The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever
The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever features experts and enthusiasts and, well, their favorite films of every year ever. Host Tristan Ettleman sits down with a new guest every week to dive into the history and beauty of some of the best movies to ever come out of the cinematic medium.
1915 E6 - James Harrison
James Harrison, BBC Archives Researcher, puts that expertise to good use with his ultimate pick reflecting his interest in British moving image (and war) history. But on the way, he also discusses European innovation in defiance of World War Iâs intensification and American narrative development.
James is also the co-director of South West Silents and Film Noir UK. He has written many articles about classic cinema and was a graduate of the Giornate del Cinema Muto Collegium.
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your own top five for 1915!
Mentioned media:Br...
1915 E5 - Scout Tafoya
Filmmaker, critic, and author Scout Tafoya brings some of his âunlovedâ sensibilities, as demonstrated in his titular video essay series, to his selections for 1915, although a couple of his picks overlap with films that have come into view as undeniably impactful for this season.
Scout, in addition to directing numerous feature films, is the author of books on Tobe Hooper, John Ford, Anthony Mann, and Christophe Gans. His ongoing work can be supported on Patreon.
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your own top five for 1915!
Mentioned media:
Alia...
1915 E4 - Daisuke Miyao
Daisuke Miyao, Professor and the Hajime Mori Chair in Japanese Language and Literature at the University of California, San Diego, is the author of Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom. His ultimate selection factors greatly into that book, but also picks an international array of differing genres and forms.
Daisuke is also the author of Ozu and the Ethics of Indeterminacy, Le SamouraĂŻ: BFI Film Classics, Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema, Cinema Is a Cat: A Cat Loverâs Introduction to Film Studies, and The Aesthetics of Shadow: Lighting and Japanese Cinema. He is also the edit...
1915 E3 - Jeremy Mathews
Filmmaker, musician, and writer Jeremy Mathews takes a couple tacks in his selections for 1915. In addition to a couple National Film Registry entries and another widely praised American drama, he selects an offbeat short comedy and a surreal, macabre, and underseen Russian horror, of a kind.
Jeremyâs film criticism has appeared in Eye for Film in the UK and Paste Magazine in the US. He fronts the indie band NSPS as singer, songwriter and guitarist, with upcoming projects including the new NSPS album, No Truth Left to Tell, and a short film called Seize the Initiative, which he...
1915 E2 - Anthony Slide
Anthony Slide, prolific film historian, author, and archivist, personally knew a few people who acted in his selections of 1915. This secondhand view of their production is combined with his wide historical knowledge of their significance to bring valuable insight to the year and period.
Anthony is the author of numerous books since 1970 and has served as archivist at the American Film Historian and resident film historian for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Perhaps his most relevant book to this conversation is American Racist: The Life and Films of Thomas Dixon and his works can be f...
1915 E1 - The White-Hooded Elephant in the Room
To borrow a phrase from an upcoming guest of this season, Jeremy Mathews: 1915 has a white-hooded elephant in the room. D.W. Griffithâs racist epic The Birth of a Nation has to be mentioned when discussing film in this year, and although (spoiler) it was only selected by one guest, its shadow is cast somewhere into each of the conversations and diverse picks to come, addressing both its good and bad influence.
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your own top five for 1915!
Media mentioned:The Birth of a Nation (1915) - D.W...
1914 E7 - Wartime Modernity
While the 1914 season introduction promised the omnipresence of âThe Great War,â World War I, if still at least mentioned in every episode, didnât dominate the conversations. Even still, its representation of sudden disruption, evolution, and modernity is still thematically connected to the aesthetic and industrial developments in film of the year.
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to see the list of every submitted film!
Mentioned media:
Cabiria (1914) - Giovanni PastroneTillieâs Punctured Romance (1914) - Mack SennettFantĂ´mas (1914) - Louis FeuilladeDaisy Doodadâs Dial (1914) - Florence TurnerGertie the Dinosaur (1914) - Winsor McCayKid Auto Races at Ve...
1914 E6 - Bret Wood
Whether he had a hand in their restoration or not, Bret Wood, filmmaker, author, and SVP and Producer of Archival Releases at Kino Lorber, selects five films that hold some personal connections for him. While they shift back and forth from epic drama and short comedy, these picks also highlight some representative traits of American film in 1914.
