directed, full of unnerving scares that burrow under your skin, and a plot that keeps you guessing.
Travis Stevens
1. Violet
2. The Power of the Dog
3. Titane
4. All the Streets are Silent
5. Val
6. A Glitch in the Matrix
7. The Sleeping Negro
8. Come True
9. The Velvet Underground
10. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Notes
The quality I enjoyed the most from the films on this list, was the courage and experimentation with cinematic form that the filmmakers used to tell these stories. Whether it was Todd Haynes utilizing other artworks to emphasize the cultural context surrounding The Velvet Underground, or Jane Campion using the conventions of a slasher film to heighten the feeling of helplessness in The Power of the Dog, Rodney Asher’s decision to use digital avatars to stand in for his interview subjects in A Glitch in the Matrix, or Val‘s use of home videos to reclaim the narrative of his creative and professional life, 2021 was filled with bold filmmaking choices that not only heightened the stories in simple and exciting ways, but felt like proof that there is still progression happening in this medium. In a year filled with interesting examples, the movie that touched me the most was Justine Bateman’s directorial debut, Violet. Her aggressive use of an inner monologue via voiceover and on-screen text so effectively conveys the moment-by-moment ups and downs of crippling insecurity, that you are not just watching the story of the title character trying to overcome her self-doubt, but you are experiencing her do it, along with her, in real time. It is cinema as an immersive emotional event … and powerfully engaging given how limited modern cinema can often feel.
Sandi Tan
1. The Souvenir Part II
2. Zola
3. Ascension
4. The Velvet Underground
5. The Worst Person in the World
6. Drive My Car
7. Procession
8. No Time To Die
9. The Power of the Dog
10. The Lost Daughter
Notes
I haven’t seen Licorice Pizza yet! It may unseat one of the above.
Alex Thompson
1. The Beatles: Get Back
Once surrendered to, it’s euphoric.
2. Bergman Island
I had similar experiences with Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere and Olivier Assayas’ Personal Shopper, mysterious little movies I turned on or walked into at odd times with little expectation and haven’t stopped thinking about since.
3. Licorice Pizza
As masterful as you’d expect, but earnest, too, and thrilling for it.
4. The Green Knight
Haunted and lived-in in a way that would feel impossible were it not for Lowery’s other work, which somehow also feels ancient and Arthurian.
5. Ninja Baby
Defies expectation; also it is perfect and the hardest I’ve laughed in years.
6. / 7. / 8. The Power of the Dog / Petite Maman / The Lost Daughter
I love the simple pleasure of a great story told by a great storyteller.
9./10. Red Rocket/Nightmare Alley
Bradley Cooper = the spitting image of Bruce Bennett
Honorable mention: No Sudden Move
I watched it on my Yiayia’s iPad and I loved it.
Matthew Wilder
1. The French Dispatch
2. Gunda
3. About Endlessness
4. New Order
5. The Killing of Two Lovers
6. Memoria
7. France
8. State Funeral
9. A Quiet Place Part II
10. Dune
Notes
Superb performances of 2021: LaKeith Stanfield in Judas and the Black Messiah, Sean Penn in Flag Day and Licorice Pizza, Denzel Washington in The Tragedy of Macbeth, Millicent Simonds in A Quiet Place Part II, Jodie Foster in The Mauritanian, Léa Seydoux in France, Devyn McDowell in Annette, Charlotte Rampling in Benedetta, Frankie Shaw in No Sudden Move, Timothy Spall in Spencer, and, above all, Jonah Hill in Don’t Look Up.
Eleanor Wilson
1. Licorice Pizza
2. The Souvenir Part II
3. Bergman Island
4. Annette
5. Judas and the Black Messiah
6. Red Rocket
7. Lamb
8. CODA
9. Summer of Soul
10. Titane
Notes
Also from Sundance 2021, not released yet: We’re All Going To The World’s Fair. I haven’t had the chance to see the following movies, but assume they could become favorites: Drive My Car, The Humans, The Worst Person In The World, Benedetta
Jonathan Wysocki
1. The Disciple
2. The Souvenir Part II
3. The Lost Daughter
4. Quo Vadis, Aida?
5. Tick, Tick… Boom!
6. West Side Story
7. Dune
8. The Power of the Dog
9. Licorice Pizza
10. Shiva Baby
Notes
I didn’t realize how emotional I’d be to return to movie theaters to watch films collectively in the dark. Whether it was a big, splashy musical or a small, intimate drama, seeing cinema in a cinema remains a transcendent experience for me. Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to bring cinemas back from the brink.
Maya at 24 – Lynne Sachs’ short uses the simple image of her daughter Maya running in front of the camera to offer kinetic snapshots of how our children change physically and emotionally over the years.
Peter Wong
For this writing filmgoer, 2021 offered the first tentative steps back to pre-pandemic filmgoing. Film festivals adjusted in various ways to using both online streaming and in-person events to reach their audiences. The reopening of film theaters in San Francisco allowed proper enjoyment of such big screen must-see films as “Summer Of Soul,” “Dune,” and “Shang-Chi And The Legend Of Ten Rings.” On the other hand, the least worrisome in-theater viewing was had at the Roxie, which required ID and proof of vaccination before a viewer could even get a ticket.
Because there’s no category here for episodic TV screened at film festivals, special note needs to be made of Maria Belen Poncio and Rosario Perazolo Masjoan’s Argentine TV mini-series “Four Feet High.” The Sundance Film Festival presented this touching and funny story of wheelchair-bound teen Juana, who’s just transferred to a new high school. Her struggle for personal independence gets intertwined with her desire to get laid. In addition, she’s helping some fellow queer students’ efforts to get a real sex education course at their school. Its greatest asset is giving viewers a chance to see through Juana’s eyes what life is like as a disabled person. Where else will you get to hear Juana’s riposte to a woman who patronizingly wants to put Juana on a pedestal: “Your life must be awful if I’m setting the example.”
Of the actual feature films seen by this writer this year, here are some lesser known films which deserve a little more than a title-only honorable mention:
“The Show” comes from director Mitch Jenkins, who worked off a script by comics legend Alan Moore. The film begins with a familiar fictional trope: A man whose name is supposedly Steve Lipman comes to Northampton on a quest. But by the time “Lipman”’s true name and intentions are revealed, the viewer discovers Northampton teems with such ongoing surprises as a superhero investigator, a supposedly dead comedian/mage (played by Moore), and a burned down men’s club that’s still thriving in dreams. Call the Moore-scripted film one unburdened by the diktat of genre storytelling. The film is available via Shout! Home Video.
2021 saw two films titled “Swan Song” hit theater screens. Todd Stephens’ version stars perpetual character actor Udo Kier in his first lead role. He plays a gay beautician reluctantly escaping retirement for one last job. Kier makes the most of “Swan Song”’s hilariously bitchy dialogue (e.g. “Let her be buried with bad hair”) and showing how his “Mr. Pat” remains fabulous even in reduced circumstances (e.g. the candelabra “wig”).
A different sort of swan song is offered by the Benny Chan action film “Raging Fire.” It might very well be a bullet- and blood-soaked farewell to the Hong Kong popular cinema brand of balls-to-the-wall action thanks to the mainland Chinese government’s draconian use of its “National Security Law,” The antagonists are tough but righteous Bong (Donnie Yen) and Bong’s now disgraced former protege Kong (Nicholas Tse). Kong’s determined to have his revenge on the people he blames for ruining his career, no matter how powerful they may be. The mainland Chinese government generally frowns on films with corrupt government officials as villains, which is why viewers might be unlikely to see future “Raging Fire”-style films.
Now on to the main Best Of lists.
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Part I: Features
The Power Of The Dog–The year’s best feature film brings deep and memorable shades of gray to a genre notorious for its characteristic stark black and white morality. Director Jane Campion’s anti-Western challenges the genre’s exaltation of straight maleness. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Phil magnetically dominates the screen as one of two 1920s Montana ranch owners. Even when his character despicably emotionally abuses Kirsten Dunst’s modest Rose, it never feels as if his behavior plays into cultural stereotypes. Yet the film’s biggest sting comes from the viewer’s eventual realization of why the film’s title is perfect for its story.
Drive My Car–On paper, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s 3-hour movie may sound as if it’s greatly padding Haruki Murakami’s 30-page original short story. Yet Hamaguchi treats Murakami’s original as a starter kit for his own take, one which begins by filling in characters’ backstories only hinted at in the original. Theater director/actor Yusuke Kafuku and his young chauffeur Misaki Watari turn out to be kindred souls in finding time has not been a balm for personal grief. Producing Kafuku’s multilingual version of the Chekhov classic “Uncle Vanya” turns out to be key in different ways to helping these two characters’ grieving processes move to their conclusions.
Titane–With an abandon matched by driving a car at top speed on urban streets, Julia Ducournau’s entertainingly demented French feminist body horror tale gleefully runs over bourgeois aesthetics. Neither objectification nor sentimentality is allowed to soften car dancing lead character Alexia’s serial killer nature. Unconstrained describes both her killing methods and her means of sexual satisfaction. Even when Alexia goes to ground by scamming her way into a rural fire chief’s life, Ducornau’s lead character remains defiant in a different way courtesy of a public deliberately sexy dance and a fantastically strong Ace bandage body wrap able to conceal her increasing pregnancy.
Judas And The Black Messiah–The title of Shaka Khan’s electrifying film refers to Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton and undercover FBI informant William O’Neal. Daniel Kaluuya masterfully brought to life Hampton’s personal charisma and his incredible political skills at unifying politically opposed Chicago subcultures. But the film’s also a painful lesson on the limits of Hampton’s personal charisma. In O’Neal, actor LaKeith Stanfield memorably created a man for whom it was unclear whether he’d turn on his FBI puppet masters or he was continually conning his fellow Black Panthers. “Anti-white” scolds of the film can soak their heads given it’s a fair description borne out by history to say white law enforcement officials’ willingness to permanently neutralize Chairman Fred went into “by any means necessary” territory.
There Is No Evil–Admittedly, this 70th Berlin International Film Festival Golden Bear winner is not an easy film to sit through. But Mohammad Rasoulof’s film demonstrates once again why real art skillfully disturbs its viewer. Its four stories about administering the death penalty in Iran questions individual responsibility in a brutal system. How does a person deal with the reality of being compelled to take another person’s life at the government’s order? As the viewer learns the motivations and consequences that affect a character’s obedience to the kill order, they wind up considering their own boundaries if they were placed in a similar situation.
The Lost Daughter–Maggie Gyllenhaal’s wonderfully thorny debut feature shows the consequences of culturally assuming that women are inherently maternal creatures. Her adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s titular novel teases out the emotional similarities between comparative literature professor Leda (Olivia Colman) and young semi-irresponsible mother Nina (Dakota Jackson) during a Greek summer vacation. Jessie Buckley, who plays the younger version of Leda, ably handles the crucial task of showing how Leda’s marriage to her job and her valuing of personal independence frequently overrides her responsibilities as a mother. If Gyllenhaal’s film liberates one woman from resignation to motherhood, it will have succeeded.
Riders Of Justice–Director Anders Thomas Jensen’s revenge tale carries within its frames the seeds of its darkly comic deconstruction of the retribution genre. Eccentric mathematician Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and his friends may have common cause with military man Markus (Mads Mikkelsen) thanks to a train “accident” that claims the lives of both a key criminal trial witness and Markus’ wife. But Jensen shows how healing the strained relationship between Markus and his teen daughter Mathilde deserves as much importance as avoiding the film’s lethal flying bullets.
Wheel Of Fortune And Fantasy–In this unusual year of 2021, Ryusuke Hamaguchi manages to put a second film on the year’s best of list. This one is a triptych of short stories about love forgotten or rejected. In each story, a woman who’s failed at finding love in the past is given the opportunity to either change or repeat their earlier mistakes. This film may appear visually simple, yet its stories roil with deep and complicated emotions.
Night Of The Kings–A forest-bound Ivory Coast prison run by its inmates happens to be the setting for Philippe Lacote’s always hypnotic tale of the power of storytelling. As new prisoner Roman tries to stay alive until morning by telling tales of the life of notorious outlaw Zama King, the viewer is swept up in the recreations and dramatizations of such moments as the betrayal that ended Zama’s life and magical battles between African rulers. Yet equally fascinating are the efforts of dying prison kingpin Blackbeard to avoid being deposed and ambitious rival Lass’ efforts to push Blackbeard out of the top seat.
Zola–The greatest stripper saga ever Tweeted gets an entertaining dramatization in Janicza Bravo’s hands. Its tale of a money-making road trip to Florida that goes south in a non-geographic way works via the contrast between Taylour Paige’s Black commonsensical stripper title character and Riley Keough’s blaccented white trash deceptive fellow stripper Stefani. The crazier events Zola recounts still feel way more truthful than Stefani’s account of Zola’s rocking garbage bag couture.
