Looking at the paintings of Paul Benzi Florendo, one immediately recalls the raw power of the works of the young Jutze Pamate or Mark Valenzuela or Razceljan Salvarita—all of earnestness and strangeness and sureness of vision that mark what may be the beginning of a fantastic career in the visual arts, right at its rawness, without strings or politics or life’s hard bargains. To look at Benzi’s paintings and see how they pulsate is to quicken once more life from the tired old critical bones, slaying the old pronouncements that “visual art in Dumaguete is dead.”
That it is in some sort of doldrums may be something that cannot denied. But there are others like Benzi springing from an increasingly bustling art scene in Dumaguete. (That is, if “bustling” is the word.) Collectively, they constitute some hope, enough for the city to recall its prime as Visayan capital of art. The most exciting among them include Stephen Abanto, Nabil Padilla, Jess Andrew Abode, Sabrina Skye Benito, Kristine Jul Oliva, Ramon Adonis Catacutan, and Hans de Barras—and in their last group show together, for the
held last March, some showed a brilliant command of the artistic that went beyond the pale of the expected and the humdrum: I remember a guitar stripped, dismantled, reset, and transformed into a kind of Rorschach test; a series of still lives and what-not—a snake with a gun among them—that seemed to put some strange edginess into the representational; a set of skulls from different sorts of material that put a hint of danger to the domestic; an installation of clay and wire figures “at play” with kites that married wit with the whimsical. These were fantastic pieces by some of the city’s young artists, and one could only wish to see more of what they could do beyond plates made for classroom exercises, beyond the requisite demands of academic exhibitions. That most have not entirely burst out of their confines and rocked the city beyond the comforts of campus life is a little beyond my ken—but perhaps they are only cocooning?
Enter Paul Benzi Florendo. A few months ago, in the makeshift exhibition walls of Canto Fresco, which is owned by the visual artist Babu Wenceslao, he debuted with his first solo exhibition—something he called
The show, small though it was, featured ambitious art with a nod to the soft, strangely tender (if also unsettling) surrealism of René Magritte—but with wit completely Mr. Florendo’s own. There’s the blue teddy bear with the old man’s face, dragging a toy cart with square wheels, in diagram; there’s the masked boy astride a snail, bullhorn in hand; there’s the similarly bullhorned girl, eyes masked or pixelized, riding a giant rabbit; there is the army of boxy androids with human faces, minus the eyes, deep in empty thought-balloons; there’s the strapping youth with the baseball cap, looking up into the rainbowed sky, boxed in by some invisible diagram that include a hovering satellite… It is all very strange, and all made to make you ask—“What do you think?” The question is subtly provocative, and asks much of the viewer in terms of what they put
It is the painting “Egghead” that strikes me the most though. It shows a gigantic egg hovering in an emptiness of azure, cracked in places, and through the bigger holes punched by the cracks, we see various parts of a human face—nose, lips, ears, eyes—asymmetrical, disembodied, and whole at the same. And all that, afloat, like a beautiful threat.
“I always want to make people think hard when viewing my works,” Mr. Florendo explained. “I do not want the audience to just see my painting and think, ‘Oh, it’s nice,’ or conversely, ‘Oh, that’s stupid’—and just stop there. I want them to recognize something beyond what is obvious. I want them to perceive how I see life or how I tell a story of moments through my paintings—and perhaps relate these to their own lives.”
But what he also wants is a workout of sorts for his potential viewers. “I want them to feel as if their brains are going to burn up trying to think too much,” he said, “or perhaps even ultimately explode, especially when they realize that too much thinking did not have to done in the first place. I want people to be able to also use plain common sense, which is rare these days. I want to spark creativity in my viewer’s minds, and perhaps cause them to be artistic in their own ways.”
Which is perhaps putting too many eggs of expectations in one basket, but one admires that ambitious reach in the young artist: to seize that fabled opportunity to reach into the minutiae of a viewer’s head, and transform thinking through art.
But regardless of my mention of Magritte, Mr. Florendo does not claim to have influences in the way he marks his art. He reaches out, instead, to the common “influence” of what surrounds him: “My influences are the people around me doing what they normally do,” he said. “May it be wiping the table, playing in an orchestra, taking photos, typing on a keyboard, chewing gum, snoring, running, giving a sermon—you name it, these simple things give me a lots of ideas that can certainly be turned into something artistically complex. It’s like a simple cycle: I take ideas from what I see around me, then I give it back to the world through my paintings.”
And if this indeed is a start of something bigger, artistically speaking, what does the future entail for him? “I always wanted to do work which many people can relate to, or at least that they will be blessed by my work. But something I have always wanted to do is make people interact with my art in certain ways.” But it is that first wish for relatability that he wants the most. “I hope to achieve something big which people around me can recognize and be able to relate to. Even the simplest of people.”
Which makes common sense.
Is there a glut of photographers in Dumaguete? Without batting an eyelash, my answer is yes—and not just in Dumaguete. The delusion of photographic skill is everywhere, and the evidence is flooding the feeds of our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Flickr… I’ve said it before. The exploding number of shutterbugs is a phenomenon directly proportional to the increasing democracy of digital photography, and it has become a joke in photography circles that these days anyone with an SLR seems to think he can saunter into the world and proclaim himself a “photographer.” That the vast majority do not call themselves thus is an act of mercy by the universe—amateurs thankfully in acknowledgment of their limitations. For a few that do, their sheer number often threatens to overwhelm the integrity (and asking price) of the profession, leaving the serious professionals in ridiculous competition with wannabes who invariably take commissions with a grain of salt, but don’t often deliver. As a result, the price for photographic talent may be bottoming out.
Of late, we get waves upon waves of photographic blahness—ad infinitum and ad nauseum—of leaves and flowers, sunrises and sunsets, women in bikinis, men in briefs. Most of these are slyly tweaked in Photoshop (or, heavens, Instagram) to approximate some glossy finish. Truth to tell, one or two of these pictures are beautiful all right, an accident of timing and angle; but in the context of body of work, the eye—the crucial eye—sans Photoshop is missing. Nothing draws you in beyond the initial “hmmm.” There’s no magic.
In the ocean of photographers in Dumaguete, a few do stand out. There’s Kat Banay and Hersley Ven Casero, whom I have featured in this series separately. In the front ranks, you will find Mikko Lim, DX Lapid, Clee Andro Villasor, Kim Cuevas, David Jules Mamhot, Zon Lee, Alma Zosan Alcoran, Paul Benzi Florendo, Darrell Bryan Rosales, Jerick Hernani, Aris Ramiro, Charlie Sindiong, Jaysie Tayko, Phil Calumpang—and I may be missing others, but this is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yet I keep turning to the works of three young men whose technical proficiency and hard-earned professional integrity seem to coincide with the gift of the elusive eye: the photographs of Luigi Anton Borromeo, Brian Arbas Rimer, and Urich Calumpang seem to me to be the prime examples of budding artistry in overarching mastery of medium. Whether with a regular still camera, a video, or an iPod, these three have exhibited an uncanny understanding of photographic language. They have demonstrated that it is not enough to own the proper expensive gadgets and certainly not enough to know the tweak buttons of post-processing applications. Great photography is the telling of an evocative story—and the best of them, for the lack of a better word, move you. The works of these three have moved countless people—and they know how to tell a story.
For all three, a childhood brush with the camera proved to be the push to a life-long drive to perfectly capture something of life. For Mr. Borromeo specifically, the interest had childhood roots, but it was also a late-blooming love affair. “Film was expensive,” was his explanation. He was already all of 20 years old when he really started taking photography seriously, digital this time. But the fascination had always been there; and the motivation, too. “I’m always motivated to shoot,” he said. “I get that from Ansel Adams who once said, ‘The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it.’”
And shoot he does, although the whole seriousness of the craft was something he had to get used to. “Intimidation is my weakness,” Mr. Borromeo said. “I easily get intimidated when I’m in a crowd of photographers who have greater experiences and have better equipment than I do. I own an entry-level digital reflex camera. So the only way I can compensate is to do my best to make a picture seem like it was shot on an expensive camera.” Which is perhaps the perfect retort to anyone who believes gadget trumps over talent. (And there are certainly a lot of them.)
Mr. Borromeo’s forte is environmental portraiture. “I was inspired by Joe McNally,” he said, “especially in how he lights his subjects. He does this in very creative ways. He utilizes ambient and artificial lights very well, making the picture interesting. His technique gives his subject more dynamism and depth, without exactly going overboard.” His portrait of Kylie Montebon is a good example of that influence—lighting and depth and texture and subject’s beauty in a great mix, it cannot help but tell a story. This is not merely a girl posing. This is a girl with a story captured well—a hesitation in full make-up, wary and unfeeling at the same time. That she caresses a tree, its texture barely there, adds to an effect of obliqueness.
Brian Arbas Rimer, on the other hand, seems to have found firm footing in both still photography and video—and his own love affair with capturing image also has its roots in childhood. “My dad used to bring his camera everywhere we went, and we kind of got used to the idea of photographing every detail of our family vacations,” he said. “I got my first film camera when I was 7, and since then, I’ve fallen in love with photography.” He started devouring the pictures of Scott Kelby and the photographs he saw in National Geographic. He started aiming for what he saw in them: “a perfect shot, where one image perfectly captures an entire event.” That calls, of course, for an instinctive feel for the grand moment that is often fleeting, which is something that will inform his future work.
But Mr. Rimer’s real education sprang from encounters with local wedding photographers—Dino Lara, Rock Paper Scissors, Paul Vincent, and Nelwin Uy. “I noticed that they concentrated more on people’s expressions rather than on technicalities,” he said. The technicalities, for him, can often prove to be cumbersome if allowed to overwhelm the shoot. Mr. Rimer prefers instinct above all, especially the instinct to capture emotion in people that, in his own words, “can be universally understood.” “Photography,” he once said, “is the language I use to translate other cultures.”
One sees all these in his collective work that seems to celebrate the candid. “I like to take a step back and let things happen on their own rather than setting up or posing a picture,” he said.