Among the many projects Bret has worked on at Kino are Pioneers of African-American Cinema and Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers. His films include Hell's Highway: The True Story of Highway Safety Films and he is the author of Tod Browning: une...
1914 E5 - Beja MargithĂĄzi
The selections from Beja MargithĂĄzi, assistant professor at EĂśtvĂśs LorĂĄnd University's Department of Film Studies, begin in Canada and move eastward. They also jump between genres and culminate in an early directorial effort from Michael Curtiz and a representation of the cinema of her native Hungary.
Beja is editor of the film theory and history journal Metropolis. She is also the author of The Cinema of the Face: Close-up and Film Style and co-editor of the anthology Visual Communication.
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your own top five for 1914!
1914 E4 - Brian Darr
Library professional Brian Darr once maintained a blog about the San Francisco Bay Area screening scene called Hell On Frisco Bay, an alias he still uses on Bluesky and Letterboxd. So some aspect of the theatrical experience, whether he caught a screening or not, comes into the conversation about each of his five picks (all from a different country!) in addition to their aesthetic recommendations.
Brian has written on media history for outlets like Senses of Cinema, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, SFGate, Screen Slate, the Independent Lens blog and The Maine Playweek. He's performed several audiovisual...
1914 E3 - Elyse Singer
Elyse Singer, Lecturer in the Department of Theater at Dartmouth College, selects a wide range of forms and genres for her five picks of 1914, from short comedy to serial action to epic tales (one historically dramatic and the other perhaps the first feature comedy). At least two relate to her recent research in female madness in film and the agency of women in serials of the time.
Elyse has also taught at the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at CUNY and NYU Tisch. Her work has been published in Cinematic Explorations of the Mind, The Routledge Companion to...
1914 E2 - Susan Potter
Susan Potter, Senior Lecturer in the School of Art, Communication and English at the University of Sydney, wrote the book Queer Timing: The Emergence of Lesbian Sexuality in Early Cinema. While its scope is broader than any one year, and just one of Susanâs 1914 selections is referenced within it, she also mostly highlights female agency and subversion before and behind the screen with her picks.
Susanâs research investigates the relation of cinema as modern mass medium to the intensification of sexuality since the late nineteenth century and audiovisual media's role in queer identity and culture formation. Thei...
1914 E1 - The Great War Begins
The event that has been foreshadowed the past few seasons comes to pass in 1914: the Great War, or World War I. And while not every facet of the conversations this season relates back to the disruption of the film industry that ensued (to say nothing of the disruption of every other aspect of life), it certainly looms large and provides context for filmmaking language and industrial developments in this year and to come through at least the end of the decade.
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your own top five for 1914!
Films mentioned:<...
1913 E7 - Yes, a Milestone Year
The 1913 season introduction episodeâs title was âA Milestone Year?â And indeed, the guests for these past five episodes, as well as the representation of listeners based on their submission lists, made the case that it was artistically, industrially, critically, and popularly.
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to see the full list of 1913 submissions!
Films mentioned:
Suspense (1913) - Lois Weber and Phillips SmalleyFantĂ´mas (1913) - Louis FeuilladeTraffic in Souls (1913) - George Loane TuckerA House Divided (1913) - Alice Guy-BlachĂŠThe Student of Prague (1913) - Stellan RyeThe Night Before Christmas (1913) - Ladislas StarevichIvanhoe (1913) - Herbert BrenonTh...
1913 E6 - Charlie Keil
Charlie Keil, Professor in the Cinema Studies Institute and the Department of History at the University of Toronto, is the author of Early American Cinema in Transition. His periodization of the transitional era, as explored in that book, ends with 1913 and his take on the traits of the time and how it shifts from the beginning of the period in 1907 defines the conversation.
Charlie has also published seven other books, the most recent being The Oxford Handbook of Silent Cinema, coedited with Rob King. His next book will be Observing Film Art: Themes from the Work of David...
1913 E5 - Paul Gagliardi
Paul Gagliardi, Teaching Associate Professor of English at Marquette University, selects almost entirely comedy shorts for his 1913 highlights, although they connect with his proto-expressionist feature pick in that they all contain morbid underbellies. And diving into the comic commentary of these works, intended or not, reflects a few things about audience reception to movies and politics of the time.
Paul is the author of All Play and No Work: The Comic Plays of the Federal Theatre Project. His website is paul-gagliardi.com.
