counter-programming

When I first decided to embark on a quest to watch each of the films in Roger Ebert’s Great Movies series, I couldn’t help noticing that the list of familiar names and titles excluded vast parts of the filmmaking and -watching world.

This isn’t to Ebert’s discredit – the movies that have received the most attention and acclaim are the ones he sought to highlight, and those have mostly issued from traditions and movements that historically showcase white, male, straight filmmakers from the U.S., England, and Europe (with a healthy dollop of Kurosawa in the mix).

So when I considered tackling the already fairly unreasonable 370 films in his list, I also thought I’d counter-program The Plan with an equal number of movies that diverged from expectation. The Counter-Programming The Great Movies list I’ve finally arrived at is below. I’m going to watch all of these too.

A few words on methodology are needed. It immediately became clear how different this Great Movies project was from the first – in the case of Ebert’s list, there’s a ready-made canon to explore (or re-explore, in the case of films I’ve already seen). But making up a new one out of whole cloth would be impossible – fundamentally, it’s just impossible to make a list of “great movies you mostly haven’t seen.” It would become a random enterprise.

So, I solicited suggestions from knowledgeable friends, and looked around for guidance. I went through the entirety of the 1,000 greatest films of all time composed by the folks at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?, and segmented out films from non-white, non-Western, non-male, and/or non-straight filmmakers. I also relied heavily on the Great Movie lists posted on MUBI, the House Next Door, this Flavorwire compilation, and a bunch of Letterboxd offerings, especially Death To The Western Canon. I also dropped the titles that do appear on Ebert’s list.

In an ironic but unsurprising way, it’s hard to compose a list of movies you haven’t seen or heard of, in order to familiarize yourself with things you haven’t seen or heard of. Many of these titles and directors (though not all) are completely unknown to me, so their inclusion below started to seem random: it’s completely and totally based on the advice of others.

I briefly toyed with the idea of weighting them in different ways – how many lists they appear on, how many awards they’ve won, just how removed from the mainstream they are, limiting number of movies for a given year, etc. – but quickly decided that was a terrible idea and not in keeping with the project. The last thing anyone needs is for a white, straight guy from the U.S. to assign relative values to these films in order to assess their importance. There’s also the very real danger of Great Movies tokenism – like getting one film from each demographic I can think of – which is something I hope to avoid.

That said, a number are on here simply because I want to see them, or plug specific gaps in my knowledge (examples: independent Black U.S. cinema, early cinema from outside the U.S., Korean and Indian films in general, and especially films from across the African continent). So this should not be thought of as a one-to-one corollary to Ebert’s Great Films – I haven’t even seen most of these to call them great. That’s the point. But they have at least been recognized as important by someone I trust (even if just a friend), which is good enough for me.

In a final twist, I’ve left 30 spots blank at the end. I know beyond all doubt that I’ve missed obvious things, and I hope you can tell me what those great movies are. (Bonus points for early cinema – just kidding, there are no points, but that would be helpful.) Since this is yet another enormous list, there’s no rush, but I’d appreciate some suggestions to round things out.

I’m looking forward to this, and hope you are, too! Like the Great Movies page, I will update this one as I progress.

Let’s do this thing.