With Mr. Cuevas, Mr. Rimer has also done cinematography for some local short films, notably a NORSU-produced film titled Amor y Sangre. There is a sequence in the film—of two lovers being amorous in a beach-side cottage at night—that jumps at me for the inventiveness of its tracking shot which at once relays playfulness and illicitness requisite in the scene. “I started to get interested into cinematography not that long ago since HD movie recording came out,” Mr. Rimer said. “Bringing movement to pictures was something totally new for me, a still photographer. First it started out as something I did for fun, until I began learning more techniques. It soon required new equipment, and once again it became another passion.” Of Mr. Rimer’s forays into film, he cites as influences the documentaries of Jason Magbanua, Threelogy, Mayad Studios, Chase Jarvis, and Vincent Laforet.
For Urich Calumpang, photography began as a holiday gift when he was younger. “I got my first camera from my mom as a Christmas gift,” he said. “It was a Casio point-and-shoot camera, and I started taking pictures of the usual flowers ands sunrises and sunsets. The usual macros. What was just there, I shot. I was 17. I had that camera for around a year, and soon it broke. So I got another camera, which was still a point-and-shoot one, a Kodak. But I wasn’t satisfied with my pictures, and so I worked abroad, in California, for two months, and saved up for a better camera. Which was a Canon 550D, which I use until now.”
That was when he started shooting for real: people and streets and assorted events. “It was mostly just everything I saw that interested me,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot from the photographs of Ansel Adams. And locally, the works of Hersley-Ven Casero. I soon met the most awesome photographers who mentored me and taught me a lot of things, and helped me. I learned the ethics, I learned how to take solid shots, how to cover events, how to dress appropriately. There’s Greg Morales. He’s like my second dad. And I’m most thankful that we got to know each other.”
For Mr. Calumpang, the process of taking good photographs is just letting the creative juices flow. “I have learned not to suppress it. It’s there, within you. That flows in you,” he said. And so, every single day, he brings with him anything that has a camera—a phone, an iPod, whatever. “Wherever I go, I’m always ready to take pictures of things, everyday things that people often take for granted. Some of the most wonderful photographs I’ve gotten come from the most common things usually taken for granted. But my process is quite simple: I feel it, the potential photograph. When you look at something, and you picture it in your mind…when you are able to think of that something, you can actually take that very picture.”
His regular commissioned photos, always without Photoshop, have a sparkling crispness to them that belie an instinctive feel for moment and light and angle. But when he goes for a stylistic bent, he bends color to a 70s Polaroid feel. “These photos give me that nostalgic feeling,” he said, “and a sense of euphoria.” Which may be understandable for somebody who is fond, musically, of standards and the whole Beatles repertoire. “I’ve always wondered what it must have felt like, to live in that age, when my music idols were actually very much a part of the era,” he said. And in wonderment, he tries to recapture an era with photography.
And so we thus know that Mr. Calumpang has his own stylistic quirk, often best captured in his experiments with Instagram, using his iPod.
But his fascination for the extraordinary and the symmetrical in the common perhaps defines him best as a photographer—and you see that in his shots of architectural detail, of lines, of geometrical shapes. All these from everyday objects and scenes, of course. This appeals to the obsessive compulsive in him. “I love symmetry. I love it because it has balance, it creates a sense of completeness, which best describes my personality as an O.C. guy. I put more emphasis on balance, and seeing things that are in place makes me at ease,” he said.
A sense of balance, ease, and symmetry. A feel for light and ambience. An instinct for moments. Perhaps these are the very ingredients that define the photographic eye. In the works of these three men, we have an embodiment of the very same things.
Think of your favorite film, and you think of the images that compose the story. The best ones—a marriage of skillful direction and a deft cinematographic eye—give film an almost tactile heft. The best of film, after all, is sorcery in pictures in the service of story. Think of the films seared into your memory. There’s the little girl in the red dress in Steven Spielberg’s black and white
. There’s Neo evading bullets in a space-bending ballet in The Wachoswki Brothers’
. There’s the smoke billowing from the passing trains, to engulf the space of the illicit love affair of our lovers in David Lean’s
You behold these choice mise en scenes, and you know, somehow, what their movies are specifically all about. Films are indeed constructed from a grammar of images. But sound—
Think about your favorite films again, and at the back of your heads, the refrains of their scores somehow become their anchors: consider John Williams’ shark-baity suspense in Spielberg’s
, Henry Mancini’s longing for a world that understands lost souls in Blake Edwards’
, the Bee Gees’ disco beat underlining a dreamer’s hopes of getting away in John Badham’s
, Michael Giacchino’s mournful limbo in J.J. Abram’s
. Their music embody the films they are part of as a kind of emotional architecture. (Or if not “embody,” perhaps “underline”?) The quickest way to appreciate this is to watch a horror movie and have it unfold with one covering one’s ears. The result is strange: somehow, the scare is lesser, unless you are F.W. Murnau making
, and silence is not an impediment to a cinematic evocation of exquisite horror.
A great musical score is designed like an architecture of sound—each trill and melody composed to tease out something in us the moviegoer, and no one in Dumaguete knows this more than Ian Manuel Mercado.
Still a music student in the College of Performing and Visual Arts in Silliman University, Mr. Mercado has somehow found a way of gaining some traction in the international world of film composing—thanks, in large part, to the Internet. And more specifically, Soundcloud, a popular music-sharing social networking site.
“Someone from UNESCO wrote to me to ask if I was interested to work for a recent project,” Mr. Mercardo said. “It was a World Heritage and Cultural Diversity promotional video, and I was to work as a film scorer together with some other amateur composers picked from around the web. The rest, as they say, is history.”
That stint led him to obtain a full merit-based membership in the Society of Composers and Lyricists, or the SCL, where he was able to meet with fellow musicians—mostly composers—notably some legends like James Newton Howard, Bryan Tyler, Steve Jablonsky, Christopher Lenertz, Bill Brown, Deane Ogdene, and many more. “I met them in one of the SCL’s composers’ symposia where we I got the chance to further develop my skills in film scoring,” Mr. Mercado said. “The SCL is also where composers get the chance to get their scores laid on some short or big films, advertising campaign and alike.”
Mr. Mercado—a talented pianist and also a member of Silliman’s Campus Choristers and Ating Pamana—has always been into music composition, but scoring for films has of late become the major focus in his early blooming career as a musician. And in that regard, he has managed to delineate the subtleties demanded by this particular craft—something leavened by the challenge of cinema: “What is it that separates a composer from a film scorer? I believe it’s the ability to look at a movie, not just from a musical perspective, but from a filmmaker’s as well,” he mused once to me in consideration of what he does. “An effective score must have the same kind of exposition and development and recapitulation that an effective script has. And if you take out elements along the way, or leave out exposition, then it doesn’t work quite as well. Moreover, there are some more other crucial viewpoints in film scoring that we should consider. Geography, for example. I always look for the geography of the film I’m working on, because I’ve found that if I can attach some cultural sensibilities to it, it’s easier for me to find my way through musically.
“Then there is theme, and there is character. I’ve also discovered that directors habitually have notions of musical themes to characterize individuals in a picture, but I’ve never really understood that, and I’ve never worked that way—unless I was really forced to. While a number of situations might combine to cause a motif to recur in situations involving the appearance of a particular character, I’d maintain that in my scores, this never has a conscious genesis for me.
“There’s also orchestration and instrumentation. For me, less can really be more in film scoring. I feel that that’s why so many short films are so impressive musically. They are often scored with just a few instruments. Although this may be the result of budgetary restrictions, personally I find that kind of thing terribly appealing. As long as you can make an effective counterpoint out of a two- or three-player ensemble in a score, it would still be as grand as an 80-piece orchestral score.”
, something of a favorite of mine. I like its slow build-up, announced by some bells pealing, and then a hazy percussion blend that eases into a thrilling rhythm. There is narrative movement to the music—harp, flute, and string soon ebbing and flowing to the sound of waves crashing, reminiscent of Trevor Jones or James Horner or Randy Edelman. You close your eyes, and with the music alone, your mind lends itself to a movie of your own making. Such is the power of film scoring. As complement to film, it is the element that pushes the image to a higher resonance. On its own, it creates its own narrative gravity and propulsion.
Mr. Mercado has come into his own, of course, as a study of influences. “I’d point out Gustav Mahler and John Williams if I really have to name names here,” he said. But his artistry, it seems, has enough wellspring that come from some secret personal source. “A lot of my inventiveness comes not from direct research of the various genres or people. More from my own innate feeling for a style—from medieval to modern-day music,” he said. “It’s an impressionistic kind of thing.”
That personal impressionistic feel for sound seems to work for him. The doors are certainly opening for Mr. Mercado. It won’t be too surprising to find a future movie with his name indelibly impressed on the celluloid projection with “music by” attached firmly to it.
No one argues with Coco Chanel. The legendary fashion designer once said: “Dress shabbily, and they remember the dress. Dress impeccably, and they remember the woman.”
This declaration defined, with the same stylish precision of a Chanel suit, the importance of dressing well. And perhaps, rallying to this call, the truly stylish among us—and not merely the unfortunate fashion victim—aim for that impeccability of dress.
To make a mark, to forge an identity, to express who we are. Fashion becomes emblematic in this regard—and perhaps this is why a particular species of enterprising people have evolved to answer that need. You know who they are. The stylists.
Stylists, especially the best ones, are avid readers of fashion. They are the able conjurers of sartorial language, which marries personality with cut fabric. On television, we get Rachel Zoe—although one might make the argument she does not exactly typify the best of such strange occupation. So forget Rachel Zoe. There’s somebody in Dumaguete who does exactly the same thing as the reality TV fixture does, but with decidedly less mugging for the camera. And decidedly with more creativity. Her name is Veronica Valente-Vicuña, and one can say she has made a life and career over her uncanny sense of what works for you, fashion-wise.
