TIFF - Best of the Decade

Posted January 7th, 2010 by webmaster

by Marc Glassman

The Best of the Decade: An Alternative View A curated selection of 41 films based on the results of a poll that TIFF Cinematheque’s Senior Programmer, James Quandt, conducted among a panel of over 60 film curators, historians, archivists and programmers world-wide. Films include: Platform (2000), The World (2004) and Still Life (2006) by Jia Zhang-ke; Blissfully Yours (2002), Syndromes and a Century (2006) and Tropical Malady (2004) by Apichatpong Weerasethakul; L’intrus (2004) and Beau Travail (1999) by Clair Denis; Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us (1999); Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000); Agnès Varda’s Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (2000); Jean-Luc Godard’s Éloge de l’amour (2001); Hayao Miyazaki’s surrealist fable Spirited Away (2001); Pedro Almodóvar’s Talk to Her (2002); Ingmar Bergman’s Saraband (2003); David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (2005); Tsai Ming-liang’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (2006); Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) and Terrence Malick’s The New World (2006).

Series starts on January 21 and runs until February 23at the AGO’s Jackman Hall, 317 Dundas Street West (McCaul Street entrance). For more info, check: www.cinemathequeontario.ca

TIFF Cinematheque curator James Quandt has assembled an impressive backwards look at the past ten years of cinema. Make no mistake about it though; this is “an alternative view.” Imagine a group of music professors, theorists and composers assembling a “best of” list for the ‘20s, which positioned Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School on top, berated Stravinsky for becoming conservative, considered Gershwin a hopeless populist and accepted Janacek and Bartok with reluctance. Voila! That’s the last decade as perceived by Quandt and his colleagues.

CLICK HERE to read more from TIFF Cinematheque’s Best of the Decade.