Dune Part 1–Big screen science fiction adaptations often create the temptation of letting the spectacle of its imagined worlds overwhelm the human story that’s supposed to be a film’s core. After literal decades of attempts to bring Frank Herbert’s science fiction epic to the silver screen, “Arrival” director Denis Villeneuve finally succeeds. By breaking this adaptation into (potentially) two parts, Villeneuve gives the viewer breathing room to inhabit the arid magnificence of Arrakis and to follow and understand the destiny awaiting Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet). Props to the director for gambling that audiences would make this first half profitable enough that he can show how Atreides’ story ends.
Honorable Mentions: The Show, In The Heights, Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings, The Green Knight, Language Lessons, The Souvenir Part II, Pebbles, Raging Fire, Swan Song, Passing, I’m Fine (Thanks For Asking), Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes
Part II–Documentaries
Summer Of Soul—Thinking of Questlove’s debut feature documentary as just a powerful concert film sells his cinematic achievement short. 2021’s best documentary is also a thrilling piece of cinematic cultural archeology. It both resurrects footage of the unjustly forgotten 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival and rebukes the cultural gatekeepers who ignored the festival in favor of the (predominantly white) Woodstock Music Festival. This film is a treasure chest of period performances by such seminal Black artists as Gladys Knight and the Pips, B.B. King, and Nina Simone. But equally fascinating are the reminiscences from both sides of the Cultural Festival stage.
The Velvet Underground–Director Todd Haynes’ outstanding first documentary feature captures the life and times of the Lou Reed years of the legendary art rock band and the cultural milieu the Velvet Underground emerged from. Andy Warhol’s portrait studies of the individual VU members and VU founding member John Cale’s reminiscences are just two of the powerful primary sources Haynes draws upon to make the film come alive. The original iteration of the VU may have produced a limited discography. But the impact of that music on sparking future musical talents demonstrates once again the virtue of quality over quantity.
The First Wave–It is not “too soon” for the appearance of Matthew Heineman’s emotionally intense chronicle of a beleaguered New York City-based medical facility during the first wave of COVID infections. It’s a snapshot of the chaos and desperation of those months when even vaccines for COVID weren’t available. Seeing the stress on medical personnel who are regularly confronted by their inability to save lives from the disease makes those who deny the seriousness of COVID appear even more selfish and short-sighted than ever.
499–Rodrigo Reyes’ incredible hybrid documentary surveys contemporary Mexican life to show why the country’s conquest by Spain nearly 500 years ago was not the boon touted by advocates of such conquest. An unnamed 16th century Spanish conquistador becomes a mostly silent guide through modern day Mexico as he shows how MS-13 gangsters and the desperate migrants hopping a ride on The Beast aren’t that far removed from the conquistador’s contemporaries.
Procession—Robert Greene may be the name director in this film following half a dozen victims of clerical child abuse using drama therapy to find emotional closure. But these victims break down the subject/director barrier by using the therapeutic recreations or confrontations they commit to film to empower themselves. The legal system may have repeatedly failed these recipients of clerical abuse. But the audience is privileged to see the men using this film they made together to take back their lives.
The Neutral Ground–The years-long struggle to remove four statues honoring the Confederacy from New Orleans’ public land provides an entry point for director CJ Hunt to examine the history of America’s toxic romance with the Antebellum South and the evil it represented. Hunt’s non-confrontational approach does allow advocates for “Southern culture” space to appear as more than just ignorant stereotypes. But the film ultimately argues that America’s long-standing romance with the so-called Lost Cause is one that preserves and strengthens the worst aspects of America’s soul.
Dear Mr. Brody–Keith Maitland found the right angle to recount the tale of self-styled hippie millionaire Michael Brody, Jr.’s publicly announced plan to give away his entire $25 million fortune (up to $172 million in 2021 dollars) to “anyone in need.” Instead of centering on the enigmatic young man making this public offer, the director finds the tale’s heart in the stories of some of Brody’s would-be supplicants and a couple of people in his inner circle. That smart decision shows the real lesson of Brody’s offer comes not from seeing human avarice on display but in learning the often touching dreams and desperation that compels people to seek Brody’s aid.
Who We Are: A Chronicle Of Racism In America–Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler’s documentary captures ACLU’s deputy legal director Jeffery Robinson explaining the intertwining of American greatness and the country’s long racist history. It’s shocking to see how present day innocuous places (e.g. NYC’s Wall Street, New Orleans’ The French Quarter) have strong ties to the slave trade. Contrary to the whitewashed racism behind opposition to “critical race theory,” the Kunstlers’ film powerfully argues that only through asking questions and confronting its shameful bigoted legacy can America truly move forward racially.
A Sexplanation–Local filmmaker Alex Liu skillfully uses humor and curiosity to undermine viewers’ prurience around sex. His ultimate goal is to show viewers the inadequacies of current sex education, as seen in a cringeworthy sequence of random adults in S.F.’s Dolores Park being unable to identify human genitalia. The director’s search for better ways to learn about sex sends him on a cross-country journey to such places as the Kinsey Institute and even a class that teaches age-appropriate sex education. What other documentary this year allows its director the opportunity to masturbate for science?
Morgana–One of the year’s more intriguing documentary subjects is the titular Morgana Muses. This divorced middle-aged Australian housewife re-invented and re-discovered herself making woman-oriented erotic videos. This funny and frequently heartbreaking film follows her over several years as she tries to live her best personal and artistic life while fending off mental illness.
Honorable Mentions: A Glitch In The Matrix, Burning, Landfall, Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street, Ricochet, North By Current, Lily Topples The World, A Kaddish For Bernie Madoff, Ascension, Writing With Fire
Part III–Shorts
Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Mama–Topaz Jones’ update of the 1970s’ “Black ABCs” flashcards offers a wonderful snapshot of modern-day Black American culture by bringing in everything from the concept of code switching to the joys of eating sour candy. Simply the year’s best short film.
What You’ll Remember–Erika Cohn’s heartfelt locally-based short is an expression of love from a mother for the resilience of her children as their working poor family all weathered houselessness in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Maya At 24–Lynne Sachs’ short uses the simple image of her daughter Maya running in front of the camera to offer kinetic snapshots of how our children change physically and emotionally over the years.
Exquisite Shorts Volume 1–Applying the Exquisite Corpse game to filmmaking, Ben Fee and 18 other filmmakers or duos made short films inspired by a pair of unrelated words. One word begins the film while the other ends it. Otherwise, anything goes. The entertaining results include a flying saucer abduction, a back porch conversation, and a “Survivor” style game where unlucky contestants turn into ooze.
Opera–Erick Oh’s breathtaking animated film takes viewers through the various levels of a fictional hierarchical society. The exquisitely detailed animation is such that several viewings and a good screen will be needed to truly appreciate Oh’s work.
Honorable Mentions: ASMR For White Liberals, 24,483 Dreams Of Death, Nuevo Rico, Koto: The Last Service, The Leaf, Luv U Cuz, A Ship From Guantanamo, Mission: Hebron, Almost Famous: The Queen Of Basketball
About Lynne Sachs Lynne Sachs makes films, installations, performances and web projects that explore the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences by weaving together poetry, collage, painting, politics and layered sound design. Strongly committed to a dialogue between cinematic theory and practice, she searches for a rigorous play between image and sound, pushing the visual and aural textures in her work with each and every new project. Between 1994 and 2009, her five essay films took her to Vietnam, Bosnia, Israel, Italy and Germany — sites affected by international war – where she looked at the space between a community’s collective memory and her own subjective perceptions.
Recently, after 25 years of making experimental documentaries, Lynne learned something that turned all her ideas about filmmaking upside down. While working on Your Day is My Night in the Chinatown neighborhood of New York City, she came to see that every time she asked a person to talk in front of her camera, they were performing for her rather than revealing something completely honest about their lives. The very process of recording guaranteed that some aspect of the project would be artificial. She decided she had to think of a way to change that, so she invited her subjects to work with her to make the film, to become her collaborators. For Lynne, this change in her process has moved her toward a new type of filmmaking, one that not only explores the experiences of her subjects, but also invites them to participate in the construction of a film about their lives.
Her films have screened at the New York Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, Toronto’s Images Festival and Los Angeles’ REDCAT Theatre as well as a five-film retrospective at the Buenos Aires Film Festival. The San Francisco Cinematheque recently published a monograph with four original essays in conjunction with a full retrospective of Lynne’s work. In 2014, Lynne received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Film and Video.
About Ovid With the help of an unprecedented collaborative effort by eight of the most noteworthy, independent film distribution companies in the U.S., Docuseek, LLC launched an innovative, new, subscription video-on-demand service, OVID.tv.
OVID.tv will provide North American viewers with access to thousands of documentaries, independent films, and notable works of international cinema, largely unavailable on any other platform.
OVID’s initial offerings fall into roughly three categories: a) powerful films addressing urgent political and social issues, such as climate change, and economic justice; b) in-depth selections of creative documentaries by world-famous directors; and c) cutting-edge arthouse feature and genre films by contemporary directors as well as established masters. And new films in all three areas will be added to the OVID collection every two weeks.
OVID.tv is an initiative of Docuseek, LLC, which operates Docuseek, a streaming service for colleges and universities which was established in 2012, streaming a library of over 1600 titles.
The eight founding content partners are:
BULLFROG FILMS The leading U.S. publisher of independently produced documentaries on environmental and related social justice issues, in business for more than 45 years, it currently distributes over 750 titles.
THE DGENERATE FILMS COLLECTION dGenerate Films distributes contemporary independent film from mainland China to audiences worldwide. They are dedicated to procuring and promoting visionary content, fueled by transformative social change and digital innovation.
DISTRIB FILMS US An independent distributor of international feature films, Distrib Films US is known for its strong collection of French and Italian fiction feature films.
FIRST RUN FEATURES Founded in 1979 by a group of filmmakers to advance the distribution of independent film, First Run has been honored with a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art for its significant contributions.
GRASSHOPPER FILM A distribution company founded in 2015 by Ryan Krivoshey, dedicated to the release of independent, foreign, and documentary film.
ICARUS FILMS A leading distributor of documentary films in North America, with a collection exceeding 1000 titles. It recently celebrated its 40th anniversary.
KIMSTIM A distribution company dedicated to the release of exceptional independent, foreign, and documentary film.
WOMEN MAKE MOVIES Women Make Movies (WMM), a non-profit feminist social enterprise based in New York, is the world’s leading distributor of independent films by and about women.
Sachs’ Films Selected by MEHDI JAHAN & LIBERTAD GILLS
This 2021 has been a complex year, to the extent that we continue to be subjected to a pandemic, which still continues to limit the ways we access movies. It has also been a year of resilience for a type of experimental cinema, which has perhaps been forced or motivated by the “materiality” of digital. We think of spaces like @preservationinsanity by Mark Toscano on Instagram, which every week projects films from a projector while transmitting that experience live via Live. Isn’t it a kind of lifeline for those of us who find ourselves removed from these kinds of opportunities? Or the imperative of seeing the Thai – Colombian Memoriain a movie theater, not necessarily because of its visual stakes, but because of the demanding sound experience, often neglected: gathered under the darkness of a movie theater to listen attentively. The pandemic has also filled us with noise pollution, and their silence and its subtleties become escape valves, or echoes of a future survival of cinema in times of streaming and torrents.
From Desistfilm, we continue with our commitment to continue to make visible a cinema supported by online festivals above all, and the mission of this type of list is to share this appreciation for a cinema that resists and that continues to transform us. Here is the list of collaborators and friends of Desistfilm, who this year accompanied us in some way, either with their texts, appreciations or other forms of love for cinema.
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This 2021 has been a complex year, to the extent that we continue to be subjected to a pandemic, which still continues to limit the ways of accessing movies. It has also been a year of resilience for a type of experimental cinema, which has perhaps been forced or motivated by the “materiality” of digital. We think of spaces like @preservationinsanity by Mark Toscano on Instagram, which every week projects films from a projector while transmitting that experience live via Live. Isn’t it a kind of lifeline for those of us who find ourselves removed from these kinds of opportunities? Or the imperative to see the Thai Colombo Memoriain a movie theater, not necessarily because of their visual stakes, but because of the demanding sound experience, often neglected: gathered under the darkness of a movie theater to listen attentively. The pandemic has also filled us with noise pollution, and there silence and its subtleties become escape valves, or echoes of a future survival of cinema in times of streaming and torrents.
From Desistfilm, we continue with our commitment to continue to make visible a cinema supported by online festivals above all, and the mission of this type of list is to share this appreciation for a cinema that resists and that continues to transform us. Here is the list of collaborators and friends of Desistfilm, who this year accompanied us in some way, either with their texts, appreciations or other forms of love for cinema.