, ever since college,” Rona told me. “Being a bargain hunter, I get a rush when I find pretty items which would cost triple or more if sold in department stores. Even if the clothing item would be too big for me, I would still get it because my thinking is, I could just have it altered down to my size.”
Eventually that nose for bargain and style led to a kind of fashionable hording. “Soon I had bags and bags full of dresses,” Rona remembered, “So I thought, why not sell some?”
She started toying with that idea of commercializing her sense of fashion in 2006, but it took her until February of 2007 to get things really going. She opened her online store
To her delighted surprise, the dresses sold out within hours. “That encouraged me more,” Rona said, “And soon, with a good client list growing, I had to make a weekly upload schedule to keep up with the customer demand.”
A few of summers ago, she found herself participating in a program for fashion designing in Cebu. “I learned quite a lot from some of Cebu’s top fashion designers,” she said. That summer program ended with a fashion show at the Waterfront, which featured the participants’ new designs, things they created for class.
This soon paved the way for better things. “Subsequently, I was invited by Anya Lim of Anthill Fabric Gallery in Cebu to display some items from my website,” Rona said. “She had been buying regularly from my site, and she wanted me to sell my re-made dresses in her fabric gallery. She encouraged me to come up with a line, where altered and reconstructed vintage dresses are showcased.” Rona chose the name
She explained the concept behind the project: “Some dresses may have beautiful fabrics, but the dress may not be worn again due to tiny rips, runs, and others. This is where I come in. I totally revamp the dress. Using what fabric can be salvaged from it, I then add new fabrics and restyle the old design.” Clearly, what had began as a hobby—transforming old dresses and making them different and more fashionably current—soon became one of her sources of income. “And relaxation, too,” Rona admitted.
What is the underlying philosophy of her work? “To provide unique dresses, which are extra-special because of the history behind it, them being vintage,” Rona said. “As a member of Anthill Fabric Gallery and Stylissimo Sessions of Cebu, I believe in thinking green. By using old materials, I can do my part in saving the environment.” This philosophy led her to become part of a fashion show in Cebu called
and recyclable materials. “I used old neckties for the headpiece, as well as men’s blazers and pieces from an old computer keyboard,” she recalled with a smile.
But her sense of style is not without study. For Rona, her influences consist of the style icons of past, which include Audrey Hepburn. “It is because of her femininity and how she carried men’s inspired clothing,” Rona said. “Her style was never fussy. She kept it neat and clean. You can’t go wrong with that.” There is also 1960s model Twiggy, whose slender figure—being both boyish and also ultra-girlie—was an inspiration for great designers of the time. “She rocked the mod look!” Rona said. “I love mod. Floral and geometrical patterns make me happy as well as solid-colored dresses decorated with bows and ribbons, buttons and zippers!”
From such confessions, one readily sees that for Rona, the love of vintage and everything related to it is what defines her sense of style.
with Anthill Fabric Gallery, for example. The whole look of the series foregrounds her aesthetics, which is essentially a worship of a laid-back vibe, hippie luxe and classic vintage all at the same time. There are the flowy dresses in paisley or floral prints, dresses with gauzy or silk fabrics, dresses with billowy white peasant shirts complete with embroidery—a style that defines what for Rona is soft, fun and young. There is the dress with the printed bib and belt from a vintage 70’s blouse, to which she added a gaze faconne fabric, which is like chiffon but is a bit stretchable. “I also re-used the original buttons from the blouse,” Rona said. “This dress is BoHo-inspired.” There are more of the kind in her inventory.
And what does she hope the future can bring for her? “I’m taking things in stride,” she said. “For
, I hope to have a name for myself in the local Internet market as the shop to go for vintage and vintage-inspired dresses. For
, I am currently laying out the beginnings of what will be my spring/summer collection. And maybe one fine day, I can get featured in Preview, my favorite magazine. I can dream right?”
Yes, Rona, you can. And fabulously, too.
“And I will not lie down!” cried the rebellious Agueda, leaping to the floor. “Stay, old woman. Tell me what I have to do.”
The old woman dropped the clothes she had gathered and approached and fixed her eyes on the girl. “You must take a candle,” she instructed, “and go into a room that is dark and that has a mirror in it and you must be alone in the room. Go up to the mirror and close your eyes and say:
If all goes right, just above your left shoulder will appear the face of the man you will marry.”
A silence. Then: “And what if all does not go right?” asked Agueda.
“But what nonsense!” cried Agueda. “This is the year 1847. There are no devil anymore!”
You must attribute this list to summer boredom or to the impending certainty of 2012, but I've listed down below the films checklisted by Steven Jay Schneider in his book
(2003), and I have decided to devote time in the foreseeable future to see the titles on this list ... before I die.
I like this list. And like any list, it necessarily leaves out personal favorites ("The Lion King" but no "Little Mermaid"?), and takes in too many things I suspect to be the result of editorial bias (there's too much Paul Verhoeven here than is necessary). But I like this list nonetheless, because it is generous with what it includes and becomes a virtual cineast feast. It includes celebrated short films and not just full-length features, and strange experimental films (it has Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid's "Meshes in the Afternoon"!), and strange independent films (it has Ken Jacob's "Blonde Cobra"!), and strange horror films (it has Dario Argento's "Suspiria"!), and strange documentaries (it has Terry Zwigoff's "Crumb"!), and avant-garde or risque films you don't think will make such a list (it has Kenneth Anger's very gay "Scorpio Rising"!), and films representative of major world cinemas (it even has Lino Brocka's "Manila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag"!).
I must take note, however, I've been watching movies my whole life -- and studying them as well -- and so there are titles here that feel like I've seen them, but I'm not exactly so sure of the fact, simply because their legend has made them so familiar my memory now plays tricks on me. So then I've decided to check only those titles I'm really sure I've seen.
So, how many films have you seen from this list?
☑ A Trip to the Moon (Georges Melies, 1902)
☑ The Great Train Robbery (Edwin S. Porter, 1903)
☑ The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915)
☐ Les Vampires (Louis Feuillade, 1915)
☑ Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1916)
☑ The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1919)
☐ Broken Blossoms (D.W. Griffith, 1919)
☐ Way Down East (D.W. Griffith, 1920)
☐ Within Our Gates (Oscar Micheaux, 1920)
☐ The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjöström, 1921)
☐ Orphans of the Storm (D.W. Griffith, 1921)
☐ The Smiling Madame Beudet (Germaine Dulac, 1922)
☐ Dr. Mabuse, Parts 1 and 2 (Fritz Lang, 1922)
☑ Nanook of the North (Robert J. Flaherty, 1922)
☑ Nosferatu, A Symphony of Terror (F.W. Murnau, 1922)
☐ Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Benjamin Christensen, 1923)
☐ Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim, 1922)
☐ Our Hospitality (John G. Blystone, 1923)
☐ La Roue [The Wheel] (Abel Gance, 1923)
☐ The Thief of Bagdad (Raoul Walsh, 1924)
☑ Strike (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1924)
☐ Greed (Erich von Stroheim, 1924)
☐ Sherlock, Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
☐ The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau, 1924)
☐ Seven Chances (Buster Keaton, 1925)
☐ The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, 1925)
☑ The Battleship Potemkin (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925)
☑ The Gold Rush (Charlie Chaplin, 1925)
☐ The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925)
☑ Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
☐ Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
☐ The General (Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton, 1927)
☐ The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927)
☐ October (Grigori Aleksandrov and Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1927)
☑ The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927)
☐ Napoleon (Abel Gance, 1927)
☐ The Kid Brother (Ted Wilde, 1927)
☐ The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928)
☐ The Docks of New York (Josef von Sternberg, 1928)
☑ Un Chien Andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1928)
☑ The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
☐ Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Charles Reisner, 1928)
☐ Potomok Chingis-Khana [Storm Over Asia] (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1928)
☐ Blackmail (Alfred Hitchcock, 1929)
☑ The Man with the Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
☐ Pandora's Box (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1929)
☐ The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)
☐ L'Age D'Or (Luis Buñuel, 1930)
☐ Earth (Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 1930)
☐ Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy, 1930)
☐ All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930)
☐ À Nous la Liberté [Freedom For Us] (René Clair, 1931)
☐ Le Million (René Clair, 1931)
☐ Tabu (F.W. Murnau, 1931)
☐ Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931)
☑ Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931)
☑ City Lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931)
☐ The Public Enemy (William A. Wellman, 1931)
☐ M (Fritz Lang, 1931)
☐ La Chienne [The Bitch] (Jean Renoir, 1931)
☐ Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)
☐ Love Me Tonight (Rouben Mamoulian, 1932)
☐ Boudu Saved From Drowning (Jean Renoir, 1932)
☐ I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932)
☐ Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)
☐ Scarface: The Shame of a Nation (Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson, 1932)
☐ Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)
☐ Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932)
☐ Me and My Gal (Raoul Walsh, 1932)
☐ Zero de Conduite (Jean Vigo, 1933)
☐ 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933)
☐ Footlight Parade (Lloyd Bacon, 1933)
☐ Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933)
☐ She Done Him Wrong (Lowell Sherman, 1933)
☐ Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)
☐ Queen Christina (Rouben Mamoulian, 1933)
☐ Land Without Bread (Luis Buñuel, 1933)
☐ King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933)
☐ The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra, 1933)
☐ Sons of the Desert (William A. Seiter, 1933)
☐ It's a Gift (Norman Z. McLeod, 1934)
☑ Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1934)
☐ L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)
☐ The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934)
☐ Judge Priest (John Ford, 1934)
☑ It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934)
☐ The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934)
☐ Captain Blood (Michael Curtiz, 1935)
☐ Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd, 1935)
☐ A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood, 1935)
☐ The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935)
☑ Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935)
☐ Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935)
☐ A Day in the Country (Jean Renoir, 1936)
☑ Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936)
☐ Swing Time (George Stevens, 1936)
☐ My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, 1936)
☐ Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1936)
☐ Camille (George Cukor, 1936)
☐ Sabotage (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936)
☐ Dodsworth (William Wyler, 1936)
