These are my 20 favorite films this year, organized on Letterboxd. Other than the obvious COVID-19 pandemic which hindered theater-going, my movie-watching habits remained largely the same, although I definitely spent more time in front of a screen than in past years.
Previous years: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012.
Read more Movies watched in 202010 Years 10 Films (10Y10F) is a project to display embedded YouTube selections of cinema history. This is Part Five of a series that gives the viewer a quick time-lapse view of how movie technology and style has developed throughout the world – one clip each year – from 1888 through 2017, starting with the foundations to see how filmmakers build or deconstruct them.
Sound “talkies” and censorship are the huge cinematic changes for this decade. It’s hard to say how the Great Depression (1929, lasting about ten years) affected the film industry, but Nazi policies throughout the 1930s definitely had an effect until the end of WWII, and many German filmmakers and actors emigrated.
Read more Video clips and history of world cinema: 1928-1937
One of the world’s first film directors has been receiving some much-deserved attention lately, due to the 2018 documentary Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (1873-1968). Here is a list of just over 100 of her films that you can find pretty easily today on DVD or Blu-ray disc.
I was recently inspired by the stats visualizations on Letterboxd.com, a movie review website. The stats page is available for Pro subscribers only, but I’ve enjoyed Letterboxd as a free subscriber since 2013. Now that I’ve paid for a year of Pro, I can actually look at stats for each of the years that I’ve used the service.
This overview of Letterboxd stats will serve as my 2019 in review, but I’ll also point out some of the “all-time” stats features.
Read more A Life in Film – my Letterboxd statsI’m proud to announce that my partner Aimee and I are hosting a new podcast, “where we question why women make up 50 percent of the world’s population but only a small percentage of the film industry.”
10 Years 10 Films (10Y10F) is a project to display embedded YouTube selections of cinema history. This is Part IV of a series that gives the viewer a quick time-lapse view of how movie technology and style has developed throughout the world – one clip each year – from 1888 through 2017, starting with the foundations to see how filmmakers build or deconstruct them.
As “the war to end all wars” came to a close in 1918, the destruction in Europe shifted the center of the film world to Hollywood. By 1928, the “Big Five” studios had been established and they dominated the artistic and economic production of films in the United States.[1] This was particularly stifling for women directors as alpha males created a toxic environment on set.[2]
Despite – or perhaps because of – their lack of resources, German filmmakers in particular were especially creative during this time. Foreign language films were rarely exhibited in the States, but as the political situation worsened, several directors from Europe and Russia were recruited to Hollywood.
This is an era that continues to be revered today, with frequent exhibitions of classics like Metropolis, Within Our Gates, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, The Gold Rush, Battleship Potemkin, Nosferatu, and The Mark of Zorro to name a few. Read more Video clips and history of world cinema: 1918-1927