NICOLE BRENEZ, professor (Sorbonne nouvelle / Fémis), programmer (Cinémathèque française)
The most exciting cinephile event of 2021 for me is the simultaneous release of two magnificent and complementary documentaries / film-essays on Omar Blondin Diop, the young revolutionary filmed by Jean-Luc Godard in La Chinoise (1967) and murdered in prison in 1973: the first in Africa (Senegal) by Djeydi Djigo; the second in Europe (Belgium-France) by Vincent Meessen. This indicates to us the slowness it takes for humanity to light a sparkle of symbolic justice. But also, that perhaps the forever young Omar Diop is sending us the signal to start the general revolt.
(By alphabetic order of the authors, Twelve films)
Omar Blondin Diop le révolté / Omar Blondin Diop the rebel (Djeydi Djigo, Senegal, 2021) Topologie d’une absence / Topology of an absence (Rami El Sabbagh, Lebanon, 2021) Jean Genet: Notre-Père-des-Fleurs / Jean Genet: Our-Father-of-Flowers (Dalila Ennadre, Morocco, 2021) Signe Byrge Sørensen, Our Memory Belongs To Us (Rami Farah, Denmark / France / Palestine / Syria, 2021) Moune Ô, Belgium (Maxime Jean-Baptiste, 2021) Masters of the Land , Mongolia / Belgium (Jan Locus, 2021) Juste un Mouvement / Just a Movement (Vincent Meessen, Belgium / France, 2021) Filmatruc a? verres n ° 2, Oiseaux/ Glass film trick n ° 2, Birds, (Silvi Simon, France, 2021, Film, Installation) Frères / Brothers (Ugo Simon France, 2021) En Corps + (Lionel Soukaz, Stéphane Gérard, France, 2021, Film, Installation) The Visit (Kristi Tethong Canada, 2021) Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky, Austria, 2021)
+ 2 wonderful essays from 2020 I saw only this year: IWOW: I walk on water (Khalik Allah USA, 2020) Fiertés, inc. / Pride, Inc. (Thibault Jacquin, France, 2020)
The most amazing work I read in 2021 is Thibault Elie’s monumental research on Florent Marcie, titled Florent Marcie sur le front de l’information (“ Florent Marcie on the news front ”). I hope it will be published soon, so that cinephiles could share this sum of knowledge and passion.
One of the wittiest and most energetic book ever written about cinema is Jurij Meden’s Scratches and glitches. Observations on Preserving and Exhibiting Cinema in the Early 21st Century , Vienna, FilmmuseumSynemaPublications, 2021. Finally, one doesn’t have to be a diviner to predict that the greatest book of 2022 is Bidhan Jacob’s long-awaited Aesthetics of the signal / Esthétique du signal , to be published next February, fruit of almost 20 years of research, a true event.
ADRIAN MARTIN , Australian film critic, audiovisual essayist
To 2021 Memoir
The name of this online journal has always grabbed me: not Resistfilm , but Desistfilm . Desist: refuse, refrain from doing something, cease or abstain, just stop it. So I will desist from handing in the same old ‘Top Ten Movies’ of the year list here. I want to record some other kinds of filmic phenomena.
I discovered one of my happiest and most surprising film viewing experiences in 2021 through my occasional teaching and tutoring at the EQZE film school in San Sebastián, Spain. A student (Haizea Barcenilla), investigating collective filmmaking involving community groups, screened a 21-minute work from 2016 from the Basque region titled Andrekale, credited to Sra. Polaroiska, which is the name of a duo comprising Alaitz Arenaza and María Ibarretxe. As it began on the screen, I expected nothing: maybe a simple, observational documentary about a local community. I was wrong! Its specific subject is a ‘Street of Women’ in Hernani – a place where women gather to talk, play games, socialize, and so on. The film begins with a camera tracking backward, snaking down a curved path with tightly-spaced buildings of three or floor floors on either side. No human presence at the start. Then women begin to emerge, pouring out of one doorway and then another, and immediately taking up their voluble place at some table or sidewalk display. The camera keeps moving, the frame keeps filling, life keeps flowing – what an explosion, all in one magnificent shot! And an absolutely pure cinematic idea. From that point, I had the sense that almost anything could happen in this film – and it did. Two seemingly demure elderly ladies are seen sipping tea and chatting outdoors. Suddenly, without any prompting, they begin to hurl their cups, their fine chinaware, at a nearby rock face, smashing it all. It goes on and on, a great liberating orgy of anarchistic destruction! There’s more toAndrekale , but I will let you discover that for yourself, if you can. I loved this film, seen by chance, unforgettable.
Thanks to the job of catalog-entry-writing for the Viennale, I encountered, for the first time, the work of UK artist-critic Morgan Quaintance: his recent films A Human Certainty (2021, 20 minutes), and Surviving You, Always (2020, 18 minutes). These films offered me another kind of bracing shock: true minimalism, no slickness, no padding, no easy wash of image or sound to make the materials more palatable. Stories told in written texts, over often mysterious and cryptic image-archives: achingly personal, and also keyed to numerous forms of collective, social breakdown. An uncompromised, unfashionable form of political art.
Watching, over and over, Birth ( https://laughmotel.wordpress.com/2021/08/05/birth/), a 13-minute video by Cristina Álvarez López, was an especially powerful experience for me. She has spent a lot of time in 2021 exploring techniques of superimposition, a skill she has added to her long-conquered dexterity in audiovisual montage. You couldn’t find a more perfect fit between style and subject, form and content, than here: the emotional and psychic schisms of individual subjectivity – fusion and separation, especially in relation to mother and daughter – traced through the joining and merging, splitting and redefining, of spaces, colors, shapes, bodies. Voices on the soundtrack whisper privately or speak in unguarded conversation about loss of self, of ground, of origin, of center. Sobbing tears of depression flow from eyes, but there is distance here, as well as closeness, for the spectator as well as for the maker: the arrangement of image and sound forms takes us to another plateau of empathic contemplation. As she writes: “This is all about what images can do to each other and about how they become something else when affected by the other’s properties: it’s exactly like with people”.
For regular online reading, I like the less institutionalized or commercialized independent sites: Ubiquarian (for which I reviewed Zulfikar Filandra’s fascinating 64-minute feature Minotaur [2020]), Desistfilm , Sabzian . Among book publications devoted to adventurous cinema, I value Jurij Meden’s Scratches and Glitches (Austrian Film Museum), and Erika Balsom’s Ten Skies (Fireflies Press).
I pull of all the modish talk of algorithms, artificial intelligence, non-fungible tokens, digitally-readable and computer-generated imagery. Of Netflix and YouTube. Of whether Marvel Superhero blockbusters are Art or not. All this bears little on the reality of what I watch, from day to day, and what moves me. Cinema is still, fundamentally, what you or I can manage to film, to edit, to shape, to express, and to show to another person. Some people high up the industrial ladder still manage to do that in an intimate, eloquent, touching way, whether they are Leos Carax, Kelly Reichardt or Clint Eastwood: I salute them as a viewer and as a critic. That’s film art to me, just like the far more modestly scaled productions by Abel Ferrara ( Zeros and Ones ) or Marco Bellocchio ( Marx Can Wait); and just like the streaking, no-budget comets in the sky of cinema that I have barely described above.
TOMÁŠ HUDÁK Film critic and programmer based in Bratislava, Slovakia.
If last year I was trying to take advantage of all the online offerings and attend festivals I had never been to physically, in 2021 I had to skip many of them. I was just too tired. But it was not a “Zoom fatigue”, just good ol ‘pressure to be everywhere and see everything, to not waste any time and always be productive. I was slowly burning out (again) and had to throw in the towel many times.
Still, I have seen most of my favorite film of 2021 at home. Notable exceptions are Memoria and What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? which I am so happy that I managed to see in cinema on really huge screen. I spent a lot of time with Peter Watkins films, both watching them and reading about them ( The Journey and La Commune are still waiting for me). I have seen The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On for the first time and it was one of the most devastating film experiences I have ever had. Practices of Viewing , an ongoing series of video essays by Johannes Binotto, is always challenging and illuminating. I learned so much reading Kim Knowles’ bookExperimental Film and Photochemical Practices . Probably no piece of writing made deeper impact on me this year than Abby Sun’s essay On Criticism . Berwick’s BFMAF public discussion about its internal practices was so important and inspirational. I had some great time with NBA and WNBA league passes. And finally, special shout out to Ecstatic Static, Another Screen, Global Media Cultures Podcast and to everyone talking about mental health (in film industry).
Here are some of my favorite films I saw in 2021 for the first time:
All Light, Everywhere (Theo Anthony, USA, 2021) Decasia (Bill Morrison, USA, 2002) earthearthearth (Daïchi Saïto, Canada, 2021) Edvard Munch (Peter Watkins, Norway, Sweden, 1973) The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (Kazuo Hara, Japan, 1987) Gunda (Victor Kossakovsky, Norway, USA, 2020) Landscapes of Resistance (Marta Popivoda, Serbia, Germany, France, 2020) Luukkaankangas – updated, revisited (Dariusz Kowalski, Austria, 2005) Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Colombia, Thailand, United Kingdom, Mexico, France, 2021) A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia, France, India, 2021) Now, At Last! (Ben Rivers, United Kingdom, 2018) Point and Line to Plane (Sofia Bohdanowicz, Canada, 2020) Still Processing (Sophy Romvari, Canada, 2020) This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, Lesotho, 2019) Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another (Jessica Sarah Rinland, United Kingdom, Argentina, 2019) What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia, 2021)
EVE HELLER Filmmaker (Austria)
Backyard (Peggy Ahwesh, 2021, USA, 2 min) Twin Peaks: The Return (David Lynch, 2017, USA, 18 hours) Anathema (Julie Murray, 1995, USA, 7 min) La Signora di tutti (Max Ophüls, 1934, Italy, 89 min) The Coronation (Talena Sanders, 2021, Mexico, 8 min) Herr Bachmann und seine Klasse [Mr. Bachmann and His Class] (Maria Speth, 2021, Germany, 217 min) Kristallnacht (Chick Strand, 1979, USA, 7 min) Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky, Austria, 2021, 20 min).
Most intricately stirring and thought provoking film program series of 2021:
Carte Blanche. Mark McElhatten— “To The Lighthouse,” Oct 29 – Nov 16, 2021 MoMA
JULIAN ROSS Programmer, curator, film critic
Have feature films
A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia, 2021) Memoryland (Kim Quy Bui, 2021) El Gran Movimiento (The Great Movement, Kiro Russo, 2021) The Story of Southern Islet (Nan wu, Keat Aun Chong, 2020) Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021) Inside the Red Brick Wall (Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers, 2020) Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021) Ste. Anne (Rhayne Vermette, 2021) White Building (Bodeng Sar, Kavich Neang, 2021) Feast ( Tim Leyendekker, 2021)
Have short films
Song for dying (Korakrit Arunanondchai, 2021)
Surviving You Always (Morgan Quaintance, 2021)
Maat Means Land (Fox Maxy, 2020)
Manifesto (Ane Hjort Guttu, 2020)
Tellurian Drama (Riar Rizaldi, 2020)
One Thousand and One Attempts to be an Ocean (Wang Yuyan, 2020)
Polycephaly in D (Michael Robinson, 2021)
Isn’t it a beautiful world (Joseph Wilson, 2021)
Glass Life (Sara Cwynar, 2021)
earthearthearth (Daïchi Saïto, 2021)
Have first views
Includes two 35mm films, a 16mm double-projection performance and a digital restoration presented in a cinema, as well as online presentations by Another Screen, Light Industry, MUBI, Thai Film Archive, Jeonju International Film Festival and @preservationinsanity.
Silent Light (Stellet Licht, Carlos Reygadas, 2007) La Ciénaga (Lucrecia Martel, 2001) The Round-Up (Szegénylegények, Miklós Jancsó, 1966) Tongpan (Yutthana Mukdasanit, 1977) The Zone of Total Eclipse (Mika Taanila, 2006) Untitled 77-A (Han Ok-hee, 1977) Lost Book Found (Jem Cohen, 1996) Stendalì: Suonano ancora (Cecilia Mangini, 1960) Vital Signs (Barbara Hammer, 1991) Bhuvan Shome (Mrinal Sen, 1969)
JEAN HYEMIN KIM, film scholar / writer / teacher, USA.