☐ Things to Come (William Cameron Menzies, 1936)
☐ The Story of a Cheat (Sacha Guitry, 1936)
☐ Captains Courageous (Victor Fleming, 1937)
☐ Song at Midnight (Weibang Ma-Xu, 1937)
☐ Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)
☑ Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937)
☑ The Life of Emile Zola (William Dieterle, 1937)
☐ Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey, 1937)
☑ Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (William Cottrell and David Hand, 1937)
☐ The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937)
☐ Pepe le Moko (Julien Duvivier, 1937)
☐ Jezebel (William Wyler, 1938)
☐ The Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz and William Keighley, 1938)
☐ Angels with Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz, 1938)
☑ Olympia (Leni Riefenstahl, 1938)
☐ The Baker's Wife (Marcel Pagnol, 1938)
☐ Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938)
☐ Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939)
☐ The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1939)
☐ Babes in Arms (Busby Berkeley, 1939)
☑ Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra, 1939)
☑ The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939)
☐ Destry Rides Again (George Marshall, 1939)
☐ Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks, 1939)
☑ Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939)
☐ Le Jour Se Lève [Daybreak] (Marcel Carné, 1939)
☐ Gunga Din (George Stevens, 1939)
☐ Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)
☐ La Règle du Jeu [The Rules of the Game] (Jean Renoir, 1939)
☐ Wuthering Heights (William Wyler, 1939)
☐ His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940)
☑ Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)
☑ Fantasia (James Algar and Samuel Armstrong, 1940)
☑ The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)
☐ The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940)
☐ Dance, Girl, Dance (Dorothy Arzner, 1940)
☑ Pinocchio (Norman Ferguson and T. Hee, 1940)
☐ The Mortal Storm (Frank Borzage, 1940)
☐ The Bank Dick (Edward F. Cline, 1940)
☑ Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
☐ The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941)
☐ The Wolf Man (George Waggner, 1941)
☑ The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)
☐ Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941)
☑ Dumbo (Samuel Armstrong and Norman Ferguson, 1941)
☐ High Sierra (Raoul Walsh, 1941)
☑ Sullivan's Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941)
☑ How Green Was My Valley (John Ford, 1941)
☐ The Palm Beach Story (Preston Sturges, 1942)
☐ Now, Voyager (Irving Rapper, 1942)
☑ Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
☐ To Be or Not to Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942)
☐ Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 1942)
☑ The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1942)
☐ Yankee Doodle Dandy (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
☐ Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, 1943)
☐ Fires Were Started (Humphrey Jennings, 1943)
☐ The Man in Grey (Leslie Arliss, 1943)
☐ The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1943)
☐ I Walked With a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur, 1943)
☐ The Seventh Victim (Mark Robson, 1943)
☐ The Ox-Bow Incident (William A. Wellman, 1943)
☐ Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943)
☐ Ossessione (Luchino Visconti, 1943)
☑ Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944)
☐ To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944)
☐ Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944)
☑ Gaslight (George Cukor, 1944)
☐ Henry V (Laurence Olivier, 1944)
☐ Ivan the Terrible, Parts One and Two (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1944)
☑ Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)
☐ Murder, My Sweet (Edward Dmytryk, 1944)
☐ The Battle of San Pietro (John Huston and Mark W. Clark, 1945)
☑ Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock, 1945)
☑ Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945)
☐ Les Enfants du Paradis [The Children of Paradise] (Marcel Carné, 1945)
☐ Rome, Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945)
☐ The Lost Weekend (Billy Wilder, 1945)
☐ Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)
☐ I Know Where I'm Going! (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1945)
☐ The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946)
☑ Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1946)
☐ Paisan (Roberto Rossellini, 1946)
☐ The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946)
☐ My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946)
☐ The Stranger (Orson Welles, 1946)
☐ Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1946)
☐ The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946)
☐ The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946)
☐ A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
☐ Great Expectations (David Lean, 1946)
☑ Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)
☐ Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
☑ It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946)
☐ Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946)
☑ Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin, 1947)
☐ Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947)
☑ The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1947)
☐ Odd Man Out (Carol Reed, 1947)
☑ The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
☐ Letter From an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls, 1948)
☐ Secret Beyond the Door (Fritz Lang, 1948)
☐ Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky, 1948)
☐ Spring in a Small Town (Fei Mu, 1948)
☑ Red River (Howard Hawks, 1948)
☑ Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948)
☐ The Snake Pit (Anatole Litvak, 1948)
☐ The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1948)
☐ The Paleface (Norman Z. McLeod, 1948)
☑ The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
☐ The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948)
☐ Louisiana Story (Robert J. Flaherty, 1948)
☐ The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949)
☐ Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)
☐ Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis, 1949)
☑ Adam's Rib (George Cukor, 1949)
☐ Whiskey Galore! (Alexander Mackendrick, 1949)
☐ White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949)
☐ The Reckless Moment (Max Ophüls, 1949)
☐ The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
☑ On the Town (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1949)
☐ Orpheus (Jean Cocteau, 1949)
☐ The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950)
☑ Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
☐ Winchester '73 (Anthony Mann, 1950)
☐ Rio Grande (John Ford, 1950)
☑ All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)
☑ Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950)
☐ Los Olvidados (Luis Buñuel, 1950)
☐ In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)
☐ The Big Carnival [Ace in the Hole] (Billy Wilder, 1951)
☑ A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan, 1951)
☑ Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock, 1951)
☐ The Lavender Hill Mob (Charles Crichton, 1951)
☐ Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (Albert Lewin, 1951)
☐ The African Queen (John Huston, 1951)
☑ Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson, 1951)
☑ An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli, 1951)
☐ A Place in the Sun (George Stevens, 1951)
☐ The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951)
☐ The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952)
☐ Jeux Interdits [Forbidden Games] (René Clément, 1952)
☐ Angel Face (Otto Preminger, 1952)
☑ Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952)
☐ Ikiru [To Live] (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)
☐ Europa '51 [The Greatest Love] (Roberto Rossellini, 1952)
☐ The Bad and the Beautiful (Vincente Minnelli, 1952)
☐ The Big Sky (Howard Hawks, 1952)
☑ High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952)
☐ Umberto D (Vittorio De Sica, 1952)
☐ Le Carrosse D'Or [The Golden Coach] (Jean Renoir, 1952)
☐ The Bigamist (Ida Lupino, 1953)
☐ The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli, 1953)
☐ The Earrings of Madame De… (Max Ophüls, 1953)
☐ From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953)
☑ Tokyo Story (Yasujirô Ozu, 1953)
☑ Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953)
☐ Le Salaire de la Peur [The Wages of Fear] (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953)
☐ The Naked Spur (Anthony Mann, 1953)
☐ Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller, 1953)
☑ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953)
☐ The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953)
☐ Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (Jacques Tati, 1953)
☐ Voyage in Italy (Roberto Rossellini, 1953)
☐ Tales of Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
☑ Shane (George Stevens, 1953)
☐ Beat the Devil (John Huston, 1953)
☐ Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)
☑ On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)
☐ Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Stanley Donen, 1954)
☐ Les Diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1954)
☐ Animal Farm (Joy Batchelor and John Halas, 1954)
☑ Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)
☑ A Star Is Born (George Cukor, 1954)
☐ The Barefoot Contessa (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1954)
☐ La Strada (Federico Fellini, 1954)
☑ The Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
☐ Senso [The Wanton Countess] (Luchino Visconti, 1954)
☐ Silver Lode (Allan Dwan, 1954)
☑ Carmen Jones (Otto Preminger, 1954)
☐ Sansho the Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)
☐ Salt of the Earth (Herbert J. Biberman, 1954)
☐ Artists and Models (Frank Tashlin, 1955)
☐ Guys and Dolls (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1955)
☑ Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)
☐ Bad Day at Black Rock (John Sturges, 1955)
☐ Les Maîtres Fous [The Mad Masters] (Jean Rouch, 1955)
☐ Giv'a 24 Eina Ona [Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer] (Thorold Dickinson, 1955)
☐ The Ladykillers (Alexander Mackendrick, 1955)
☐ Marty (Delbert Mann, 1955)
☐ Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)
☐ Bob Le Flambeur [Bob the Gambler] (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1955)
☐ Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)
☐ The Man from Laramie (Anthony Mann, 1955)
☑ Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955)
☐ The Phenix City Story (Phil Karlson, 1955)
☐ Smiles of a Summer Night (Ingmar Bergman, 1955)
☐ Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955)
☑ The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
☐ The Sins of Lola Montes (Max Ophüls, 1955)
☐ Forbidden Planet (Fred M. Wilcox, 1956)
☐ The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa, 1956)
☑ The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
☐ A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956)
☑ Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956)
☑ The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956)
☑ Giant (George Stevens, 1956)
☑ All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, 1956)
☑ Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956)
☐ The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956)
☐ Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray, 1956)
☑ High Society (Charles Walters, 1956)
☑ The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956)
☑ 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957)
☐ The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
☑ An Affair to Remember (Leo McCarey, 1957)
☐ Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
☑ Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini, 1957)
☐ Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa, 1957)
☐ The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold, 1957)
☐ Aparajito [The Unvanquished] (Satyajit Ray, 1957)
☐ Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (John Sturges, 1957)
☑ The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957)
☐ Mother India (Mehboob Khan, 1957)
☐ The Cranes Are Flying (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1957)
☐ Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957)
