Alex Dudok de Wit

Comments

Fantasia

(note to editors: I ran out of space in the Directors field!)

Further remarks

Dozens of films jostle in my brain for top spots in polls like these – they are all effectively joint first in my private best-of. To whittle the list down to ten, I have to impose some arbitrary rule. So why not focus on animated films, which often get sidelined in general cinema polls (I counted zero in Sight & Sound's top 100 in 2012)?

Much-discussed prejudices against the medium aside, animation suffers from a secondary bias in these surveys: that against short films. More than in live action, the short is a major format in this world, not least because economic factors have made feature production very onerous, at least until recently. Many of the greatest animation filmmakers have never made a feature or even aspired to do so. Some of them are represented in my list, which includes six shorts.

The films I've chosen are daring in their use of animation, whether formally (the diabolical loops of Revolver), thematically (the wartime horror of Grave of the Fireflies), stylistically (the flamboyant expressionism of Fantasia) or technically (the groundbreaking computer experiments of Toy Story). Collectively, they remind us that animation is really a set of mediums: cut-outs, plasticine puppets, CGI, rotoscoping and traditional cel animation are all represented here (and, strictly speaking, Pas de deux isn't actually animated). But more importantly, these films entertain or move me as much as any other, and I rewatch them all often.