10 films I enjoyed this year (New & Old)
The Tsugua Diaries / Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? / Alexandre Koberidze
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy / Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Stray / Elizabeth Lo
A Love Song For Latasha / Sophia Nahli Allison
The Girl from Chicago / Oscar Micheaux
Le Mystère Bunny / Wayne Koestenbaum
Nénette and Boni / Claire Denis
The Velvet Underground / Todd Haynes
10.Belle / Mamoru Hosoda
PETER TSCHERKASSKY , Filmmaker (Austria)
Au bord du monde (Gaspar Noé, F / B / Monaco 2021, 142 min) The Card Counter (Paul Schrader, USA / GB / China 2021, 112 min) Herr Bachmann und seine Klasse [Mr. Bachmann and his Class] (Maria Speth, Germany 2021, 217 min) Jaddeh khaki (Panah Panahi, Iran, 2021, 97 min) Kelti (Milica Tomovic, RS 2021, 106 min) Report (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, CO / Thailand / GB / Mexico / F / China / Taiwan 2021, 136 min) Promenade 1 (Zélie Parraud, F 2021, 1 min) Promenade 2 (Zélie Parraud, F 2021, 1 min) Re Granchio (Alessio Rigo de Righi, Metteo Zoppis, I / AR / F 2021, 106 min) Singing in Oblivion (Eve Heller, A 2021, 13 min) A Police Movie (Alonso Ruizpalacios, Mexico 2021, 107 min.)
DAISUKE AKASAKA . Film Critic (Japan)
Gavagai (Rob Tregenza, 2017) Harley Queen (Carolina Adriazola, José Luis Sepúlveda. 2019) Death will come and he will have your eyes (José Luis Torres Leiva, 2019) White on White (Théo Court, 2019) The floor of the wind (Gustavo Fontán , Gloria Peirano, 2021) Chapter eo chapter (Júlio Bressane, 2021) Luz nos tropicos (Paula Gaitán, 2020) Lúa Vermella (Lois Patiño, 2019) The year of discovery (Luis López Carrasco, 2020) Picasso in Vallauris (Peter Nestler, 2021) Annette (Leos Carax, 2021) First Cow (Kelly Reichardt, 2019) Fourteen(Dan Sallitt, 2019) Wheel of fortune and fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021) Love Mooning (Kunitoshi Manda, 2021) Danses macabres, Squelettes et autres fantasies (Rita Azevedo Gomes, Pierre Léon, Jean-Louis Schefer, 2019)
DAN SALLITT , Filmmaker, USA
My favorite films that were released for the first time in 2021. This list usually grows considerably over the next 18 months or so:
El Planeta (Amalia Ulman, 2021) Souad (Ayten Amin, 2021) Pebbles (PS Vinothraj, 2021) Outside Noise (Ted Fendt, 2021) France (Bruno Dumont, 2021) Who prevents it (Jonás Trueba, 2021) Susanna Andler (Benoît Jacquot, 2021) The Cathedral (Ricky D’Ambrose, 2021) In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo, 2021) Sacred Spirit (Chema García Ibarra, 2021) Wood and Water (Jonas Bak, 2021)
Some excellent older films that I saw for the first time in 2021, in chronological order: Mashenka (Yuli Raizman, 1942); But What If This Is Love? (Yuli Raizman, 1962); Encore (Once More) (Paul Vecchiali, 1988); Aux petits bonheurs (Michel Deville, 1994); Kippur (Amos Gitai, 2000); Beautiful Valley (Hadar Friedlich, 2011); Aferim! (Radu Jude, 2015); Season (André Novais Oliveira, 2018); Short Vacation (Kwon Min-pyo and Han-Sol Seo, 2020).
DENNIS COOPER, filmmaker, writer, USA
Favorite 2021 films (in no order)
Whether Line (Ryan Trecartin & Lizzie Fitch, 2019)
Sisters With Transistors (Lisa Rovner, 2020)
Nature (Artavazd Pelechian, 2019)
Unsprung Der Nacht (Lothar Baumgarten, 1982)
Annette (Leos Carax, 2021)
When We Were Monsters (Steve Reinke & James Richards, 2020)
The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson, 2021)
L’anne Derniere A Dachau (Mark Rappaport, 2020)
The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes, 2021)
The Masturbator’s Heart (Michael Salerno)
On The Island (Daniel & Clara , 2021)
I’m Free (Laure Portier, 2021)
France (Bruno Dumont, 2021)
Mudmonster (OB De Alessi, 2021)
About Endlessness (Roy Andersson, 2019)
Tori Kudo Archive
Accidental Luxuriance Of The Translucent Watery Rebus (Dalibor Baric, 2020)
Censor (Prano Bailey-Bond, 2021)
Fat Chance (Stephen Broomer, 2021)
Moments Like This Never Last (Cheryl Dunne, 2020)
Death And Bowling (Lyle Kash, 2021)
JOSE SARMIENTO HINOJOSA Director, desistfilm.com, curator, film critic
2020, 2021 films
Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky, 2021)
Transparent, I Am (Yuri Muraoka, 2020)
Luz Nos Tropicos (Paula Gaitán, 2020)
Memory (Apitchapong Weerasethakul, 2021)
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude, 2021)
Light Trap (Pablo Marin, 2021)
Zeroes and Ones – Abel Ferrara (2021)
EARTHEARTHEARTH – Daichi Saito (2021)
Drive my Car – Rysuke Hamaguchi (2021)
10.Red Post on Escher Street – Sion Sono (2020)
11.Bela – Prantik Narayan Basu (2021)
12.Saxifrages, Quatre Nuits Blanches – Nicolas Klotz, Elizabeth Perceval (2021)
Steve Polta’s Rituals of Regeneration for Dobra Film Festival
Daniella Shreir for Another Screen :
[Silence] […] [Laughter] + Focus on Mara Mattuschka
The Practice of Disobedience: Carole Roussoupolos & Delphine Seyrig ‘restrospective
For a Free Palestine: Films by Palestinian Women
Marguerite Duras on Television
Eight Films by Cecilia Mangini
Hands Tied / Eating the Other
A One Woman Confessional: Films by Cecilia Mangini
Stephen Broomer’s Art & Trash Videoessay series The Mechanics of Light by S (8) Mostra de Cinema Periferico
First seen in 2021:
Double Labyrinthe – Maria Klonaris, Katerina Thomadaki (1976)
From Today Until Tomorrow – Danielle Hulliet – Jean-Marie Straub (1997)
Blind Beast – Yasuzo Masumura (1969)
A Portrait of Parvaneh Navai – Maria Klonaris, Katerina Thomadaki (1983)
To Camel – Ibrahim Shaddad (1981)
The Margin – Ozualdo Ribeiro Candeias (1967)
The Whole Shebang – Ken Jacobs (2019)
The Spiral Staircase – Robert Siodmak (1946)
Trail on the Road – Aleksei German (1986)
10.One Hamlet Less – Carmelo Bene (1973)
11.Messiah of Evil – Willard Huyck, Gloria Katz (1973)
12.My Winter Journey – Vincent Dieutre (2003)
13.Juvenile Court – Frederick Wiseman (1973)
14.The Crowd – King Vidor (1928)
15.Hangover Square – John Brahm (1945)
16.Flammes – Adolfo Arrieta (1978)
17.Lady Snowblood / Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance – Toshiya Fujita (1973, 1974)
18.Pets – Albertina Carri (2012)
19.Playback – Agustina Comedi (2019)
20.Pull / Drift / The Waiting Sands – Margaret Rorison (2013, 2013)
21.Mirage – Edward Dmytryk (1965)
22.Bourbon Street Blues – Douglas Sirk (1979)
23.The Howling – Joe Dante (1981)
24.The Hot Little Girl – Yasuzo Masumura (1970)
25.Yoshiwara: The Pleasure Quartet – Tomu Uchida (1960)
26.Blood is Redder Than The Sun – Koji Wakamatsu (1966)
27.La Casa Lobo – Cristobal León, Joaquín Cociña (2018)
28.Relativity – Ed Emshwiller (1966)
29.The Long Hair of Death – Antonio Margheriti (1964)
30.Paranoia – Umberto Lenzi (1969)
31.The Whispering Star – Sion Sono (2015)
32.Autour de Jeanne Dielman – Sami Frei (1975)
33.The Amazonian Angel – Maria Klonaris, Katerina Thomadaki (1992)
34.Satan’s Rhapsody – Nino Oxilia (1965)
35.History of Postwar Japan as Told as a Bar Hostess – Shohei Imamura (1970)
36.The Oracle – Roberta Findlay (1965)
37.Eggshells – Tobe Hopper (1969)
38.Black Sabbath – Mario Bava (1963)
39.Mark of the Devil – Michael Armstrong, Adrian Hoven (1970)
40.Madhouse – Ovidio G. Assontis (1981)
41.Her Man – Tay Garnett (1930)
42.Human Being – Ibrahim Shaddad (1994)
43.Another Decade – Morgan Quaintance (2018)
44.Ghosts – André Novais Oliveira (2010)
45.The Carabineers – JLG (1963)
46.Lost Note – Saul Levine (2015)
47.Through the Ruins – Claudio Caldini (1982)
48.Abiding – Ugo Petronin (2019)
49.Bom Bom’s Dream – Jeremy Deller, Cecilia Bengolea (2016)
50.Dark Logic / Gedanken Aus Der Lift / Funes El Memorioso / Vindmoller / Memory of August / Understory – Margaret Rorison (2016, 2017, 2014, 2014, 2014, 2019)
51.The Devil’s Backbone – Guillermo del Toro (2001)
52.Karelia – International with Monument – Andrés Duque (2019)
53.Lake Mungo – Joel Anderson (2008)
MÓNICA DELGADO , film critic, director desistfilm.com
Films released for the first time in 2021
Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky, 2021)
Memory (Apichatpong Weresethakul, 2021)
Drive my car (Ryusuke Hagamuchi, 2021)
earthearthearth (Daïchi Saïto, 2021)
The great movement (The great movement, Kiro Russo, 2021)
Pejzazi otpora (Lanscape of resistance, Marta Popivoda, 2021)
Diários de Otsoga (Maureen Fazendeiro, Miguel Gomes, 2021)
Eles transportan a morte (They Carry Death, Helena Girón, Samuel M. Delgado, 2021)
Dangsin eolgul ap-eseo (In Front of Your Face, Hong Sangsoo, 2021)
10.The Inheritance (Ephraim Asili, 2021)
11.Chapter eo chapter (Capitu and the Chapter, Júlio Bressane, 2021)
12.Mad God (Phil Tippett, 2021)
13.A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia, 2021)
14.Saxifrages, quatre nuits blanches (Nicolas Klotz, Elizabeth Perceval, 2021)
15.Ostinato (Paula Gaitán, 2021)
16.Sycorax (Lois Patiño, Matías Piñeiro, 2021)
17.Rock Bottom Riser (Fern Silva, 2021)
18.Annette (Leos Carax, 2021)
19.Pr1nc3s4 (Raúl Perrone, 2021)
20.Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude, 2021)
21.Ste. Anne (Rhayne Vermette, 2021)
22.The Great Void (Sebastian Metz, 2020)
23.The Red Filter is Withdrawn (Minjung Kim, 2020)
24.Zeroes and Ones (Abel Ferrara, 2021)
25.All Light, Everywhere (Theo Anthony, 2021)
26.Light trap (Pablo Marín, 2021)
27.Nuclear Family (Travis Wilkerson, 2021)
28.Ahed’s Knee (Nadav Lapid, 2021)
29.Outside Noise (Ted Fendt, 2021)
30.Sacred Spirit (Chema García Ibarra, 2021)
31.Nuhu Yãg Mu Yõg Hãm: Essa Terra É Nossa! (Isael Maxakali, Sueli Maxakali, Carolina Canguçu, Roberto Romero, 2020)
32.Rêve de Gotokuji par un premier mai sans lune (Natacha Thiéry, 2020)
33.Erial (Javiera Cisterna, 2021)
34.The Canyon (Zacary Epcar, 2021)
35.Surviving You Always (Morgan Quaintance, 2021)
Peruvian films
I’ll wait here until I hear my name (Héctor Galvez, 2021)
The Old Child (Felipe Esparza, 2021)
Programs or tributes in festivals
Eight films by the Italian filmmaker Cecilia Mangini (1927–2021), presented by Another Screen.
First edition of Prismatic Ground, a festival centered on experimental documentary (USA). It’s wonderful when a new experimental film and video festival comes out. I loved the films of Anita Thacher.
Bette Gordon at Playdoc International Film Festival (Spain). An important tribute to a great American filmmaker. Her film Variety is indispensable. Pleasant that this fest has been able to show this film.
