Violeta Kovacsics

Comments

How to deal with contemporary cinema is one of the main challenges I face in a poll like this one. The last time I participated in this poll, I wasn't sure if I was making a mistake by leaving out contemporary film. I was thinking, above all, of Mulholland Drive. I have amended that mistake by including it now: although Lynch's film is now more than twenty years old, it still seems extremely contemporary to me. I have the urge to see contemporary film with perspective, even if cinema is still young, a modern art, and the last twenty years are already an important part of cinema’s short and fascinating history. When writing a list like this one, I still feel more confortable in the company of films that have been with me throughout my history, both as a cinephile and a professor and film critic. Time will tell if I've been unfair to any of the films of our time I had in mind and left off the list (Carol, On the Beach Alone at night), but the present is perhaps not yet history, and I guess my list is about history.