☑ Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957)
☐ Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958)
☑ Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)
☐ Bab el Hadid [The Iron Gate/Cairo Station] (Youssef Chahine, 1958)
☑ Gigi (Vincente Minnelli, 1958)
☐ The Defiant Ones (Stanley Kramer, 1958)
☑ Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
☐ Ashes and Diamonds (Andrzej Wajda, 1958)
☐ Horror of Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1958)
☐ Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati, 1958)
☐ The Music Room (Satyajit Ray, 1958)
☑ The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)
☑ North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
☑ Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)
☐ Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959)
☐ Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju, 1959)
☐ Ride Lonesome (Budd Boetticher, 1959)
☐ Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus, 1959)
☐ Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1959)
☑ The World of Apu (Satyajit Ray, 1959)
☐ Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1959)
☑ Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1959)
☐ Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959)
☑ Hiroshima Mon Amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)
☐ Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959)
☐ The Hole (Frank Capra, 1959)
☑ Floating Weeds (Yasujirô Ozu, 1959)
☐ Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960)
☑ La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)
☐ Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Karel Reisz, 1960)
☐ Shoot the Piano Player (François Truffaut, 1960)
☑ L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
☐ The Young One (Luis Buñuel, 1960)
☐ Meghe Dhaka Tara [The Cloud-Capped Star] (Ritwik Ghatak, 1960)
☐ Hanyeo [The Housemaid] (Ki-young Kim, 1960)
☑ Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
☐ Revenge of the Vampire/Black Sunday (Mario Bava, 1960)
☑ Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)
☑ The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
☑ Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960)
☐ Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan, 1961)
☑ Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
☐ La Jetee [The Pier] (Chris Marker, 1961)
☐ One-Eyed Jacks (Marlon Brando, 1961)
☐ Lola (Jacques Demy, 1961)
☑ Breakfast at Tiffany's (Blake Edwards, 1961)
☐ La Notte [The Night] (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961)
☑ Jules et Jim (François Truffaut, 1961)
☐ Viridiana (Luis Buñuel, 1961)
☐ The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis, 1961)
☐ Through a Glass Darkly (Ingmar Bergman, 1961)
☐ Chronique d'un Eté [Chronicle of a Summer] (Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, 1961)
☐ The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961)
☑ West Side Story (Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise, 1961)
☐ Mondo Cane [A Dog's Life] (Paolo Cavara and Gualtiero Jacopetti, 1962)
☐ Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)
☐ Dog Star Man (Stan Brakhage, 1962)
☑ El Ángel Exterminador [The Exterminating Angel] (Luis Buñuel, 1962)
☐ An Autumn Afternoon (Yasujirô Ozu, 1962)
☐ L'eclisse [The Eclipse] (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962)
☑ Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)
☑ To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962)
☑ The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)
☑ Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, 1962)
☐ O Pagador de Promessas [Keeper of Promises] (Anselmo Duarte, 1962)
☐ The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)
☑ What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962)
☐ Vivre sa Vie [My Life to Live] (Jean-Luc Godard, 1962)
☐ Heaven and Earth Magic (Harry Smith, 1962)
☑ The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)
☐ The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis, 1963)
☐ Blonde Cobra (Ken Jacobs, 1963)
☐ The Cool World (Shirley Clarke, 1963)
☑ 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)
☐ Passenger (Andrzej Munk and Witold Lesiewicz, 1963)
☐ Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
☐ Hud (Martin Ritt, 1963)
☐ Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman, 1963)
☐ Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith, 1963)
☐ The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963)
☐ Shock Corridor (Samuel Fuller, 1963)
☑ Il Gattopardo [The Leopard] (Luchino Visconti, 1963)
☐ Vidas Secas [Barren Lives] (Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 1963)
☐ Méditerranée (Jean-Daniel Pollet and Volker Schlöndorff, 1963)
☐ Khaneh Siah Ast [The House is Black] (Forugh Farrokhzad, 1963)
☐ The Haunting (Robert Wise, 1963)
☐ An Actor's Revenge/Revenge of a Kabuki Actor (Kon Ichikawa, 1963)
☐ The Servant (Joseph Losey, 1963)
☑ Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964)
☑ Scorpio Rising (Kenneth Anger, 1964)
☑ Les Parapluies de Cherbourg [The Umbrellas of Cherbourg] (Jacques Demy, 1964)
☑ Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock, 1964)
☑ My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964)
☑ Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964)
☑ Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
☑ A Hard Day's Night (Richard Lester, 1964)
☐ Red Desert (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964)
☐ Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Parajanov, 1964)
☐ The Masque of the Red Death (Roger Corman, 1964)
☐ Before the Revolution (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1964)
☐ Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1964)
☐ The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)
☐ Deus e O Diabo Na Terra Do Sol [Black God, White Devil] (Glauber Rocha, 1964)
☐ Onibaba [The Demon] (Kaneto Shindô, 1964)
☐ Vinyl (Andy Warhol, 1965)
☐ Obch o Na Korze [The Shop on Main Street] (Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, 1965)
☑ Doctor Zhivago (David Lean, 1965)
☐ The War Game (Peter Watkins, 1965)
☐ Tokyo Olympiad (Kon Ichikawa, 1965)
☐ The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1965)
☑ The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965)
☐ Rękopis Znaleziony w Saragossie [The Saragossa Manuscript] (Wojciech Has, 1965)
☐ Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
☐ Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1965)
☑ Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)
☐ Giulietta Degli Spiriti [Juliet of the Spirits] (Federico Fellini, 1965)
☐ Pierrot le Fou [Pierrot Goes Wild] (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
☐ Faster, Pussy Cat! Kill! Kill! (Russ Meyer, 1965)
☐ Subarnarekha [The Golden River/The Golden Thread] (Ritwik Ghatak, 1965)
☐ De Man Die Zijn Haar Kort Liet Knippen [The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short] (André Delvaux, 1965)
☐ Hold Me While I'm Naked (George Kuchar, 1966)
☑ Blowup (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966)
☑ The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)
☐ Sedmikrásky [Daisies] (Vera Chytilová, 1966)
☐ 大醉俠 [Come Drink With Me] (King Hu, 1966)
☐ Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966)
☑ Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1966)
☑ Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
☐ Masculin Féminin (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966)
☐ Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
☑ In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison, 1967)
☐ Two or Three Things I Know About Her (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)
☑ The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967)
☐ Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)
☐ Report (Bruce Conner, 1967)
☐ Hombre (Martin Ritt, 1967)
☑ Belle de Jour (Luis Buñuel, 1967)
☐ Les Demoiselles de Rochefort [The Young Girls of Rochefort] (Jacques Demy and Agnès Varda, 1967)
☐ Week End (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)
☑ Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
☐ Cool Hand Luke (Stuart Rosenberg, 1967)
☐ Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967)
☐ Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1967)
☑ Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)
☐ Csillagosok, Katonák [The Red and the White] (Miklós Jancsó, 1967)
☐ Marketa Lazarova (Frantisek Vlácil, 1967)
☑ The Jungle Book (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1967)
☐ The Fireman's Ball (Milos Forman, 1967)
☐ Terra em Transe [Earth Entranced] (Glauber Rocha, 1967)
☐ Ostře Sledované Vlaky [Closely Watched Trains] (Jiri Menzel, 1967)
☐ Vij [Spirit of Evil] (Konstantin Yershov and Georgi Kropachyov, 1967)
☐ The Cow/Poor Cow (Ken Loach, 1968)
☐ Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
☑ Planet of the Apes (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968)
☐ Faces (John Cassavetes, 1968)
☑ Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)
☐ If… (Lindsay Anderson, 1968)
☐ Memorias del Subdesarrollo [Memories of Underdevelopment] (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968)
☑ The Producers (Mel Brooks, 1968)
☐ David Holzman's Diary (Jim McBride, 1968)
☐ Shame (Ingmar Bergman, 1968)
☑ 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
☐ Hour of the Wolf (Ingmar Bergman, 1968)
☐ Targets (Peter Bogdanovich, 1968)
☑ Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968)
☑ My Night at Maud's (Eric Rohmer, 1969)
☐ Lucia (Humberto Solás, 1969)
☐ A Touch of Zen (King Hu, 1969)
☑ Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969)
☑ Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969)
☐ Satyricon (Federico Fellini, 1969)
☐ Z (Costa-Gavras, 1969)
☐ The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1969)
☑ Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969)
☐ High School (Frederick Wiseman, 1969)
☐ In the Year of the Pig (Emile de Antonio, 1969)
☑ The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)
☐ Andrei Rublev (Andrey Tarkovsky, 1969)
☐ Le Boucher [The Butcher] (Claude Chabrol, 1969)
☐ The Color of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov, 1969)
☐ Kes (Ken Loach, 1969)
☐ Tristana (Luis Buñuel, 1970)
☐ Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970)
☐ El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)
☐ Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh, 1970)
☐ Deep End (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1970)
☐ Strategia del Ragno [The Spider's Stratagem] (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)
☐ Little Big Man (Arthur Penn, 1970)
☐ Ucho [The Ear] (Karel Kachyna, 1970)
☐ Patton (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970)
☐ M*A*S*H (Robert Altman, 1970)
☐ Performance (Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, 1970)
☐ Gimme Shelter (Albert Maysles and David Maysles, 1970)
☐ Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1970)
☐ The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento, 1970)
☐ The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Vittorio De Sica, 1970)
☐ Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1971)
☐ W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism (Dusan Makavejev, 1971)
☑ A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971)
☐ The Sorrow and the Pity (Marcel Ophüls, 1971)
☑ Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart, 1971)
☐ McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
☐ Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971)
☑ Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971)
☑ Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971)
☐ Még Kér a Nép [Red Psalm] (Miklos Jancso, 1971)
☐ Get Carter (Mike Hodges, 1971)
☑ The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971)
☐ Shaft (Gordon Parks, 1971)
☑ Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971)
☑ Le Souffle au Cœur [Murmur of the Heart] (Louis Malle, 1971)
☐ Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van Peebles, 1971)
☑ The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
☐ Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah, 1971)
☐ Two-Lane Blacktop (Monte Hellman, 1971)
☑ The Heartbreak Kid (Elaine May, 1972)
☐ Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)
☑ Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972)
☑ Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972)
☐ High Plains Drifter (Clint Eastwood, 1972)
☐ Sleuth (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1972)