Homage to filmmaker Paula Gaitan at Tiradentes Film Festival (Brazil) and a retrospective at Frontera Sur Film Festival (Chile). Paula is one of the great Latin American filmmakers and her work is being revalued in the last few years. Nuhu Yãg Mu Yõg Hãm(Essa Terra É Nossa! By Isael Maxakali, Sueli Maxakali, Carolina Canguçu and Roberto Romero, 2020) at Sheffield Doc Fest. A film of an indigenous community obtaining the most important award. It is not frequent. The Big Headed Boy, Shamans & Samurais , by Bibhusan Basnet and Pooja Gurung (Nepal) at Lima Alterna Film Festival.
FARID RODRIGUEZ, program Lima Alterna Fest
In order of preference
Babi Yar. Context (Sergei Loznitsa, Ukraine)
Wood and Water (Jonas Bak, Germany)
The bones (Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León, Chile)
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Japan)
10.Terranova (Alejandro Alonso Estrella and Alejandro Pérez, Cuba)
11.Rock Bottom Riser (Fern Silva, United States)
12.Husek (Daniela Seggiario, Argentina)
13.A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces (Shengze Zhu, China)
14.Nullo (Jan Soldat, Austria)
15.The great movement (Kiro Russo, Bolivia)
16.Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude, Romania)
17.Sacred Spirit ( Chema García Ibarra, Spain)
18.Faya Dayi (Jessica Beshir, Ethiopia)
19.In Front of Your Face + Introduction (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)
20.9 (Martín Barrenechea and Nicolás Branca, Uruguay)
12 of 2020 seen in the 21
Dau. Degeneration , by Ilya Khrzhanovskiy and Ilya Permyakov (Russia)
Digital Video Editing with Adobe Premiere Pro: The Real-World Guide to Set Up and Workflow , by Hong Seong-yoon (South Korea)
Ailleurs, Partout , by Isabelle Ingold and Vivianne Perelmuter (Belgium)
The Big Headed Boy , Shamans & Samurais, Bibhusan Basnet and Pooja Gurung (Nepal)
Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It , by Yernar Nurgaliyev (Kazakhstan)
The Wasteland , by Ahmad Bahrami (Iran)
Liberty: An Ephemeral Statute , by Rebecca Jane Arthur (Belgium)
Eyimofe , by Arie Esiri and Chuko Esiri (Nigeria)
Mama , by Dongmei Li (China)
February,by Kamen Kalev (Bulgaria)
Catavento , by Joao Rosas (Portugal)
Day in the Life , from the Karrabing Film Collective (Australia)
12 Great Movies of the 20th Century First Seen in 2021
Distant Journey , by Alfréd Radok (Czechoslovakia, 1949) Dracula , by Terrence Fisher (United Kingdom, 1958) Operazione paura , by Mario Bava (Italy, 1966) The bird with the crystal feathers , by Dario Argento (Italy, 1970) Muna Moto , by Jean-Pierre Dikongue-Pipa (Cameroon, 1975) One People , by Pim de la Parra (Surinam, 1976) Beirut, Never Again , by Jocelyn Saab (Lebanon, 1976) Next of Kin , by Tony Williams (Australia, 1982) Beirut, My City , by Jocelyn Saab (Lebanon, 1983) Winter adé, by Helke Misselwitz (East Germany, 1989) The Belovs , by Viktor Kossakovsky (Russia, 1992) Little Angel, Make Me Happy , by Uzmaan Saparov (Turkmenistan, 1993)
Peruvian Movies
Pneumatic conduction, by Genietta Varsi Notes on Connection III , by Andrea Franco Arquitectura entre species , by Mauricio Freyre I ‘ll wait here until I hear my name , by Héctor Gálvez Las_chicas.mp4 , by Ximena Medina, Romina Bran, Valeria Marín and Francesca Bobbio
VICTOR GUIMARÃES, film critic (Kinetics / With eyes open) and programmer (FICValdivia, FENDA) –Brazil
14 imaginary double bills in 2021:
Memory (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021) + El Cuervo, la Yegua y la Fosa (Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, 2021)
The sonic depth of delusion.
The Whole Shebang (Ken Jacobs, 2019) + Agua del Arroyo que Tiembla (Javiera Cisterna, 2021)
A film is an image being born from the viscera of another image.
Detours (Ekaterina Selenkina, 2021) + Ste. Anne (Rhayne Vermette, 2021)
Landscape as fiction. Fiction as landscape.
Open Monte (María Rojas Arias, 2021) + Notes for a Déjà Vu (Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, 2021)
Truly facing the present requires some anachrony.
Antonio Valencia (Daniela Delgado Viteri, 2020) + Self-Portrait: Fairy Tale in 47 KM (Zhang Mengqi, 2021)
The politics of tenderness.
The Sky is Red (Francina Carbonell, 2020) + One Image, Two Acts (Sanaz Sohrabi, 2020)
Prison break.
Drive my Car (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2021) + Chapter eo Chapter (Julio Bressane, 2021)
The theater of passion.
Il n’y Aura Plus de Nuit (Eléonore Weber, 2020) + Zeros and Ones (Abel Ferrara, 2021)
A plunge into the darkness of our times.
Rodson ou (Onde o Sol Não Temdó) (Clara Chroma, Cleyton Xavier y Orlok Sombra, 2020) + Love is a Dog from Hell (Khavn, 2021)
Cinema is full of sound and fury.
Rua Ataléia (André Novais Oliveira, 2021) + Summer (Vadim Kostrov, 2021)
The delicate rigors of light.
south (Morgan Quaintance, 2020) + A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia, 2021)
A fistful of burning images.
Nuhu Yãg Mu Yõg Hãm: Essa Terra É Nossa! (Isael Maxakali, Sueli Maxakali, Carolina Canguçu, Roberto Romero, 2020) + Voltei! (Glenda Nicácio & Ary Rosa, 2021)
The musical heart of political cinema.
Nosferasta (Adam Khalil & Bayley Sweitzer & Oba, 2021) + El Gran Movimiento (Kiro Russo, 2021)
How many times can a film mutate and still be awesome?
I would like to celebrate the work of two great platforms for showing films that made our lives better this year: Another Screen and Prismatic Ground. Also, the peak of my cinephile year was discovering the work of the Sudanese Film Group – especially Jamal (1981) and Jagdpartie (1964) by Ibrahim Shaddad – during the Flaherty Seminar programmed by Janaína Oliveira.
VICTOR PAZ MORANDEIRA , film critic and programmer, Spain
Ten highlights of my 2021: eight queue filmmakers will remain in the memory
Apichatpong Weerasethakul – Memory : A fit Apitcha, comfortable in Colombian terrain developing his usual themes and aesthetics. The novelty is the sound treatment, literally from another world.
Leos Carax – Annette : Total creative freedom without fear of ridicule, without barriers. It is a joyous, complex and uncomfortable film in terms of subject matter and form. Adam Driver is an acting beast.
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi: Roulette of fortune and fantasy + Drive My Car . Few times in the history of cinema will someone have made two masterpieces in one year. I like both their elaborate plot structure, their narrative pulse and the outstanding direction of the actors, supported by excellent dialogues. At the end of the day, I think I connect with the sensibility of Japanese, and that is what makes me adore him.
Yuri Ancarani – Atlantide . As if you catch one of A full throttle but with boats through the canals of Venice and give it an air of a documentary YouTuber with urban music hitting your eardrums. The edition is radically to applaud.
Pedro Almodóvar – Parallel Mothers : A brave film in which the man from La Mancha shows himself open-heartedly around the concepts of motherhood and historical memory. That last scene is breathtaking, one of the best Almodóvar has ever shot. Penelope Cruz has never shone so bright.
Abel Ferrara – Zeros and Ones : The best film that exists about confinement, no matter how much it disguises itself as a psychotic thriller. Ferrara lets her apocalyptic paranoias flow in a new exercise in cinema as therapy. Just as cryptic as his recent tapes, but less allegorical, more direct. Very playful with the digital image. A cry of a free caged artist.
Alexandre Koberidze – What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (What do we see when we look at the sky?) Beautiful and original urban symphony in the form of an elegant romantic comedy.
Ridley Scott – The Last Duel . Crude Rashomon vintage film about how elusive the truth can be. I like him that he doesn’t judge the characters and presents his versions of events without Manichean tricks. Put together an intelligent feminist speech without the need to present yourself as a militant. What a piece of actress Jodie Comer.
An ideal shorts session
In Flow of Words (Eliane Esther Bots, 2021) + Surviving You, Always (Morgan Quaintance, 2020) + Imperdonable (Marlén Viñayo, 2020) + Le quattro strade (Alice Rohrwacher, 2021). They are films that, with different approaches to non-fiction cinema, speak of our current reality with rigor and each one of them from its own singularity.
Classics (re) discovered
The complete work of Márta Mészáros, which MUBI is recovering using new restorations from the Hungarian Film Library; and two tapes by Bette Gordon, to whom Play-Doc dedicated a complete cycle this year: The United States of America (1975, along with James Benning) and Variety (1983).
RAÚL CAMARGO , director of the Valdivia Film Festival, Chile.
15 films, in alphabetical order:
– A night of knowing nothing , by Payal Kapadia.
– Open mount , by María Rojas Arias.
– Water from the creek that trembles , by Javiera Cisterna.
– Under the sky , by Diego Acosta.
– Diários de otsoga , by Maureen Fazendeiro & Miguel Gomes.
– The Great Movement , by Kiro Russo.
– In front of your face , by Hong Sang-soo.
– The bones , by Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña.
– Luto , by Pablo Martín Weber.
– Memory , by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
–My brothers dream awake , by Claudia Huaiquimilla.
– Ste. Anne , by Rhayne Vermette.
– Summer by Vadim Kostrov.
– Une histoire de cheveux (Sibérie) , by Boris Lehman.
– What do we see when we look at the sky? by Aleksandre Koberidze.
15 special mentions, in alphabetical order:
– A morte branca do feiticeiro negro , by Rodrigo Ribeiro.
– Antonio Valencia , by Daniela Delgado.
– Bad luck banging or loony porn , by Radu Jude.
– Dry winter by Kyle Davis.
– Eles transportan a morte , by Helena Girón & Samuel M. Delgado.
– Uruguay is not a river , by Daniel Yafalián.
– Grandma’s scissors by Erica Sheu.
– Notes, incantations. Part II: Carmela , by Alexandra Cuesta.
– One image, two acts , by Sanaz Sohrabi.
– What will be of the summer , by Ignacio Ceroi.
– Retour à Reims (Fragments) , by Jean-Gabriel Périot.
– Short vacation by Kwon Min-pyo & Seo Hansol.
– Train again , by Peter Tscherkassky.
– Tonalli , from Colectivo Los Ingrávidos.
– Tropico de Capricornio, by Juliana Antunes.
PABLO GAMBA , film critic and teacher, Venezuela, Argentina
Terranova , by Alejandro Alonso and Alejandro Pérez (Cuba, 2021)
Israel , by Ernesto Baca (Argentina, 2021)
The promise of return , by Cristián Sánchez (Chile, 2020)
Sol de campinas, by Jessica Sarah Rinland (Brazil, 2021)
Watchmen , by Paz Encina (Paraguay, 2021)
The Wind Floor , by Gloria Peirano and Gustavo Fontán (Argentina, 2021)
The dog that does not shut up , by Ana Katz (Argentina, 2021)
35combro5 , by Raúl Perrone (Argentina, 2021)
Window boy would also like to have a submarine , by Alex Piperno (Uruguay-Argentina-Brazil, 2020)
10.Dark journey light , by Tin Dirdamal (Mexico-Vietnam, 2021)
Terranova’s approach to Havana , which may seem unusual, delusional, is the successful result of the search for an honest way of looking at one of the cities and one of the countries in the world on which preconceptions weigh the most, the cliches. It is also an expression of Cuban cosmopolitanism, a way of seeing the country in the world that can be very different from how the world sees this country.
