PANTHEON is a new monthly series running throughout 2023, a selection of the “greatest movies of all time”, inspired by the mother of all film lists, the critics’ poll that has run once a decade in the UK’s Sight & Sound magazine since 1952. (The results of the 2022 poll were announced in December.)
Of course there can be no definitive ten (or 12, or 100) Best list. But the poll does serve as a ready-made canon, and at the very least it’s a starting point for anyone curious about exploring the art of cinema (and arguing about it afterwards).
It’s also a snapshot of changing fashions and fixations in film criticism and academic circles. In 1952, Vittorio de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves topped the list. Then, for forty years, from 1962-2002, Citizen Kane was crowned the Greatest. In 2012, Hitchcock’s Vertigo, a film that was largely dismissed when it was released in 1957, usurped the top spot. And in 2022, Sight & Sound’s infinitely wider and more diverse constituency of 1600+ voters anointed a film directed by a woman: Chantal Akerman’s 1975 masterpiece, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, a film that can truly be said to have revolutionized the art form but which is unknown to most of the general public.
Presented by
PANTHEON screenings will take place on the third Sunday of each month at 11am,* and will comprise an introductory lecture from a roster of respected film educators, reading notes, and a discussion after the show. (There will also be a repeat screening on Tuesday evenings, without the talk.) Complimentary tea and coffee will be provided.
The focus of our series will naturally fall on the merits and qualities of the films under review, but also on wider cultural considerations on the subjectivities of taste, changing notions of excellence, diversity, representation, and what curatorship looks like at this moment in time.
Individual tickets $18
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January 22: Jeanne Dielman
- Introduced by Alla Gadassik, Associate Professor, Media History & Theory, Emily Carr University of Art + Design
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February 19: Vertigo
- Introduced by William Brown, Assistant Professor of Film, University of British Columbia
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March 19: Beau Travail
- Introduced by Dr. Sarah Shamash, media artist and educator, Emily Carr University of Art + Design
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April 16: Singin’ in the Rain
- Introduced by Harry Killas, filmmaker and Associate Professor, Emily Carr University of Art + Design
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May 21: Man With a Movie Camera
- Introduced by Ernest Mathjis, Professor in Film and Media Studies, UBC
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June 18: Tokyo Story
- Introduced by Su-Anne Yeo, specialist in Asian and Asian diasporic screen cultures at UBC and Emily Carr.
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July 16: 2001: A Space Odyssey
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August 20: 8½ (35mm)
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September 17: Mulholland Dr. (35mm)
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October 22: In the Mood for Love (35mm)
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November 19: Close-Up (35mm)
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December 17: Citizen Kane
Films
Tokyo Story
Ozu's most celebrated film follows an aging couple as they come to the city and make the rounds of their now grown children. Busy with their own lives, the children have little time for their parents, who are quickly packed off to hot springs in Osaka.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Based on Arthur C Clarke's short story The Sentinel, 2001 redefined the sci-fi genre. With its radical structure, scant dialogue and oblique narrative this was the first film to emulate the philosophical seriousness of writers like Clarke and Dick.
Mulholland Dr.
Brunette Rita (Laura Elena Harring) wanders Mulholland Drive, dazed and confused after an auto accident. She finds refuge with Betty (Naomi Watts), an aspiring blonde actress who has arrived from Deep River, Ontario, with her innocence intact.
In the Mood for Love
Wong Kar-wai's most popular film is a love story about two neighbours (Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung) who are drawn together by the long absences of their respective spouses.
Close-Up
In Abbas Kiarostami's self-reflexive non-fiction narrative feature, Sabzian, an illiterate film buff who passed himself off as the Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf plays himself in reconstructions of his fraud.
Citizen Kane
Orson Welles's debut was the most sophisticated movie to come out of the Hollywood studio system to that time, and opened up the creative possibilities of the narrative feature film for generations. For nearly 50 years it was "the best ever made".
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
In December, Chantal Akerman's 1975 masterpiece was voted the Greatest Film of All Time by 1600+ critics, academics and curators in Sight & Sound's prestigious once-a-decade poll. It's a rigorous feminist work and a stunning temporal experience.
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Beau Travail
Inspired by Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Claire Denis' transfixing Beau Travail is set in East Africa. Sgt Galoup (Denis Lavant) reflects on his time in the French Foreign Legion, and the impact of the handsome Sentain (Gregoire Colin).
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Singin' in the Rain
The greatest movie musical ever made, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's sublime Hollywood on Hollywood satire is dynamic, romantic, and very funny, with some of the most memorable dance numbers ever shot - including, of course, the legendary title number.
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Man with a Movie Camera
Bottomless invention and frenetic, dizzying montage make this city symphony one of cinema’s sharpest, most exciting experiences nearly a century after its release.
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