☑ Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972)
☑ Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)
☑ The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
☑ Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman, 1972)
☐ Fat City (John Huston, 1972)
☑ Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie [The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie] (Luis Buñuel, 1972)
☐ Die Bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant [The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant] (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972)
☐ Frenzy (Alfred Hitchcock, 1972)
☑ Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972)
☐ Superfly (Gordon Parks Jr., 1972)
☑ The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973)
☐ La Maman et la Putain [The Mother and the Whore] (Jean Eustache, 1973)
☐ Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973)
☑ American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973)
☐ Papillon (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1973)
☑ Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973)
☑ Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973)
☐ The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)
☑ The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)
☑ La Nuit Américaine [Day for Night] (François Truffaut, 1973)
☑ Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)
☑ Sleeper (Woody Allen, 1973)
☐ Serpico (Sidney Lumet, 1973)
☑ The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)
☐ Turks Fruit [Turkish Delight] (Paul Verhoeven, 1973)
☐ El Espíritu de la Colmena [The Spirit of the Beehive] (Víctor Erice, 1973)
☐ La Planète Sauvage [Fantastic Planet] (René Laloux, 1973)
☐ Amarcord (Federico Fellini, 1973)
☐ The Harder They Come (Perry Henzell, 1973)
☐ Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973)
☐ Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa, 1974)
☑ The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
☑ The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)
☐ Zerkalo [The Mirror] (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1974)
☐ A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)
☐ Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks, 1974)
☑ Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
☐ Céline et Julie Vont en Bateau [Celine and Julie Go Boating] (Jacques Rivette, 1974)
☑ Blazing Saddles (Mel Brooks, 1974)
☑ The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
☐ Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)
☐ Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Sam Peckinpah, 1974)
☑ Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975)
☑ One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman, 1975)
☐ Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
☑ The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975)
☐ Deewaar [The Wall] (Yash Chopra, 1975)
☑ Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, 1975)
☑ Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
☐ Faustrecht der Freiheit [Fox and His Friends] (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1975)
☐ India Song (Marguerite Duras, 1975)
☑ Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975)
☑ Manila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag [Manila in the Claws of Brightness] (Lino Brocka, 1975)
☑ Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975)
☑ Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
☐ Cria! (Carlos Saura, 1975)
☐ O Thiassos [The Travelling Players] (Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1975)
☑ Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
☐ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes, 1976)
☑ Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976)
☐ The Outlaw Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood, 1976)
☑ All the President's Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)
☑ Rocky (John G. Avildsen, 1976)
☑ Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
☑ Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976)
☐ Voskhozhdeniye [The Ascent] (Larisa Shepitko, 1976)
☑ In the Realm of the Senses (Nagisa Ôshima, 1976)
☐ 1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976)
☐ The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicolas Roeg, 1976)
☑ Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
☑ Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, 1977)
☐ The Last Wave (Peter Weir, 1977)
☑ Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)
☐ Last Chants for a Slow Dance (Jon Jost, 1977)
☐ Stroszek (Werner Herzog, 1977)
☐ Człowiek z Marmuru [Man of Marble] (Andrzej Wajda, 1977)
☑ Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977)
☐ Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977)
☐ Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)
☐ Ceddo (Ousmane Sembene, 1977)
☐ Der Amerikanische Freund [The American Friend] (Wim Wenders, 1977)
☐ The Hills Have Eyes (Wes Craven, 1977)
☐ Soldaat van Oranje [Soldier of Orange] (Paul Verhoeven, 1977)
☑ Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)
☐ The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (Fred Schepisi, 1978)
☐ 五毒 [Five Deadly Venoms] (Cheh Chang, 1978)
☐ L'Albero Degli Zoccoli [The Tree of Wooden Clogs] (Ermanno Olmi, 1978)
☑ The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978)
☑ Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978)
☑ Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978)
☑ Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero, 1978)
☐ Shaolin Master Killer/The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Chia-Liang Liu, 1978)
☐ Up in Smoke (Lou Adler, 1978)
☑ Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)
☐ The Marriage of Maria Braun (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979)
☐ Real Life (Albert Brooks, 1979)
☐ My Brilliant Career (Gillian Armstrong, 1979)
☐ Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
☑ Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
☐ Breaking Away (Peter Yates, 1979)
☐ Die Blechtrommel [The Tin Drum] (Volker Schlöndorff, 1979)
☑ All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979)
☑ Being There (Hal Ashby, 1979)
☑ Kramer vs. Kramer (Robert Benton, 1979)
☑ Life of Brian (Terry Jones, 1979)
☑ Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
☑ The Jerk (Carl Reiner, 1979)
☐ The Muppet Movie (James Frawley, 1979)
☑ Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)
☑ Mad Max (George Miller, 1979)
☑ Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night (Werner Herzog, 1979)
☑ Ordinary People (Robert Redford, 1980)
☐ Atlantic City (Louis Malle, 1980)
☐ The Last Metro (François Truffaut, 1980)
☑ The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
☑ Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980)
☐ The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980)
☐ The Big Red One (Samuel Fuller, 1980)
☐ Loulou (Maurice Pialat, 1980)
☑ Airplane! (Jim Abrahams and David Zucker, 1980)
☑ Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
☑ Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981)
☐ Das Boot [The Boat] (Wolfgang Petersen, 1981)
☐ Gallipoli (Peter Weir, 1981)
☑ Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson, 1981)
☑ Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan, 1981)
☑ Reds (Warren Beatty, 1981)
☑ An American Werewolf in London (John Landis, 1981)
☐ Tre Fratelli [Three Brothers] (Francesco Rosi, 1981)
☐ Człowiek z Zelaza [Man of Iron] (Andrzej Wajda, 1981)
☐ Trop Tôt, Trop Tard [Too Early, Too Late] (Daniele Huillet and Jean Marie Straub, 1981)
☑ Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Cameron Crowe, 1981)
☑ E.T.: The Extra-Terestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982)
☑ The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
☑ Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, 1982)
☑ Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
☑ The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, 1982)
☑ Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982)
☐ Yol [The Way] (Serif Gören, 1982)
☐ Diner (Barry Levinson, 1982)
☐ Fitzcaraldo (Werner Herzog, 1982)
☑ Gandhi (Richard Attenborough, 1982)
☐ La Notte di San Lorenzo [The Night of the Shooting Stars] (Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani, 1982)
☐ De Stilte Rond Christine M. [A Question of Silence] (Marleen Gorris, 1982)
☐ Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
☑ A Christmas Story (Bob Clark, 1983)
☐ El Norte (Gregory Nava, 1983)
☑ Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983)
☑ Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand, 1983)
☑ The Big Chill (Lawrence Kasdan, 1983)
☐ Sans Soleil [Sunless] (Chris Marker, 1983)
☐ Le Dernier Combat [The Last Battle] (Luc Besson, 1983)
☐ L'Argent [Money] (Robert Bresson, 1983)
☐ Utu (Geoff Murphy, 1983)
☑ Terms of Endearment (James L. Brooks, 1983)
☐ De Vierde Man [The Fourth Man] (Paul Verhoeven, 1983)
☑ The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1983)
☑ The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman, 1983)
☐ Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1983)
☑ Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1983)
☑ Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983)
☐ The Ballad of Narayama (Shôhei Imamura, 1983)
☑ Amadeus (Milos Forman, 1984)
☑ The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984)
☑ Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984)
☑ A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984)
☐ This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984)
☑ Beverly Hills Cop (Martin Brest, 1984)
☑ Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984)
☑ A Passage to India (David Lean, 1984)
☐ Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch, 1984)
☑ The Killing Fields (Roland Joffé, 1984)
☑ The Natural (Barry Levinson, 1984)
☑ The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985)
☑ Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
☐ Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985)
☐ La Historia Oficial [The Official Story] (Luis Puenzo, 1985)
☑ Out of Africa (Sydney Pollack, 1985)
☑ The Purple Rose of Cairo (Woody Allen, 1985)
☑ Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985)
☐ 童年往事 [The Time to Live and the Time to Die] (Hsiao-hsien Hou, 1985)
☑ Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)
☑ Kiss of the Spider Woman (Hector Babenco, 1985)
☐ The Quiet Earth (Geoff Murphy, 1985)
☑ Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Paul Schrader, 1985)
☐ Prizzi's Honor (John Huston, 1985)
☐ Sans Toit ni Loi [Vagabond] (Agnès Varda, 1985)
☐ Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
☑ The Color Purple (Steven Spielberg, 1985)
☑ Manhunter (Michael Mann, 1986)
☑ Stand By Me (Rob Reiner, 1986)
☑ Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
☑ Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986)
☐ She's Gotta Have It (Spike Lee, 1986)
☐ Le Déclin de L'Empire Américain [The Decline of the American Empire] (Denys Arcand, 1986)
☑ The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986)
☑ Aliens (James Cameron, 1986)
☑ Ferris Bueller's Day Off (John Hughes, 1986)
☐ Down by Law (Jim Jarmusch, 1986)
☑ A Room with a View (James Ivory, 1986)
☑ Children of a Lesser God (Randa Haines, 1986)
☑ Platoon (Oliver Stone, 1986)
☐ Caravaggio (Derek Jarman, 1986)
☐ Tampopo (Jûzô Itami, 1986)
☐ 刀馬旦 [Peking Opera Blues] (Hark Tsui, 1986)
☑ Salvador (Oliver Stone, 1986)
☑ Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986)
☐ Sherman's March (Ross McElwee, 1986)
☐ 盗马贼 [The Horse Thief] (Tian Zhuangzhuang, 1986)
☐ Yeelen [Brightness] (Souleymane Cissé, 1987)
☐ Der Himmel über Berlin [Wings of Desire] (Wim Wenders, 1987)
☐ Project A, Part II (Jackie Chan, 1987)
☑ Babettes Gæstebud [Babette's Feast] (Gabriel Axel, 1987)
☑ Raising Arizona (Joel Coen, 1987)
☑ Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick, 1987)
☑ Withnail and I (Bruce Robinson, 1987)
☑ Good Morning, Vietnam (Barry Levinson, 1987)
☑ Au Revoir Les Enfants [Goodbye, Children] (Louis Malle, 1987)
☑ Broadcast News (James L. Brooks, 1987)
☐ Housekeeping (Bill Forsyth, 1987)
☑ The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner, 1987)
☑ Moonstruck (Norman Jewison, 1987)
☑ The Untouchables (Brian De Palma, 1987)
☐ 红高粱 [Red Sorghum] (Yimou Zhang, 1987)
☑ The Dead (John Huston, 1987)
☑ Fatal Attraction (Adrian Lyne, 1987)
☐ 倩女幽魂 [A Chinese Ghost Story] (Siu-Tung Ching, 1987)
☑ Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios [Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown] (Pedro Almodóvar, 1988)