ANDREEA PATRU , programmer and film critic (Romania / Spain)
Features
Petit Maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier, 2021) The Tale of King Crab (Alessio Rigo de Righi, Matteo Zoppis, 2021) The Card Counter (Paul Schrader, 2021) Vengeance Is Mine , All Others Pay Cash (Edwin, 2021) The Girl and the Spider (Ramon Zürcher, Silvan Zürcher, 2021) The Tsugua Diaries (Maureen Fazendeiro, Miguel Gomes, 2021) The Dorm (Roman Vasyanov, 2021) A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia , 2021) All Light, Everywhere (Theo Anthony, 2021) Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2021) Dirty Feathers(Carlos Alfonso Corral, 2021) What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Aleksandre Koberidze, 2021) North by Current (Angelo Madsen Minax, 2021) The Souvenir: Part II (Joanna Hogg, 2021)
Shorts
Civil War Surveillance Poems (Part 1) (Mitch McCabe, 2020)
Naya (Sebastian Mulder, 2021)
In Flow of Words (Eliane Esther Bots, 2021)
Creature (María Silvia Esteve, 2021)
Beast (Hugo Covarrubias, 2021)
SEBASTIAN WIEDEMANN , Filmmaker, film scholar, editor and curator at humanacine.com (Colombia)
In no particular order:
Open Monte (Maria Rojas Arias, Colombia, 2021) Dark Pacific (Camila Beltrán, Colombia, 2020) Bicentennial (Pablo Alvarez Mesa, Colombia, 2020) Memory (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Colombia / Thailand, 2021) To Ultima Floresta (Luiz Bolognesi, Brazil , 2021) A Cosmopolítica Dos Animais (Juliana Fausto & Luisa Marques, Brazil, 2021) Fluxus Fungus (Tuane Eggers, Brazil, 2020) Seed, Image, Ground (Abelardo Gil-Fournier & Jussi Parikka, Spain / Finland, 2020) Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky, Austria, 2021) Signal 8 (Simon Liu, Hong Kong, 2019)
+ Online Retrospectives
Bruno Varela – Mexico (Camara Lucida Film Festival, Ecuador, 2021)
Jürgen Reble – Germany (Filmmuseum München, Germany, 2021)
Becoming Earth by Ursula Biemann – Switzerland (Art Museum at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia, 2021)
Carrabing Film Collective – Australia (Forumdoc.BH Film Festival, Brazil, 2021)
ÁNGEL RUEDA , director S8 Mostra de Cinema Periférico, Spain
A list of some of the films, programs and cycles that I want to highlight from this 2021, mostly seen in the theater and some in online programs.
– Earthearthearth (Daïchi Saïto, 2021)
– Ste. Anne (Rhayne Vermette, 2021)
– Flowers blooming in our throats (Eva Giolo, 2020)
– Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky, 2021)
– Configurations (James Edmonds, 2021)
– Bethanien Tetralogy (Deborah S. Phillips, 2020)
– Letter from Your far-off Country (Suneil Sanzgiri, 2020)
– The Fantastic (Maija Blåfield, 2020)
– One Image, Two Acts (Yek Tasveer, Do Bardasht) (Sanaz Sohrabi, 2020)
– Spinoza / Ongodist(Bruno Delgado Ramo, 2021)
– Meihodo (Jorge Suárez-Quiñones Rivas, 2020)
– # 005 and # 006 (Yonay Boix, 2021)
– Light Trap (Pablo Marín, 2021)
– Be careful out there (Alberto Gracia, 2021 )
– Bravío Flash ( Ainoha Rodríguez, 2021)
– Sacred Spirit (Chema García Ibarra, 2021)
– Eles Trasportan a Morte (Helena Girón and Samuel Delgado, 2021)
– Husek (Daniela Seggiaro, 2021)
The following Film Performances:
– Listening Exercises 2. Film performance by Helena Girón and Samuel Delgado. 2021
– Kicked with the front foot on the dark side of the deck. Film performance by Esperanza Collado. 2021
– “A Lecture by Hollis Frampton”, performed by Valentina Alvarado Matos and Carlos Vásquez Méndez. 2021
– Echo Chamber. Film performance by Valentina Alvarado Matos and Carlos Vásquez Méndez. 2021
The carte blanche produced by Jean-Claude Rousseau at the (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periférico 2021, which included the following titles:
– La Chambre (Chantal Akerman, 1972)
– Standard Time (Michael Snow, 1967)
– Césarée (Marguerite Duras, 1979)
– Surface Tension (Hollis Frampton, 1968)
– Films Sans Caméra Stst (Giovanni Martedi, 1975)
– Taris, Roi de L’eau (Jean Vigo, 1931)
The cycle on the 40 years of Light Cone, curated by Elena Duque and Yann Beauvais for the Seville European Film Festival 2021.
– SESSION 1. LANDSCAPE / ECOLOGY. http://festivalcinesevilla.eu/peliculas/ciclo-light-cone-sesion-1-paisajesecologia
– SESSION 2. GENDER / IDENTITY http://festivalcinesevilla.eu/peliculas/ciclo-light-cone-sesion-2-generoidentidad
– SESSION 3. CINEMA AS MATERIAL http://festivalcinesevilla.eu/peliculas/ciclo-light-cone-sesion-3-el-cine-como-material
ORISEL CASTRO . Filmmaker, programmer and coordinator of the Master in Documentary Film, EICTV
Year of returning to Cuba, to film school, to Glauber Rocha. Less solo films and more in the living room, with the students. The island of the island. The most important is divided into: what I saw on the big screen programmed by Jorge Yglesias, the teacher; what I saw on the computer, sometimes through MUBI, especially to program EDOC and what I saw to think of professors for the Master’s in Documentary Film that I coordinate at EICTV.
I. What I saw in the Glauber Rocha room
– Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude, 2021)
– The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion, 2021)
– Annette (Leos Carax, 2021)
– The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice, 1973)
– Last year in Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
– Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999)
– In a certain way (Sara Gómez, 1974)
II. Alone and for EDOC
– Victoria (Sofie Benoot, Liesbeth De Ceulaer, Isabelle Tollenaere, 2020)
– Bosco (Alicia Cano, 2020)
– Things we don’t do (Bruno Santamaría, 2020)
– Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)
– Princes Cyd (Stephen Cone , 2017)
– The Quince Sun (Víctor Erice, 1992)
– Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Løve, 2021) thanks to Jules for “the refuge”
III. Casting for mastery
– Playback: rehearsal of a farewell (Agustina Comedi, 2020)
– In the image and likeness (Jessica Sarah Rinland, 2019)
– My Mexican Bretzel (Nuria Giménez, 2020)
– Arabia (Affonso Uchoa, 2017) in the presence of the director, also in the EICTV room, when he came to teach the Experimental and Hybrid Cinema class.
– Recollection (Kamal Aljafari, 2015) in the presence of the director, on the recommendation of the master’s students. A great revelation for me.
December Bonus
– Memory (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021)
A haunted projection in a mixing studio in a foreign country, full of familiar thoughts and sonorous ghosts. A true sonic attack on the heart of cinephilia. I was awakened by the memory of The Sleeping One (Pascal Aubier, 1966) and I showed it in class the next day. A song in the chest …
LIBERTAD GILLS , filmmaker, film critic, video essayist, Ecuador
I imagine my list as a program that would be shown in this order:
Belmarsh Christmas Day Soundscape (Julian Assange, Stella Morris)
Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky)
Birth (Cristina Álvarez López)
Dreams Under Confinement (Christopher Harris)
Covid Messages (John Smith)
Quebrantahuesos (Martin Baus)
Notes, Imprints (On Love): Part II, Carmela (Alexandra Cuesta)
Figure & I (Lynne Sachs)
Light Year (Bruno Varela)
Mutationem (Maile Costa Colbert)
Light Trap (Pablo Marin)
+
a long: Under the sky (Diego Acosta)
+
video essays:
“Young (Women) Filmmaker (s)” (Katie Bird)
Edge (Catherine Grant)
Murky Waters (Jaap Kooijman and Patricia Pisters)
Once Upon a Screen: Explosive Paradox (Kevin B. Lee)
+
“Unmaking Cinema”: conversation with Raphael Montañez Ortiz at Light Cone
Program by Cecilia Mangini at Another Gaze
“Practicing Abolition Futures” with Pooja Rangan, Brett Story, Christopher Harris & Alex Rivera at UnionDocs
State of Cinema 2021 by Nicole Brenez
+
in Ecuadorian cinema:
Equatorial Program at Cámara Lúcida Festival
JUAN CARLOS LEMUS POLANÍA, Film Critic and director of Cine con Acento podcast
A list of the movies that moved me the most in 2021
2021 was the year in which we realized that nothing was going to change if not to get worse. More so when we have been depleted by overexposure to everything, to the immeasurable of knowledge, of attention. This being, knowing and doing everything and for everything has become imperative for many of my contemporaries. More so when Bauman’s liquid has appeared in gaseous: and the Berlinale I could see her in her pajamas while stopping Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy because the water bill came to the door. But resistance — to which one can cling, to which one puts faith — in my case goes through the adjective given to a certain cinema: slow. The works that I will list do not all fit into the aforementioned category, but for the most part they walk through that introspection,
Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc (Bad Luck Banging or Lonely Porn, Radu Jude, 2021 Berlinale 71) Golden Bear for the Romanian director with this satire that on the surface shows the life of a couple and the no border between the private and the public , diluted today by technology, with its blow it has called in past decades the “weaker sex”. And meanwhile he talks about the social cost of entering Europe for his country. Understanding its metaphor, it would be multiple penetration received with feigned pleasure, just like in hardcore porn.
Azor (Andreas Fontana, 2021, Berlinale). The Swiss director surprises with this dramatic thriller set in Argentina to talk about how corruption is engendered and who are the progenitors. The big bankers, of course from the white countries that have third world countries listed as corrupt, do not fare very well in this DNA test to certify paternity.
Gûzen to sôzô (Wheel of fortune and fantasy, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2021, Berlinale 71) Replicating the first Christians, Hamaguchi creates his Holy Trinity in this work. I do not think I fall into a solipsism when I say that we have become used to gruesome, and sometimes even brutal, narratives and make these our masterpieces – did Romanticism abuse us? -. So when this wonder of compassion and humanity is revealed; of solidarity and human warmth; It is possible to classify it as brilliant and subversive from distancing itself from the self to reaching the we. And more today than before, or as always, a necessary balm.
Annette (Leos Carax, 2021, Cannes 74). The French director brings this musical in which he is related to the tradition of his fellow sociologists dedicated to radiographing the state of the art of human behavior at a certain time. Carax undresses us in this narcissism and struggle of egos, at the point of social networks, which has become our daily life. This particular moment where high and low culture coexist in marriage, where sexist violence is increased by professional jealousy and where we exploit even the most precious in search of wealth as a synonym of success.
Memory (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021, Cannes 74) The first film I saw by this director was at Cannes 2015, and it left my head scratched for a long time, something that led me to become interested in his work and try to find meaning, or a message. I found relationships between the physical and what is not seen, but which is. However, with Memoria I feel that the Thai is going to more and can only be carried away in the trance in which the viewer is induced to see his cinema. A sensory experience that speaks of being, being and transcendence. As a Colombian, you can read what we have been hiding in order to forget when what we must collectively remember.
Compartment No. 6 (Juho Kuosmanen, 2021, Cannes 74) A budding separation and a journey kick off this road trip, but on rails and very claustrophobic. A trip in a train car that allows two worldviews to meet and then some understandings to emerge. The Finn is another of those who proposes this kind of vital companionship, of detaching armor to make the fucking path of life calmer and cushion the shocks.
The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes, 2021, Cannes 74). The Californian’s documentary is special for fans and informative for neophytes. Haynes imitates his idols and breaks some of the rules, making his work formally disruptive and that form is already a message — I bet on Warhol’s blessing. The lives of Nico, Tucker, Reed, Cale and how the avant-garde was made music in an unthinkable and little exposed sixties nihilism, which would later bring to punk. Also a memory about the cool pose, which has already been marked since Wilde’s decadence and that pretentious way of being in the cold, boring world and of no surprise and therefore conservative and elitist.
Drive my Car (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2021, Cannes 74) Handling personal and moral losses. The weight that we have left and that we must continue to carry as we can. But it seems that the Japanese sum up stoicism and temperance, according to the protagonists without actually teaching us. Hamaguchi repeats on the list with plenty of reasons. Because in addition to those moral forces mentioned, it also gives way, once again, to human communication beyond words, where hugs, looks, affection, subtleties have a place. And compassion and tenderness.
The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion, 2021, Venice 78) And the donkey returns to the wheat, however. Campion flaunts the purest postmodernism in his mix of film genres with such mastery that The Power of the Dog doesn’t have a bump. And from western to drama and thriller and something else. What and where is the power of the dog? Perhaps in that he domesticated us insofar as he made us believe otherwise.
The Card Counter (Paul Schrader, 2021, Venice 78) You already remember Travis. And it is that the protagonists of Schrader are in search of personal redemption through the other. And just as I have mentioned compassion for the other as a force that supports and helps us, perhaps among those on the other side is revenge. This one that in certain cases is necessary to the point of stupidity. Also, I add that this is the year of Oscar Isaac with this magnificent role for which we will remember.
Colophon
To pay the debt with last year (before): So many souls (Nicolás Rincón Gille, 2019. Just released this year due to its cancellation in 2020 by COVID). To contribute with the commercial fee: No Sudden Move (Steven Soderbergh, 2021, HBO Max). The usual: The empire of the senses (Nagisa Oshima, 1976). The classic: The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie (Luís Buñuel, 1972). The unforgettable: Mimosas (Oliver Laxe, 2016). The Colombian: Bicentennial (Pablo Álvarez-Mesa, 2020).