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your own top five for 1913!
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1913 E4 - Michael Gebert
Michael Gebert is the founder and co-moderator of NitrateVille, the online discussion site about vintage films of the silent era through the 1950s. Looking ahead to the advancements soon to come, his selections of almost all features demonstrate editing and performance style shifts, which branched off in slightly different ways in countries like America, France, and Sweden.
Michael is host of the NitrateVille Radio podcast, which talks to people doing "cool stuff" in the world of vintage film, from authors and filmmakers to the curators of retrospectives and festivals. He is also a food journalist in Chicago and...
1913 E3 - Julie K Allen
Julie K. Allen, professor of Comparative Arts and Letters at Brigham Young University, is the author of Screening Europe in Australasia. So it makes sense that her selections, each from a different country, would embody the transnational dynamic of silent film just before the outbreak of World War I.
Julie is also the author of Icons of Danish Modernity, Danish but Not Lutheran, and The Silent Muse: The Memoirs of Asta Nielsen. She is currently working on a book about the Danish cinema license system with the tentative title The Cultural Politics of Film Exhibition.
Visit...
1913 E2 - Shelley Stamp
This is the 100th episode and just two weeks past the second anniversary of The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever! Itâs a special episode made even more so by Shelley Stamp, Distinguished Professor of Film & Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She literally wrote the book on Lois Weber so it makes sense that pioneering filmmakerâs landmark 1913 film factors into the conversation, but all of Shelley's picks reflect the rapid development of American film grammar and stand in for womenâs representation in front of and behind the camera, as well as their fights for eq...
1913 E1 - A Milestone Year?
1913 is considered by many to be a milestone year in the development of film grammar and industry. And it perhaps is, as is set up by this context-setting introduction and the conversations with guests to come for this season!
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your own top five for 1913!
Films mentioned:
The Adventures of Kathlyn (1913) - Francis J. GrandonWhat Happened to Mary (1912) - Ashley Miller and Charles BrabinFantĂ´mas (1913) - Louis FeuilladeTraffic in Souls (1913) - George Loane TuckerThe Artistâs Dream (1913) - John Randolph BrayThe Evidence of the Film (1913) - Lawrence Mar...
1912 E7 - The Ol' Power Players Hang in There
Although the 1912 season introduction asserted that âHollywood was incoming,â the top picks for the year (fueled by a record number of submissions from guests!) is mostly made up of old power players, even if that power would recede in short order. Indeed, both that dynamic and the fact that all of the most popular selections are shorts may change in the near future!
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to see the list of every film submitted for 1912!
Films mentioned:
The Cameramanâs Revenge (1912) - Wladyslaw StarewiczThe Land Beyond the Sunset (1912) - Harold M. Sha...
1912 E6 - Paul (PT) Klein
Film historian and cultural critic Paul (PT) Kleinâs work focuses on American filmgoing cultures. So even when discussing his sole foreign pick, the conversation dives into audience reception to his selections, then and now, in addition to the various aesthetic strengths of each of his movies.
PTâs writing has appeared in Film Atlas, Film Matters, Foglifter, Metro Weekly, and more. His work can be found at ptklein.com.
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your top five for 1912!
Films and resources mentioned:
The Girl and Her Trust (1912) - D.W...
1912 E5 - Stephen Horne
Silent film accompanist and composer Stephen Horne has already composed for or accompanied a couple of his five multinational picks for 1912. But besides discussing the general aesthetic pleasures of his selections, he also ruminates on how he could approach playing for both these grounded features and short trick films (they were still hanging in there!).
Stephen is a house musician at Londonâs BFI Southbank. He released Silent Sirens, an album of solo piano pieces based on his silent film compositions, and has scored Stella Dallas, The Manxman, and many more films.
Films mentioned:
1912 E4 - Marsha Gordon
Marsha Gordon, Professor of Film Studies at North Carolina State University, mostly highlights two directors credited with advancing film narrative with four picks. But she also sings the praises of a certain work of stop-motion animation, one taking this season by storm for both guestsâ and listenersâ submissions.
Marsha is the author of Becoming the Ex-Wife: The Unconventional Life & Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott, Film, Form & Culture (with Robert Kolker), and Film is Like a Battleground: Sam Fullerâs War Films. She is currently writing a biography of the pioneering Hollywood director Dorothy Arzner.