☑ Spoorloos [The Vanishing] (George Sluizer, 1988)
☑ Bull Durham (Ron Shelton, 1988)
☐ Ariel (Aki Kaurismäki, 1988)
☐ The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988)
☑ Akira (Katsuhiro Ôtomo, 1988)
☑ Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988)
☐ Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (Marcel Ophüls, 1988)
☑ A Fish Called Wanda (Charles Crichton, 1988)
☑ The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (David Zucker, 1988)
☑ Big (Penny Marshall, 1988)
☑ Dangerous Liaisons (Stephen Frears, 1988)
☑ Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata, 1988)
☐ Topio Stin Omichli [Landscape in the Mist] (Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1988)
☑ Dekalog [The Decalogue] (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1988)
☑ Die Hard (John McTiernan, 1988)
☐ Une Histoire de Vent [A Tale of the Wind] (Joris Ivens, 1988)
☑ Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis, 1988)
☑ Rain Man (Barry Levinson, 1988)
☐ Une Affaire de Femmes [The Story of Women] (Claude Chabrol, 1988)
☑ The Accidental Tourist (Lawrence Kasdan, 1988)
☑ Alice (Woody Allen, 1988)
☑ Batman (Tim Burton, 1989)
☑ When Harry Met Sally (Rob Reiner, 1989)
☑ Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen, 1989)
☐ The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (Peter Greenaway, 1989)
☑ Drugstore Cowboy (Gus Van Sant, 1989)
☑ My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989)
☑ 喋血雙雄 [The Killer] (John Woo, 1989)
☑ Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)
☑ Roger & Me (Michael Moore, 1989)
☑ Glory (Edward Zwick, 1989)
☐ Astenicheskiy Sindrom [The Asthenic Syndrome] (Kira Muratova, 1989)
☑ sex, lies and videotape (Steven Soderbergh, 1989)
☑ Say Anything (Cameron Crowe, 1989)
☐ The Unbelievable Truth (Hal Hartley, 1989)
☐ 悲情城市 [A City of Sadness] (Hsiao-hsien Hou, 1989)
☐ S'en Fout la Mort [No Fear, No Die] (Claire Denis, 1990)
☑ Reversal of Fortune (Barbet Schroeder, 1990)
☑ Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)
☐ Jacob's Ladder (Adrian Lyne, 1990)
☐ King of New York (Abel Ferrara, 1990)
☑ Dances with Wolves (Kevin Costner, 1990)
☑ Europa Europa (Agnieszka Holland, 1990)
☑ Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall, 1990)
☐ Archangel (Guy Maddin, 1990)
☐ Trust (Hal Hartley, 1990)
☐ Nema-ye Nazdik [Close-Up] (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
☑ Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton, 1990)
☐ Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (John McNaughton, 1990)
☑ Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven, 1990)
☑ 黃飛鴻 [Once Upon a Time in China] (Hark Tsui, 1991)
☑ Boyz n the Hood (John Singleton, 1991)
☑ 大红灯笼高高挂 [Raise the Red Lantern] (Yimou Zhang, 1991)
☐ Delicatessen (Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1991)
☐ 牯嶺街少年殺人事件 [A Brighter Summer Day] (Edward Yang, 1991)
☐ Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg, 1991)
☐ La Belle Noiseuse [The Beautiful Troublemaker] (Jacques Rivette, 1991)
☑ The Rapture (Michael Tolkin, 1991)
☑ My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, 1991)
☑ Thelma & Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991)
☑ Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991)
☑ The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)
☑ JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991)
☑ Slacker (Richard Linklater, 1991)
☐ Tongues Untied (Marlon T. Riggs, 1991)
☑ Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper, 1991)
☑ The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1991)
☑ Strictly Ballroom (Baz Luhrmann, 1992)
☑ The Player (Robert Altman, 1992)
☑ Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992)
☐ Romper Stomper (Geoffrey Wright, 1992)
☑ Glengarry Glen Ross (James Foley, 1992)
☑ Unforgiven (Cint Eastwood, 1992)
☑ Bram Stoker's Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992)
☑ Candy Man (Bernard Rose, 1992)
☐ A Tale of Winter (Eric Rohmer, 1992)
☑ Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield, 1992)
☑ The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992)
☐ C'est Arrivé Près de Chez Vous [Man Bites Dog] (Rémy Belvaux and André Bonzel, 1992)
☐ The Actress (Stanley Kwan, 1992)
☑ 霸王別姬 [Farewell My Concubine] (Chen Kaige, 1993)
☑ Thirty-Two Films about Glenn Gould (François Girard, 1993)
☑ Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993)
☑ Short Cuts (Robert Altman, 1993)
☑ Philadelphia (Jonathan Demme, 1993)
☑ Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
☑ The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993)
☐ 戲夢人生 [The Puppetmaster] (Hsiao-hsien Hou, 1993)
☑ Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
☑ Three Colors: Blue (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1993)
☑ The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)
☐ 蓝风筝 [The Blue Kite] ( Zhuangzhuang Tian, 1993)
☑ 喜宴 [The Wedding Banquet] (Ang Lee, 1993)
☑ Three Colors: Red (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1994)
☐ Hoop Dreams (Steve James, 1994)
☑ Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994)
☑ Clerks (Kevin Smith, 1994)
☑ Four Weddings and a Funeral (Mike Newell, 1994)
☑ The Lion King (Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, 1994)
☐ Satantango [Satan's Tango] (Béla Tarr, 1994)
☑ Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1994)
☑ The Last Seduction (John Dahl, 1994)
☑ Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
☑ The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1994)
☑ Les Roseaux Sauvages [Wild Reeds] (André Téchiné, 1994)
☑ 重庆森林 [Chungking Express] (Wong Kar Wai, 1994)
☑ Crumb (Terry Zwigoff, 1994)
☑ Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994)
☐ Zire Darakhatan Zeyton [Through the Olive Trees] (Abbas Kiarostami, 1994)
☐ Riget [The Kingdom] (Lars Von Trier, 1994)
☐ Caro Diario [Dear Diary] (Nanni Moretti, 1994)
☑ Casino (Martin Scorsese, 1995)
☐ Deseret (James Benning, 1995)
☑ Babe (Chris Noonan, 1995)
☑ Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)
☑ Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow, 1995)
☑ Braveheart (Mel Gibson, 1995)
☑ Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995)
☑ Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 1995)
☑ Heat (Michael Mann, 1995)
☐ Zero Kelvin (Hans Petter Moland, 1995)
☑ Seven (David Fincher, 1995)
☑ Smoke (Wayne Wang, 1995)
☑ Badkonake Sefid [The White Balloon] (Jafar Panahi, 1995)
☐ Cyclo (Anh Hung Tran, 1995)
☐ Podzemlje [Underground] (Emir Kusturica, 1995)
☐ Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge [The Brave Heart Will Take the Bride] (Aditya Chopra, 1995)
☐ Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1995)
☑ The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer, 1995)
☑ The Pillow Book (Peter Greenaway, 1996)
☐ Trois Vies et Une Seule Mort [Three Lives and Only One Death] (Raoul Ruiz, 1996)
☑ Fargo (Joel Coen, 1996)
☑ Independence Day (Roland Emmerich, 1996)
☑ Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh, 1996)
☐ Breaking the Waves (Lars Von Trier, 1996)
☑ The English Patient (Anthony Minghella, 1996)
☐ Gabbeh (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1996)
☐ Lone Star (John Sayles, 1996)
☑ Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996)
☑ Scream (Wes Craven, 1996)
☑ Deconstructing Harry (Woody Allen, 1997)
☑ L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997)
☑ Happy Together (Wong Kar Wai, 1997)
☑ Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997)
☐ Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (Errol Morris, 1997)
☐ The Butcher Boy (Neil Jordan, 1997)
☑ The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997)
☑ Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997)
☑ Kundun (Martin Scorsese, 1997)
☑ The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan, 1997)
☐ Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 1997)
☐ Ta'm-e Gīlās [Taste of Cherry] (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)
☑ Abre Los Ojos [Open Your Eyes] (Alejandro Amenábar, 1997)
☐ Mat i Syn [Mother and Son] (Aleksandr Sokurov, 1997)
☑ Titanic (James Cameron, 1997)
☐ Tetsuo [The Iron Man] (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1998)
☐ Festen [The Celebration] (Thomas Vinterberg, 1998)
☑ Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998)
☐ Buffalo 66 (Vincent Gallo, 1998)
☑ Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (Guy Ritchie, 1998)
☐ Lola Rennt [Run Lola Run] (Tom Tykwer, 1998)
☑ Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998)
☑ Pi (Darren Aronofsky, 1998)
☑ Happiness (Todd Solondz, 1998)
☑ The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998)
☐ Idioterne [The Idiots] (Lars Von Trier, 1998)
☐ Sombre (Philippe Grandrieux, 1998)
☑ Ringu [Ring] (Hideo Nakata, 1998)
☑ There's Something About Mary (Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly, 1998)
☑ Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)
☐ Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999)
☑ The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, 1999)
☐ Gohatto [Taboo] (Nagisa Ôshima, 1999)
☐ Rosetta (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, 1999)
☑ Todo Sobre Mi Madre [All About My Mother] (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999)
☑ Three Kings (David O. Russell, 1999)
☐ Bād Mā Rā Khāhad Bord [The Wind Will Carry Us] (Abbas Kiarostami, 1999)
☑ Ōdishon [Audition] (Takashi Miike, 1999)
☐ Le Temps Retrouvé [Time Regained] (Raoul Ruiz, 1999)
☑ Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)
☑ Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999)
☑ American Beauty (Sam Mendes, 1999)
☐ Juyuso Seubgyuksageun [Attack the Gas Station!] (Sang-Jin Kim, 1999)
☑ Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)
☑ The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan, 1999)
☑ The Matrix (Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski, 1999)
☐ Nueve Reinas [Nine Queens] (Fabián Bielinsky, 2000)
☐ La Captive [The Captive] (Chantal Akerman, 2000)
☑ In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000)
☐ Ali Zaoua, Prince de la Rue [Ali Zaoua, Prince of the Streets] (Nabil Ayouch, 2000)
☑ Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000)
☐ Kippur (Amos Gitai, 2000)
☑ Yi Yi [A One and a Two] (Edward Yang, 2000)
☑ Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000)
☑ Amores Perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2000)
☑ Meet the Parents (Jay Roach, 2000)
☐ Signs & Wonders (Jonathan Nossiter, 2000)
☑ Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000)
☑ Traffic (Steven Soderbergh, 2000)
☐ The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda, 2000)
☑ Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000)
☑ Dancer in the Dark (Lars Von Trier, 2000)
☑ O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Joel Coen, 2000)
☑ Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001)
☑ Ni Neibian Jidian [What Time Is It There?] (Tsai Ming-liang, 2001)
☑ Y Tu Mamá También [And Your Mother, Too] (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001)
☐ Kandahar (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 2001)
☑ Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
☑ La Pianiste [The Piano Teacher] (Michael Haneke, 2001)
☑ La Stanza del Figlio [The Son's Room] (Nanni Moretti, 2001)
☑ Ničija Zemlja [No Man's Land] (Danis Tanovic, 2001)
☑ Moulin Rouge (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)
☑ Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair, 2001)
☑ Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001)
☑ Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)
☑ The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001)
☑ The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001)
☑ A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001)
☑ Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002)
☑ The Pianist (Roman Polanski, 2002)
☑ Hable Con Ella [Talk to Her] (Pedro Almodóvar, 2002)
☑ Cidade de Deus [City of God] (Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund, 2002)
☑ Russkij Kovcheg [Russian Ark] (Alexandr Sokurov, 2002)
☑ Chicago (Rob Marshall, 2002)
☑ Les Invasions Barbares [The Barbarian Invasions] (Denys Arcand, 2003)
☑ Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003)
Carmen del Prado’s energy is sweet and infectious. That was my first impression of her. And time and again, every time we meet, it is that personality that strikes the most. Formidable, stealthy stuff for a documentarian, if you come to think about it.