ALDO PADILLA , Cinemancia Festival programmer and critic, Bolivia – Chile
In astronomy there is often talk of “looking back” when looking at planets outside the solar system, we look at them hundreds or thousands of years ago while it seems impossible to think of that planet in the present. The cinema of this 2021 seems in the same way a cinema of a past world, since although two years have passed since the beginning of the pandemic and its multiple waves, the masks and the radical changes that the world has undergone seem something alien to a cinema that by its nature usually takes more than two years from its filming to its presentation, will 2022 be a cinema with masks, with social distances, with slight references to a world that is no longer the same? For now, the films that have referenced the global pandemic seem to have understood human fragility (The Great Movement),
Top 10
The Great Movement , Kiro Russo, Bolivia, 2021
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? , Alexandre Koberidze, Georgia, 2021
Rêve de Gotokuji par un premier mai sans lune , Natacha Thiéry, France, 2020
10.Beyond the night , Manuel Ponce de León, Colombia, 2021
PAOLA VELA, Peruvian visual artist and filmmaker
Movies (short and long) seen through platforms like MUBI, by festivals like MUTA or Lima Alterna, or thanks to friends who sent me the private links from VIMEO.
Four Roads (2021) by Alice Rohrwacher Terranova (2021) by Alejandro Alonso Estrella and Alejandro Pérez Serrano The Cloud in her Room (2020) by Xinyuan Zheng Lu Private Collection (2020) by Elena Duque One thousand and One Attempts to Be an Ocean ( 2020) by Yuyang Wang 13 Ways of Looking a Blackbird (2020) by Ana Vaz Felix in Wonderland (2019) by Marie Losier
Three Peruvian voices working outside Peru: No One Cried (2021) by Daniel Jacoby Notes on Connection III (2021) by Andrea Franco The Old Child (2021) by Felipe Esparza
Short films seen in person in museums Plastic Limits – For the Projection of Other Architectures (2021) by Rosa Barba, short film as part of her solo exhibition In a Perpetual Now at the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, Germany. Framer Framed (2021) by Ramaya Tegegne, documentary film as part of the group exhibition The Equality of the Possibility at the Kunstverein Bielefeld, Germany.
Discoveries / reviews of Peruvian filmmakers from the past thanks to Corriente Encuentro Latinoamericano de Cine de No Ficción, friends who sent me the links, or YouTube. 3 x 16 (2007) by Marcos Arriaga Beijing (1988) by Rose Lowder Cimarrones(1975) by Carlos Ferrrand Niños (1974) from the Liberation without Rodeos Group Vision of the Jungle (1973) from the Liberation without Rodeos Group
RODRIGO GARAY YSITA , Co-editor of Correspondences, Berlinale Talents student and member of FIPRESCI (Mexico)
I never thought a Wes Anderson movie or car commercial would end up among my favorites of an entire year, but here we are. I am very excited about what I saw in 2021. I was accompanied by darker movies last year, but now I notice a game search on this list. I feel restless, in a good way.
***
I never thought a Wes Anderson flick or a car commercial would end up among my year-long favorites, but here we are. I’m truly moved by my 2021 picks. Last year I turned to more somber films, but now I feel a spirited pursuit in this list. I feel restless, in a good way.
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze, 2021)
The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson, 2021)
What will be of the summer (Ignacio Ceroi, 2021)
The Canyon (Zachary Epcar, 2021)
Das Mädchen und die Spinne (Ramon Zürcher and Silvan Zürcher, 2021)
Day is Done (Dalei Zhang, 2020)
Friends and Strangers (James Vaughan, 2021)
earthearthearth (Daïchi Saïto, 2021)
A táxi do Jack (Susana Nobre, 2021)
10.Looking for Venera (Norika Sefa, 2021)
11.Flowers blooming in our throats (Eva Giolo, 2020)
12.Blutsauger (Julian Radlmaier, 2021)
13.The founders (Diego Hernández, 2021)
14.Rock Bottom Riser (Fern Silva, 2021)
15.Feast (Tim Leyendekker, 2021)
16.Jesus Egon Christus (David Vajda and Sasa Vajda, 2021)
17.È Stata la mano di Dio (Paolo Sorrentino, 2021)
This year I also took the time to go back to old favorites of mine that I hadn’t seen in years — like Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker, 1980), The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969) or Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984) – and confirm my resounding love for them.
***
This year I also took the time to revisit old favorites of mine that I hadn’t seen in years —such as Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker, 1980), The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969) or Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984) -, confirming my resounding love for them.
RENATO LEÓN , journalist and film critic from Peru
My favorite movies that I saw this 2021 (theaters, streaming, festivals, Torrent), in order of preference.
Drive my car by Ryusuke Hamaguchi.
Memory , by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
The card counter , by Paul Schrader.
Wheel of fortune and fantasy , by Ryusuke Hamaguchi.
Annette , by Léos Carax.
Petite maman , by Celine Sciamma.
Malignant by James Wan.
The innocents by Eskil Vogt.
Benedetta , by Paul Verhoeven.
10.Bergman Island by Mia Hansen-Løve.
11.Esquirlas , by Natalia Garayalde.
12.Night of fire , by Tatiana Huezo.
13.Power of dog by Jane Campion.
14.Un médecin de nui t, by Elie Wajeman.
15.La Nuée , by Just Philippot.
16.Spencer , by Pablo Larraín
17.Nobody by Ilya Naishuller.
18.The Green Knight by David Lowery
19.Val by Ting Poo and Leo Scott.
20.Cruella by Craig Gillespie.
Series:
Succession , Season 3 (HBO Max).
Midnight Mass (Netflix).
Small Ax .
Them (Prime Video).
The white Lotus (HBO Max).
Mare of easttown (HBO Max).
Servant , Season Two (Apple TV +).
Hellbound (Netflix).
Sex Education , third season (Netflix).
10.Scenes from a Marriage (HBO Max).
Films more inflated than a hot air balloon:
Titane by Julia Ducournau.
Cry male , by Clint Eastwood.
Nomadland by Chloé Zhao.
FRANCISCO ÁLVAREZ RÍOS , programmer and director of the Cámara Lúcida festival, Ecuador
Non-fiction circuits, or experimentation fiction:
Just a Movement by Vincent Meessen The great movement by Kiro Russo Rock Bottom Riser by Fern Silva The Invisible Mountain by Ben Rusell The moon represents my heart by Juan Martín Hsu Taming the garden by Salomé Jashi One image, two acts by Sanaz Sohrabi A night of knowing nothing by Payal Kapadia Ste. Anne by Rhayne Vermette Eles transport a morte by Helena Girón and Samuel M. Delgado
Experimental circuit:
earthearthearth by Daïchi Saïto Train Again by Peter Tscherkassky Pentalfa Neón by Bruno Varela The Canyon by Zacary Epcar Zero Lenght Spring by Ross Meckfessel 2020 by Fried Von Gröller Epoca is Another Thing by Ignacio Tamarit and Tomas Maglione Notes on connection III by Andrea Franco Tonalli from the Colectivo Los Ingrávidos Night Reflection (IV) by Benjamin Ellenberger
Ecuadorian circuit:
Dawn of Datura by Jean-Jacques Martinod and Bretta Walker Winds of Chanduy by Mario Rodríguez Dávila Notes, incantations: part II, Carmela by Alexandra Cuesta Open sky / Open sea / Open ground by Libertad Gills and Martin Baus Bearded vulture by Martin Baus
ALONSO CASTRO , Peruvian film critic
In no order of priority:
– Charm Circle , Nira Burstein (2021)
– Luto , Pablo Martín Weber (2021)
– My last adventure , Ezequiel Salinas, Ramiro Sonzini (2021)
– Window boy would also like to have a submarine , Alex Piperno (2021)
– Her socialist smile , John Gianvito (2020)
– The Wheel of Fortune , Ryusuke Hamaguchi (2021)
– Une chanson d’anniversaire , Jaques Perconte (2021)
– The dog that does not shut up , Ana Katz (2021)
– A l’abordage , Guillaume Brac (2020 )
– Otsoga Newspapers, Miguel Gomes (2021)
– Notes on Connection III , Andrea Franco (2021)
– Les choses qu’on dit, les choses qu’on fait , Emmanuel Mouret (2020)
– The bones , Cristóbal León, Joaquín Cociña (2021)
AARON CUTLER (Mutual Films / The Moviegoer), United States / Brazil
Some movies I loved in 2021 (and as always, I apologize to all the works I forgot):
– All of Your Stars Are but Dust on My Shoes (Haig Aivazian)
– Blind Body (Allison Chhorn)
– The Canyon (Zachary Epcar)
– earthearthearth (Daïchi Saïto)
– Home When You Return (Carl Elsaesser)
– The red filter is withdrawn (Minjung Kim)
– Rua Ataléia (André Novais Oliveira)
– sem title # 7 : Rara (Carlos Adriano)
– Light Trap (Pablo Marín)
– Untitled (34bsp) (Philipp Fleischmann)
– Wasteland No. 3: Moons, Sons ( Jodie Mack)
– What is it that you said? (Shun Ikezoe)
Some samples that will impress me:
– ” I Am Independent ” – Jeonju International Film Festival. The beautiful book published in conjunction should also be mentioned .
– Quinzaine des Réalisateurs – 2021 edition
– Paulo Rocha Retrospective – São Paulo International Film Festival
A thought: One of the first values I discovered in the cinema was a healthy opportunity to get out of the house. Always when I read about a new virtual programming now, even the most interesting one, I end up remembering that. The physical movie theater will always have its value.
MALENA MARTÍNEZ CABRERA , filmmaker, Peru
Films by Florent Marcie A.I. at War. France 2021, 107min
[Retrospective Film as a subversive art of the Vienna Filmmuseum. Curated by Roger Koza]
SAÏA. A front line at night in Afghanistan . France, 2000, 30 min.
Films of Grace Passô: Republic . Brazil, 2020, 15 min. Vaga carne by Grace Passô, Ricardo Alves Júnior, Brazil 2019, 45 min.
[Flaherty International Film Seminar]
In a certain way . Sara Gomez. Cuba 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977. 73min.
[Filmfestival Viennale]
Other films from the Retrospective Film as a subversive art, a tribute to Amos Vogel from the Vienna Filmmuseum.
Demain et encore demain, journal 1995 Dominique Cabrera. France, 1997, 79 min. [Curated by Birgit Kohler]. Cage rain . César González, Argentinien, 2019, 82 min. [Curated by Roger Koza] brouillard # 14 by Alexandre Laroes, Canada, 2013, 10 min. Lightning dance by Cecilia Bengolea, Argentina, 2018, 6 min. [Curated by Nicole Brenez] What am I doing in this very visual world? Manuel Embalse, 2020, AR, 64 min. [This Human World Festival (online)].
Other films seen at the Flaherty International Film Seminar, online.
The Klan comes to town by Deanna Bowen. Canada, 2013, 20 min. Sum of the parts what can be named by Deanna Bowen. Canada, 2010, 19 min. Yãy Tu Nunãnã Payexop: Encontro de Pajés (Meeting of Shamans) of Sueli Maxakali, Brazil, 2021, 23 min. Jamal (A Camel) from Sudanese Film Group, Sudan, 1981, 14 min. Public service announcemente from Athi Patra Ruga, South Africa, 2014, 15 min. Thaumamorphic Video 2: Massage by Teddy Ogborn, US, 2020, short. [Fellows screenings]
Films by the duo Gray Cake (Alexander Serechenko, Ekaterina Pryanichnikova): Dreams of the Machine . Russia, 2021, 14 min. Backlash , Russia 2020, 4min Vremyanka , Russia, 2’33 ”
Uncanny Dream Cycle of Ars Electronica Animation Festival 2021
Etéreo y Lejano de Juan Llacsa, DOCLA, Moyobamba, Peru, 2021 1’41
[DOCLA School social networks]
Peruvian longs
Genaro’s betamax , Miguel Villalobos, 2015, 114min
[Cineaparte.com, Peruvian film platform].
Seen in Focus Peru at the Latin America Festival of Biarritz
Films by Omar Forero Complex Cases . Trujillo, 2018, 81 min. Chicama . Trujillo, 2012, 75 min. Manco Capac by Henry Vallejo, Puno, 2021, Among these trees that I have invented by Martín Rebaza, Trujillo, 2021, 78 min.
BonusVista again in 2021. AI by Steven Spielberg, US, 2021, 146 min.
