So much cinema, so little time. (I could actually be spending time watching something instead of making another list, but I can’t really be chuffed right now). I guess this is another handy reference for me, an über watchlist, if you will.

Jem Cohen
Which films? I’m starting off with Chain; and if I really like it, anything else I can get my hands on.

Jonas Mekas
Which films? As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, Walden

Les Blank
Which films? Fucking all of them. Who wouldn’t want to watch films about Dizzy Gillespie, Garlic, and Gap-Toothed Women? It’s a shame not enough his films have been added to the database. I’ve seen Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe and Cigarette Blues, but those are just the tip of the iceberg, I think.

Giuseppe Andrews
Which films? Garbanzo Gas, one the first films I added when we got a “watchlist” feature on this site; on Andrews’ site it says, “Garbanzo Gas is either the most brilliant pro-vegetarian film ever made, or the most maddening deconstruction of meat’s magical allure since the Sawyer clan discovered the value in human hamburger.”
I’ll always remember Andrews as the guy from Detroit Rock City, but apparently this guy now lives in a trailer park (without any hype, take that shit and eat it, Harmony Korine) and directs his own films. I still regret missing this when it was screened at the Silent Movie Theater in LA.

Pablo Stoll
Which films? Hiroshima. I was eager to see how Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll would follow up the deadpan gem Whisky, but sadly Juan Pablo Rebella committed suicide in 2006. They were the perfect duo, with Rebella handling the melancholy and Stoll the humor, so it would be interesting to see how Stoll handles the mood of the film on his own.

Xiaolu Guo
Which films? How is Your Fish Today?, which seems to have disappeared without a trace after it screened in Sundance in 2007 (another film I regret missing) and She, a Chinese. Guo is also an accomplished author, you may want to check out A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers:

Hiroatsu Suzuki and Rossana Torres
Which films? Green Belt. I actually don’t know a thing about the film or the filmmakers, but the description sounded interesting.

Zhao Dayong
Which films? Everything he’s made, but if there was one had to pick to see right now, Ghost Town would be it. They announced on the film’s page that dGenerate films is planning to release it on DVD on the second half of this year.

Alain Cavalier
Which films? Le Filmeur, natch.

Lionel Rogosin
Which films? On the Bowery, one of the pioneering works of American independent film, nearly forgotten, but now finally getting its due with a re-release by Milestone Films and a box set of Rogosin’s work by Carlotta Films.

Shunichi Nagasaki
Which films? The Enchantment, Stranger, and The Drive; Nagasaki was the master of the genre quickie, these three are the seminal examples. Nagasaki was part of the Japanese new wave that featured Shinya Tsukamoto and Sogo Ishii…he seems to have faded into obscurity compared to his peers.

Nobuhiro Suwa
Which films? 2/Duo, mainly because of this review by Tony Rayns: “A low-budget first feature with an exemplary grasp of what it’s doing (and why it was worth doing in the first place), this account of a young couple falling apart together has real bite. The guy is an aspiring actor, the girl works in a smart boutique; her sense that things are going really really wrong starts when he turns a trivial apology into a proposal of marriage. Suwa began with a full script but told his actors to forget it and invent their own actions, reactions and dialogue. He shoots the results in long takes from fixed angles, and compounds the quasi-documentary feel by adding sequences in which the characters respond to questions about themselves from an off-screen interviewer. The resulting feeling of truthfulness makes it all remarkably moving.”

Nick Peterson & Mary DeFreese
Which films? All of them, when you get praise like this: Nick Peterson’s Yellow is a breath of fresh air. Amid the grainy, the gritty, and the grim–in short, in contrast to virtually every other American “first film” out there–Peterson brings the brightness, the brilliance, the wonder, and the mystery of poetry (and song!) to his work. He has the best, the most exciting"eye" of any young filmmaker in my experience. Yellow is visually delicious, acoustically dazzling, and completely original, fresh, and new in its sensibility. And it doesn’t hurt that it is deeply perceptive and penetrating as well. It is an eye- and ear-opener of a film–one of my favorite “unknown masterworks” of the past five years.
—Ray Carney, professor\author, why the fuck not?

Films / Filmmakers I've been meaning to watch