Then again, her entire family—the Del Prados, who have made formidable business of being, all of them, artists—is largely cut from the same cloth. The fruit, so they say, never falls far from the tree. When I first got to know her, it was a Carmen still embarking on the possibilities of being a filmmaker. She was still unsure about what she wanted to do with life, considering what surrounded her in her immediate family—Dad Noy was a businessman; Mom Wing was an artist; and then there were the brothers—Miguel was already a gifted
, Ramon an animator of increasing renown, and Gabriel a chef.
For Carmen perhaps, the idea of doing a documentary on Dumaguete’s artists was a way of weighing things, of seeing what was there, and finding out what could click within her. I remember that she had emailed me at the start of her project, asking for pointers and leads about whom to contact from the disparate community of artists in Dumaguete.
She began with that list, went off to work, and then a year later, she came out with the finished product—
. And for a first work by a budding documentarian, it was something else entirely: a cohesive narrative about artists in a small city, colorful by all accounts, and threaded all throughout with a confidence that proved exciting. In 2010, the film became Dumaguete’s representative to the annual CineRehiyon, the national film festival of cinematic works from around the region (except Manila). That film proved to be some kind of bellwether for her.
Which is good news because being a documentarian filmmaker is quite a rare breed in the Philippines. Almost all budding filmmakers in the country dream of doing it the fictional route, which is the usual, with their eyes firmly set on Cannes or Berlin. Or a career with StarCinema. What documentarians we do have spring mostly from the news outlets in media organizations: at the forefront of a young generation of documentarians, we have Paolo Villaluna and Patricia Evangelista at the helm of ANC’s
. Sure, there are also Ramona Diaz (
)—but their number still pale considerably in comparison to the hordes of film fictionists. In Dumaguete, the only other person who has made some foray into documentary filmmaking is Anthony Gerard Odtohan, who made
in 2008, but Odie is now, alas Tokyo-based. (Disclosure: I’ve produced the 2011 documentary
with Chinese filmmaker Zhao Lewis Liu, but I don’t really consider myself a full-fledged documentarian. A dabbler, at most.)
Enter Carmen into that rarified rank. That Carmen has considerably gone far at this stage of her career is beyond doubt, and already, together with her filmmaking partners Juls Rodriguez and brother Ramon, she is putting together a commissioned work for an international body, filming in different areas of the country to tell different a story about the Philippines.
“My love for art started when I was very young,” Carmen told me. “A lot of it came from my mom who taught us how to color and paint. It was only recently—in the past three years or so—that I’ve become interested in film.”
She started her film work with a few narratives made for her classes in the College of Saint Benilde—with some fun on the side making music videos with friends and family. She had no inkling then that it was going to be her consuming passion.
But passion it has since become. Her filmmaking, however, is something that she does with an underlying philosophy she compares to sugar, which is apt, since her family—part of Negros’ sugar society—owns a hacienda in Bais City. “My work is like muscovado sugar,” Carmen said, “Raw, not refined, but still sweet. In my first film, for example, I didn’t want it to be too refined or too commercial. I wanted it to be more natural and real. Instead of having the typical narration we find in documentaries, I wanted the film to narrate itself, told from the point of views directly from the local artists themselves. And I think that’s what made it interesting.”
That whirlwind of artistic points of view is something that speaks of her as a sponge for artistic ideas. “I get a lot inspiration from different cultures,” she said. “I like working in new places, meeting different artists and learning new things from them, and getting inspirations from what they do—which is exactly what I’ve done in creating my. That is why this film is something that best describes me as an artist.”
It is her brother Ramon, however, who remains her biggest influence. She said: “The biggest influences in my work are the members of my family, but especially my brother Ramon, who is also interested in film and animation. He has taught me to be the best in what I do, and we always try to team up together when we brainstorm for new projects. He’s one of the best persons whom I can really turn to since we have similar interests.”
And what of her work in the coming years? “What I would really hope to achieve with my work in the future is to become an even better filmmaker,” she said. “To travel more, and to create more films as well as promote the city where I grew up in. Hopefully, my films will become a tool for inspiration to others.”
There are many sides to Stephen Abanto. Xteve, most of us call him. Xteve is painter, multimedia artist, filmmaker, bedeviled idealist, romantic dreamer, incurable insomniac. Late nights, we sometimes get to tweeting each other some inanities about not being able to sleep, and I’d imagine he’d be in his room, trying to do stuff with his computer. Those “stuff” often become the very ingredient of some magic—be it a painting, a film, or a sculpture.
I’ve known him since he first emailed me in Facebook some years back. Out of the blue, this kid with a hairstyle borrowed from some manga character wanted to ask me about, well, “love.” As if I knew anything worthwhile about it—but then again, maybe I did. (I did title my last collection of short stories
, and dedicated the entire volume to someone who “gave me both heartbreak and magic.” Totally lame in retrospect—but you do what you do when you’re in love. No logic to it.)
But I’m digressing. I don’t remember what I told Xteve in my reply to his missive, but I’ve since followed his evolution as artist—from his beginnings as a dabbler in manga-like fantasies to his current fascination with film. His first short, an animated effort titled
was full of promise. His second short, something he has titled
, about the comeuppance of dreadful gossipmongers, is something he made for my literature class. I told him at the very beginning of the term, “Enroll in my course. I know what your final project will be—a short film.” He did exactly that (and I think much to his own surprise). Right now, he’s doing another short film, something called
. The trailer is already YouTube-able, and by the looks of it, it smacks of an epic fantasy, something celebrating the city Xteve comes from—Dumaguete.
But I’d rather that Xteve talk. Because he can get loquacious, too. “I’m a proud leftie,” he once told me. “I started drawing since I could hold a pencil or any ‘marking’ media. But I don’t think I started doing anything seriously of note until a few years ago, sadly enough. For the most part, I’m self-taught, which for some people, is hard to believe. It wasn’t until Silliman offered a BFA in Painting that I’ve had ‘professional help’.”
Did he ever think about doing art seriously? “I never really considered making a career out of what I thought was just a hobby of mine,” he said. “I never really knew what I wanted to do with myself until later in college. It wasn’t until a major ‘occurrence’ came about in my life that I decided to take this hobby to a whole new level. I started actively uploading my work to the Internet about a couple of years ago. Then
! I was surprised by the amount of positive feedback I got from other people. They loved my work. They wanted more. I even got commissioned to do the cover art for a fantasy novel by this new author based in the U.S. But eventually I abandoned it for several reasons. Anyway, this ‘sideline’ took a toll on my academic life, as it was no longer possible for me to juggle Engineering with drawing. So, long story short, it finally dawned on me that I should follow my bliss. I shifted to BFA without parental consent, and I’ve never been happier.
“There was never a master plan as to what I wanted to be as an artist. I’m still currently trying to find a direction in my artistic compass here. I have mainly done traditional paintings and drawings before but during the process of building my portfolio, I decided to take the risk to experiment with different types of media. To be completely honest, I’m never contented with any of my works.
But isn’t that the whole point? We all strive to improve and be better than what we have already accomplished, right?
"I consider my art as an evolution. My discontentment compelled me to not stick to one medium. I believe that it would be a good opportunity to create more diverse art works, and throughout the process, I can identify which ones I’d like to stick to improving and what will take a backseat in my priority list. The older I got, the more complex the process of my works became. Say, I draw a character on paper, a pencil drawing. But I want to give it more life, so I apply color. I paint on it. But it isn’t enough. I want to render color and effects only possible through digital media. So I learn Photoshop. And here, I’ve discovered my now favorite art form—digital art. But I’m still not happy. I want to be able to display them, no longer on a flat surface of a canvas or paper, so I make action figures made of clay and papier mache. I’m still not satisfied. I want to take that even further. So I try sculpting now, using processed clay and/or plaster of Paris, with my mom’s nail pusher for a carving knife!
“I didn’t stop there. I fancied movement. No, not robotics. I entered into animation. So I made this 15-second animation on Flash. I was kinda happy with the result, but I didn’t stop there. My fascination for video and film grew. And when Miss Silliman 2010 came around, I was more than ecstatic to do the videos and be able to practice my ‘directing skills,’ or lack thereof. To be able to see my visions come alive on screen like that, in my opinion, is the ultimate form art can take. Kids today, younger artists in particular, have grown up with technology. They learn awesome techniques and abilities straight out of their diapers, it’s amazing! People are now coming up with new ways of producing art everyday. Keeping up with that trend is very difficult. But for me, an artist should accept this challenge. It can be very good for the old creative drive you know. Artists shouldn’t succumb to one art form. A true artist is open-minded about embracing changes and new developments. Versatility is the name of the game.”
5:07 AM |
The Visualist of Common Sense