Films mentio...
1912 E3 - Alison Strauss
As Founding Director of HippFest, Scotlandâs first and only silent film festival, Alison Strauss is especially knowledgeable about the history of Scottish filmmaking and -going, as represented by three of her picks. But the conversation, which concludes with outlandish animation, also addresses the preponderance of short films in an era of increasingly long ones.
Alison works as Falkirk Councilâs Arts Development Officer (Film and Media), programming the Hippodrome year-round. Alison is the âface of the Festivalâ and leads on the artistic programme, commissioning, funding, research and development, and touring.
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submi...
1912 E2 - Tanya Goldman
Tanya Goldman, Assistant Professor of Film at Missouri State University, has a strong interest in what could variably be called ânontheatrical movies,â âminor cinema,â âuseful films,â and other such phrases, reflected by her two concluding picks dealing with sponsored films, whether by social progress groups or farm equipment manufacturers. But much of the conversation concerns morbid humor, whether in live action or animation, and all of the shorts demonstrate the offbeat character of 1912.
https://www.tanyagoldmanphd.com/ focuses on media access, considering how the distribution of documentary + nonfiction film is a political and cultural taste-making practice. She is currently co...
1912 E1 - Hollywood Incoming
1912 seems to offer more threads of industrial, technological, and social changes in the global film industry than the previous few years, but maybe just because a few still recognizable names can essentially âheadlineâ this season. The threads introduced in this intro, and many more, will be picked up by five guests to explore just how exciting the period is becoming.
Films mentioned:
Queen Elizabeth (1912) - Louis Mercanton and Henri DesfontainesOliver Twist (1912) - unknownOliver Twist (1912) - Thomas BentleyRichard III (1912) - AndrĂŠ Calmettes and James KeaneCleopatra (1912) - Charles L. GaskillLorna Doone (1912) - Wilfred NoyWhat Happened to Mary (1912) - Ash...
1911 E7 - The Shorts Continue
The introduction to this 1911 season made a big point (or did it?) that the features have begun, and although the majority of the five most selected films from guests and listeners indeed operate in that mode, the vast majority of selections in general still conform to the timeâs global film industry norm of one or two reelers. They reflect, or foreshadow, how quickly the cinematic form was evolving throughout the early and middle years of the 1910s decade.
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to see the most selected films and the list of every one submitted!
1911 E6 - Casper Tybjerg
Casper Tybjerg, Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Copenhagen, selects five films that reflect the advancement of narrative cinematic drama. Whether they offer visual and emotional spectacle or crusading social messages, his picks demonstrate the international refinement of the cinematic medium.
A scholar of Danish and international silent film, Casper is the co-editor of the anthology Danish and German Silent Cinema: Towards a Common Film Culture. He was awarded the Dr. Phil. (Habilitation) degree for his forthcoming book, The Historiography of Filmmaking â through the Lens of Carl Th. Dreyer.
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/lis...
1911 E5 - Eva Hielscher
Eva Hielscher, head of film-related collections at Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, selects a wholly international survey of 1911 films, jumping from country to country and genre to genre. This heterogeneous view of the year ranges from French comedy and animation experiment shorts to an Italian epic and German featureâŚand a document of a historic expedition!
Eva is also co-artistic director of the Bonn International Silent Film Festival. She is co-editor of The City Symphony Phenomenon: Cinema, Art, and Urban Modernity between the Wars and Color Mania â The Material of Color in Photography and Film.
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com...
1911 E4 - Thomas Christensen
Thomas Christensen is Curator at the Danish Film Institute, so it stands to reason that all of his selections hail from Denmark. All but one of them come in at âfeature lengthâ (and from the same director) as well, reflecting the countryâs place in advancing film grammar, subjects, and character psychology at a crucial transitional time.
Thomas also serves on the Executive Committee of the European Cinematheque Association and served on the FIAF Technical Commission from 2003 to 2015. He has recently been involved in a project digitizing all surviving Danish silent films from 1896 to 1929.
Visit the5bestfi...
1911 E3 - Patrick Friel
Patrick Friel, educator and programmer, is very interested in non-narrative and experimental film. Therefore, his five selections totally fit into those designations (well, with one semi-exception), but each of them offer totally different visual experiences and intentions.
