Alastair Phillips

Comments

I can't quite go for 'the greatest', but here are ten titles that definitely feel 'among' the greatest from ten very different directors and locations. All have opened important doors and windows for me. As a creative medium, cinema is inherently about space, time, movement and transition. Looking at my choices, I seem interested in films that represent these aspects figuratively in narratives involving intense moments of transformation or realisation, whether this be a glance in a mirror, an encounter in a street, or simply the decision to visit the other side of the hill. I'm struck by how many of these films also hold a relationship between two spaces or two identities and find new ways of making you feel about what this might mean to the people involved. Clearly, many of these filmmakers have themselves made important life journeys and this definitely accounts for the ways they therefore link place and emotion with growth, loss and memory. But, above all, these are simply 'great' films because of their unique aesthetic and affective impact. In this sense, not only do they move in every way possible, but the list could just go on and on.