The Classics of Today

Toronto – Beginning January 21, 2010, TIFF Cinematheque presents The Best of the Decade: An Alternative View, a curated series based on a poll conducted by TIFF Cinematheque’s Senior Programmer James Quandt.

An esteemed panel of over sixty film curators, historians, archivists and programmers from festivals, cinematheques and similar organizations around the world participated and were asked to pick the films they thought were the most important of the past decade. The poll’s participants are connected by their leadership in the field of historical film curation, with most having published books, essays and polemics on cinema, bringing perspectives that distinguish this poll from other end-of-the-decade polls.

“Their perspective,” says Quandt, “should give us a longer view of the films made in this decade, the films that should stand the test of time and be acknowledged as historically influential works in the decades to come.”

The poll includes works by venerable masters such as Abbas Kiarostami, Agnès Varda, Ingmar Bergman, Jean‑Luc Godard and Pedro Almodóvar; directors who broke onto the international scene in the past 10 years, including Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Carlos Reygadas, Cristi Puiu, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Jia Zhang-ke and David Cronenberg; and indie renegades like Gus Van Sant, Pedro Costa and Lucrecia Martel. It also features many pleasant surprises, from the inclusion of a largely unknown film, Valeska Grisebach’s Longing (2006), which was highlighted during TIFF Cinematheque’s Berlin School series last Winter, to the strong showings for films that were not necessarily well received on their initial outings, such as Gus Van Sant’s Gerry (2003) and Claire Denis’s L’Intrus (2004).

Films were scored according to a point system designed to measure not only how many individual votes a film received, but also the intensity of support (i.e., an indication of frequency and strength of advocacy). The poll participants, half of them new to the task since the 1990s poll, include representatives from some of the most important film institutions from around the world including the Museum of Modern Art (New York); the British Film Institute (London); the UCLA Film & Television Archive (Los Angeles); Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus); Filmoteca de la UNAM (Mexico City); George Eastman House (Rochester); Austrian Film Museum (Vienna); World Cinema Foundation (New York); Vancouver International Film Festival (Vancouver); Centre National de la Cinématographie (Paris); Canadian Film Institute (Ottawa); Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival (Gran Canaria); Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley); Swedish Film Institute (Stockholm); Berlin International Film Festival (Berlin); Haghefilm Foundation (Amsterdam); Tokyo FILMeX (Tokyo) and TIFF Cinematheque (Toronto). A complete list of contributors is available on request.

The countries most prominently represented in the poll include: France (21), USA (9), Germany (7), Taiwan (6), and Japan, China and Italy (4 each). Other countries represented include: Argentina; Austria; Belgium; China; Denmark; Hong Kong, China; Hungary; Iran; Japan; Mexico; Netherlands; Romania; Russia; South Korea; Spain; Sweden; Thailand; Turkey and the UK. Canada is well represented with three films: Guy Maddin’s The Heart of the World (2000) and My Winnipeg (2007), and Zacharias Kunuk’s Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner (2001). The Best of the Decade: An Alternative View proves that international art cinema is more alive than ever.

The series will run until February 23, featuring a curated selection of 38 films from the final poll, which contains 54 titles in total. It will spotlight the two most influential and revered filmmakers of the decade, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Jia Zhang-ke, as both placed very high in number of films (three each) and position in the poll: Apichatpong’s Syndromes and a Century (2006) is ranked the top film of the decade while Jia Zhang-ke’s Platform (2000) is second on the list. Their twin triumphs illustrate not only the continued ascendancy of Asian cinema, but also a taste for the elliptical and allusive. TIFF Cinematheque previously featured both directors in a Film Now retrospective, and it is with immense pleasure that it brings back their most important films to celebrate them as leading filmmakers of the decade. The series will also feature the full-length version of Jia Zhang-ke’s Platform, which runs more than 30 minutes longer than all other prints, to be presented for the first time anywhere since its initial festival outings.

Organized in part to launch the 20th anniversary celebrations of TIFF Cinematheque (née Cinematheque Ontario), The Best of the Decade: An Alternative View includes many films that have screened previously at TIFF Cinematheque. The final results of the poll are attached, followed by a list of the films to be screened in TIFF Cinematheque’s series.