Patrick is currently an Adjunct Professor of Instruction at Columbia College Chicago and has previously taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was also the former Program Director at Chicago Filmmakers and the Festival Director and Programmer of the Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival.
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your top...
1911 E2 - Kathy Feeley
Kathy Feeley, professor of history at the University of Redlands, wrote Mary Pickford: Hollywood and the New Woman, so it makes sense that two of her picks center the film icon and pioneer, still in the early years of her career. But the rest of Kathyâs selections also paint a picture of womenâs contributions before and behind the camera in an era before mass corporatization and the sidelining of women in various roles across the film industry.
Kathy co-edited, with Jennifer Frost, When Private Talk Goes Public: Gossip in American History. She is also, again with Jenn...
1911 E1 - The Feature Begins?
1911 really feels like the beginning of the feature film. Oh sure, it didnât suddenly define the output of the global film industry, but ambitious experiments from Italy, Denmark, Russia, and only very tentatively, America, sat alongside narrative, as well as plenty of non-narrative, successes and intriguing failures in the short form.
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your top five for 1911!
Films mentioned:
LâInferno (1911) - Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan, and Giuseppe De LiguoroLâOdissea (1911) - Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan, and Giuseppe De LiguoroThe Black Dream (1911) - Urban GadThe Girl Behind the Co...
1910 E7 - Legitimacy and Controversy
Hopefully youâre not too tired of hearing about how 1910 and its surrounding years are part of a transitional era, but this seasonâs conversations also revealed how diverse the global medium was at the turn of a new decade with offbeat modes, genres, and subjects. With a record slate of submissions from listeners, in addition to the guestsâ selections, 1910âs collective list paints a broad picture of the yearâs releases.
Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to see every film submitted by guests and listeners!
Films mentioned:
Jeffries-Johnson Worldâs Championship Boxing Conte...
1910 E6 - Kathy Rose O'Regan
As Executive Director of San Francisco Film Preserve, Kathy Rose OâRegan works hard to highlight our shared film heritage. Her five picks certainly paint a picture of the international nuances of 1910 filmmaking, with each hailing from a different country and operating in a different narrative mode (or lack thereof).
Kathy also served as the Senior Film Restorer for San Francisco Silent Film Festival, overseeing all operations of the preservation department and managing the restoration of dozens of silent era titles. Previously, she managed the preservation department of the Bay Area Video Coalition.
Films and re...
1910 E5 - Kynan Dias
Kynan Dias, Assistant Professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is no stranger to podcasting as co-host, with Lester Ryan Clark, of a series of film history podcasts on the TruStory.FM network. His picks reflect some of the conversation surrounding this 1910 season regarding literary adaptations and real-world impact, but the discussion finds new angles to explore, including a landmark work of Native American filmmaking.
Kynan earned a B.A. in film from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he pursued acting, screenwriting, and directing. Later, Kynan earned his MFA in screenwriting from the University of California...
1910 E4 - Laura Horak
Laura Horak, Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University, is the author of Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressing Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema. Therefore, most of the conversation addresses the transgression, or lack thereof, of films that depicted such changes in dress, a rich topic represented by four of her five picks.
Laura is also the director of the Transgender Media Lab and Transgender Media Portal. She is co-curator of the 99-film Bluray set Cinemaâs First Nasty Women and co-editor of Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space and Unwatchable.
Films and resources mentioned:...
1910 E3 - David Morton
David Morton, Lecturer at the University of Central Florida, is the author of Motion Picture Paradise: A History of Floridaâs Film and Television Industry. With this expertise in mind, the opening of the conversation covers the American film industryâs halting migration to the southern state, but moves on to American migrations to other locations and censored films.
David received his Ph.D. in Texts and Technology in 2019 from University of Central Florida in 2019. He was a 2017-18 recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship and served as a visiting scholar at the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies at G...
1910 E2 - Ned Thanhouser
Ned Thanhouser is president of Thanhouser Company Film Preservation and grandson of film pioneers Gertrude and Edwin Thanhouser. It makes sense, then, that he and Tristan discuss the founding of his familyâs studio, which released its first film in 1910, but they also move on to Nedâs picks of classic literature adaptations and controversy.
Ned directed the 2014 documentary The Thanhouser Studio and the Birth of American Cinema. He has been active in film preservation since 1986, produced 17 DVDs containing over 120 surviving Thanhouser films, and published Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History by Q. David Bowers.
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