MARIANA DIANELA TORRES VALENCIA , visual artist, video essayist, Mexico
10 or 15 Favorite Movies 2021
Sedmikrásky (Vera Chytilová, 1966)
Where Is My Friend’s House? (Abbas Kiarostami, 1987)
Ozols (Laila Pakalnina, 1997)
Selva Tragica (Yulene Olaizola, 2020)
Double Phase (Takashi Makino, 2020)
Glimpses from a Visit to Orkney in Summer 1995 (Ute Aurand, 2020)
Holiday (Holiday) (Azucena Losana, 2021)
The road is made by walking (Paula Gaitán, 2021)
What will be of the summer (Ignacio Ceroi, 2021)
Labor of Lov e (Sylvia Schedelbauer, 2020)
S4D3 (Raúl Perrone, 2021)
Underground pulses (Elena Pardo, 2020- 2021-…)
Neon Crystals(Bruno Varela, 2021)
All the light we can see (Pablo Escoto, 2020)
The wait (Celina Manuel, 2021)
WILDER ZUMARÁN , film critic, Peru
This year, due to different factors, I have seen very little cinema. I saw little and, above all, I was aware of what could be seen in Peru and at festivals in Latin America. I think this list reflects well the intermittent journey that 2021 has been for me. A political year, a bit tragic, energetic at times, suffocating many times. A year, for me, however, of great brief moments with the cinema.
Luz nos Tópicos , by Paula Gaitán
Los conductos , by Camilo Restrepo
La France contre les robots , by Jean-Marie Straub
Chaco , by Diego Mondaca
First Cow , by Kelly Reichardt
Fauna , by Nicolás Pereda
Like the sky after it rains , by Mercedes Gaviria
The Whole Shebang , by Ken Jacobs
Playback. Essay of a farewell , by Agustina Comedi
Of all the things to know , by Sofía Velázquez
Esquirlas , by Natalia Garayalde
+
Sutís Interferências , by Paula Gaitán
Poilean , by Claudio Caldini
Sisters with transistors , by Lisa Rovner
Peruvian films
Of all the things to know , by Sofía Velázquez
The Old Child , by Felipe Esparza
pov: you have dystrophy and you are going to turn 25 artificial years , by Claudia Vanesa Figueroa
Spotlights and curatorial proposals
Spotlight María Galindo and Mujeres Creando – Transcinema
Spotlight Paula Gaitán – Frontera Sur
Traversed Peruvian cartographies: Heterogeneous routes and horizons in five decades of audiovisual production – Corriente. Latin American Non-Fiction Film Encounter
Discoveries
María Galindo and Mujeres Creating
Kinuyo Tanaka [Thanks to Marianela Vega]
Carolee Schneemann’s trilogy [thanks to Ivonne Sheen]
The disappearance (and the future return?)
Transcinema
CARLOS ESQUIVES , Peruvian film critic
These are the recent movies seen this year that I liked the most. It is worth mentioning that my presence in physical theaters has been almost nil, which has limited me to see commercial premieres. I also add to the failure to see important recent releases of the Netflix platform so far. Here is my list, in no order of preference.
The Father (Florian Zeller, 2020)
A Man on a Camera (Guido Hendrikx, 2021)
The Viewing Booth (Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, 2019)
A Very Long Exposure (Chloé Galibert-Laine, 2020)
Piccolo Corpo (Laura Samani, 2021)
Digital Video Editing with Adobe Premiere Pro: The Real-World Guide to Set Up and Workflow (Hong Seong-yoon, 2020)
Mother Lode (Matteo Tortone, 2021)
Friends and Strangers (James Vaughan, 2021)
Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021 )
The Killing of Two Lovers (Robert Machoian, 2020)
Between Two Dawns (Selman Nacar, 2021)
The Taking(Alexandre O. Philippe, 2021)
Who prevents it (Jonás Trueba, 2021)
Our happiest days (Sol Berruezo Pichon-Riviere, 2021)
Annette (Leos Carax, 2021)
The Green Knight (David Lowery, 2021)
Memory (Apichatpong Weerasethakul , 2021)
CRISTIAN SALDÍA , Filmmaker, director and programmer at the Frontera Sur Festival (Chile)
Memory (Apichatpong Weerasethakul) Eles transportan a morte (Helena Girón, Samuel M. Delgado) Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky) Un monde flottant (Jean-Claude Rousseau) In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo) Esquirlas (Natalia Garayalde) Les Antilopes (Maxime Martinot) Water from the creek that trembles (Javiera Cisterna) Bicentennial (Pablo Álvarez-Mesa) Saxifrages, quatre nuits blanches (Nicolas Klotz, Elisabeth Perceval) The great movement (Kiro Russo) The floor of the wind (Gustavo Fontán, Gloria Peirano ) The sky is red(Francina Carbonell) Light trap (Pablo Marín) Pão e Gente (Renan Rovida) Diários de Otsoga (Maureen Fazendeiro, Miguel Gomes)
MEHDI JAHAN , Filmmaker (India)
Favorite first time views of 2021 / Films seen for the first time which reinforced my faith in Cinema this year:
FEATURES (in no particular order):
1. Fertile Memory | Michel Khleifi | Palestine | 1980
2. Wedding in Galilee | Michel Khleifi | Palestine | 1987
3. Leila and the Wolves | Heiny Srour | Lebanon | 1984
4. Radiograph of a Family | Firouzeh Khosrovani | Iran | 2020
5. Pride | Manuel Mur Oti | Spain | 1955
6. O Cangaceiro (The Bandit) | Lima Barreto | Brazil | 1953
7. Sunday Afternoon (Sunday Afternoon) | Antonio De Macedo | Portugal | 1966
8. Daichi no Komoriuta (Lullaby of the Earth) | Yasuzo Masumura | Japan | 1976
9. Duel to the Death | Ching Siu-Tong | Hong Kong | 1983
10. Onna (Woman) | Keisuke Kinoshita | Japan | 1948
63. Ville Marie | Alexandre Larose | Canada | 2010
64. Fluorescent Gir l | Janie Geiser | USA | 2018
65. Cathode Garden | Janie Geiser | USA | 2015.
FAVORITE CINEMA EVENTS / FESTIVALS (which led to the discovery of a great wealth of Cinema previously unknown to me or a rediscovery / revaluation of works of filmmakers / artists I admire):
1. State of Cinema 2021 (Projections. Provisionals. Provisions) by Nicole Brenez + Dossier (On the Earth / At the Bottom of the Heart) compiled by Nicole Brenez and Gerard-Jan Claes for Sabzian
2. Films by Palestinian Women | Another Gaze: A Feminist Film Journal (Curated by Daniella Shreir)
3. MUTA International Festival of Audiovisual Appropriation
4. DOBRA – Festival Int’l de Cinema Experimental
5. Moscow International Experimental Film Festival
There is a certain tension between the statements “any revolution is possible” and “no revolution is possible”, which seem to be the most obvious difference between the two translations of one of the texts of Marguerite Duras , but they are not opposite, because the inevitable, at least according to the old Marxist tablets, communist the revolution is postponed indefinitely – and the whole world is not frozen in a state of delicate equilibrium, is not moving towards general consumer welfare, but is rolling towards its own end. “Any revolution is possible,” which means that it is devoid of meaning and future, “no revolution is possible,” which means they will continue indefinitely – until the very end.
Duras writes:
“There is no longer any point in feeding us films about socialist hope. Or capitalist hope. There is no point in feeding us films about social justice, economic justice, and any other upcoming justice. You don’t need films about work. About values. About women. About youth. About the Portuguese. About the Malays. About intellectuals. About the Senegalese.
There is no point in feeding us fear films. About the revolution. About the dictatorship of the proletariat. About freedom. About straw scarecrows. About love. It doesn’t make sense anymore.
There is no point in feeding us films about cinema.
We don’t believe in anything anymore. We believe. Joy: we believe: nothing else.
We don’t believe in anything anymore.
There is no point in making your films anymore. It doesn’t make sense anymore. It is necessary to make films, realizing that there is no more meaning.
Let cinematography end, this is the only cinematography.
Let the end of the world come, let it end, this is the only policy “… [one]
The notorious stability of Belarus is finally destroyed, now the end of the world is approaching us, we have become part of a larger world. Even migrants are no longer in the news, on the fabulous Mediterranean Sea, where you can die in joy, but next to us, on our gray streets. Our prisons are as full as ever. A quick, gentle, beautiful “revolution” did not work, which means that you can finally get down to business. The illusion of a welfare state has collapsed, so you can strive for it. The main film festival of the country was de facto destroyed by the officials who seized it, and both main “national” film projects were afraid to release them – it means that cinema matters.
To have an end means to have a future.
Main events of the year:
1. The main event was absence. At the end of 2021, we can say for sure that the protests and repressions in Belarus, although they caused some increase in interest in our country in the international media (and, as a result, at festivals), activist, engaged cinema, the creators of which would try to directly take part in what is happening around them did not appear. Not a single film, not a single director or partisan group of authors. Either the cinema itself is not keeping up with the current communities, yielding to the “new media”, or it is here that it has not acquired a critical mass in order to give rise to autonomous activity. The adage “there is no Belarusian cinema” stuck in my teeth is so annoying precisely because over and over again it turns out, albeit not completely, but partly true. Films, however, were at foreign festivals.Nikita Lavretsky – “Liberation” . Despite all the street scenes and the fact that the film “Nikita”, even occasionally remaining alone, looks at the world around it through a computer screen, the film itself is rather inwarda person living in troubled times. Awkward jokes about taking your own brother to the woods to the historical place of executions, nervous cries of “listen to me” and a predictable ending – perhaps the most accurate hit on the nerve of Minsk in 2021. Winter is in the yard, activism is paused or moved abroad, where the emigrated Belarusian mounts her old fears and hopes with shots of pacified cats (“Dear Revolution” by Tasha Orlova). The cat is always pleased with himself and always strives to improve the quality of life. So the philosopher John Gray believes that we’d better be like cats.
5. The Refurbished Truck (Le camion, 1977) by Marguerite Duras (Gaumont, 2021) and her film book, recently translated into English, The Darkroom (Contra Mundum Press, 2020).
12. “Shock Wave 2” (Chai dan zhuan jia 2), Herman Yau, Hong Kong, China, 2020
13. “Shalom, daddy!” (Shiva Baby), Emma Seligman, 2020
Returned cinema (online retrospectives, restoration and digitization of selected films):
Pirate torrent trackers remain the most extensive, convenient and publicly available movie archives, but traditional cinematics, funds, streaming services (and not only specialized ones like Mubi, but also giants like Netflix and Amazon), rental companies, as well as individual enthusiasts also store, digitize and show movies. Let not a single film be lost, even if only one person needs it.
1. “ A Season of Classic Films” of the Association of European Cinematheques, which included not so much obvious “classics” as films like the wonderful “Maria do Mar” (1930) by Jose Leitana de Barros.
2. A large-scale project of the Polish Film Institute, which has restored many Polish films and several thousand newsreels, from 1945 to 1994, and made them publicly available with English subtitles.
3. Retrospective Anthology Film Archives, among which the most noteworthy was “Anthology Baltic modernist film» (Baltic Modernist Cinema Anthology).
4. Retrospective of John Jost, hosted by the Munich Film Museum.
6. The Potato Eaters Collective YouTube channel , where enthusiasts post the rarities of Indian cinema.
7. YouTube-channel Modern Chinese Cultural Studies , where the historian of Chinese cinema Christopher Rea shares little-known Chinese films, as well as videos dedicated to them. He also recently published an excellent book, Chinese Film Classics, 1922-1949 (Columbia University Press, 2021).
8. Online program “Vidkritiy archiv”, conducted by the Dovzhenko Center.
1. “Alice in Wonderland” (Ali au pays des merveilles), Juhra Abuda, Alain Bonnami, France, 1976 (Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2021)
2. “Thunderbolt”, Joseph von Sternberg, USA, 1929 (Kino Lorber, 2021)
[1] Translated by Maxim Karpitsky based on the publication: Duras, Marguerite, Ifland, Alta, Nancy, Jean-Luc. The Darkroom. – Contra Mundum Press, 2021 .– P. 54
The lines quoted are the full text of the First Application for the film Truck ( Le Camion , 1977), a sketch of the idea for a future film. [Back]
Welcome to the 99th and final podcast from THE SCREEN’S MARGINS of the year! What a year it’s been, and what better way to round out 2021 than by…okay there’s nothing special, it’s just B Peterson and Witney Seibold talking good film that’s available on Ovid.tv, aka the premise of OLL OBOUT OVID! We talk Alain Renais’ 1956 tribute to libraries, Madeline Anderson’s documentation of Civil Rights activism and activists, Lynne Sachs’ experimental explorations of history, language and the documentary form itself, Jill Li’s chronicling of a democratic movement in Southern China, and more besides! We hope you enjoy, and thank you for your time.
