101 DIRECTORS' ESSENTIAL FILMS

Chikamatsu Monogatari/The Crucified Lovers

Done without preparation, so don’t read much into the order

Partly personal, partly “objective” taking into account importance and general opinion (so there are some directors i’m not very keen on).Tarantino I suppose is too popular to be left out, but sorry, fans of Jackson, Coens, Cameron, Nolan, Fincher, Eastwood, P.T.Anderson, Ridley Scott…well, they don’t need promoting. I don’t think the Oscars are a good guide to quality, so directors are not always represented by Oscar winning films.

So many bubbling under: Peries, Diaz, Yoshida, Gosho, Pasolini, Mambety, Von Trier, Chahine, Tati, Vertov, Dovzhenko, Wiseman, Kaul, Barnet, Kalatozov, Pasolini, Hong Sang-Soo, Kitano, Masumura, Ichikawa, Yamanaka, Suzuki, Sun Yu, Chen Kaige, Menzel, Vlacil, Inarritu, Tran Anh-Hung, Chabrol, Kazan, Campion, Sen, Dutt, M. Makhmalbaf, Svankmajer, Keiller, Cronenberg, Ivens, Cassavetes, Maddin, Brakhage, Cocteau, Wajda, Deren, Franju, Kaurismaki, Costa, Argento, Guney, Norstein, Stroheim, Losey, Sanjines, Im Kwon-taek, P.Sturges, Melies, Guy-Blaché, Jarmusch, Quay brothers, Pialat, Garrel, Pintilie, Jarman, Bartas, Nikolaidis, Kaboré, De Seta, Martel, Wang Bing, Robert Kramer, Ogawa, Chytilova, Mekas, Wes Anderson, Loach, Leigh…

Of course, the Directors Cups have showcased a lot now, Nikolaidis and Ruiz the surprise finalists in the first, Monteiro the winner of the 2nd, beating Mizoguchi in the final.

There should be more by women, from Latin America, and quite a few countries are hard done by. In any event, there is also the list 500 Directors. I’m amazed this list, strung together higgledy-piggledy with no planning and little in the way of pictures or write-up, is so popular