Contacts
Info
The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever features experts and enthusiasts and, well, their favorite films of every year ever. Host Tristan Ettleman sits down with a new guest...
show more
The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever features experts and enthusiasts and, well, their favorite films of every year ever. Host Tristan Ettleman sits down with a new guest every week to dive into the history and beauty of some of the best movies to ever come out of the cinematic medium.
show less
The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever
The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever
The 1800s E6 - Peter Domankiewicz
10 JUL 2024 · Peter Domankiewicz is a film director (https://youtu.be/6kUzk5Vgo3g?si=I4ri0bHH54wc70QJ), screenwriter, and journalist with a long-standing interest in the origins of cinema. That interest manifests in five picks that deconstruct some of the myths surrounding early film, including the definition of “cinema” and its “invention,” a widescreen format at least 70 years before it became a standard, and a genuinely exclusive explanation of a film residing in the French national film archive that Peter was able to identify this summer.
He is currently in the final year of a fully-funded PhD at De Montfort University, examining the work and inventions of the controversial moving picture pioneer, William Friese-Greene. He has written about early film for Sight & Sound and The Guardian, contributed to reference works and journals, and has recently co-authored https://www.exeterpress.co.uk/products/finding-birt-acres for publication by University of Exeter Press in 2025. His blog https://friesegreene.com/ presents original research on early film history for a broad readership.
Films and resources mentioned:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIfHpe2via0
- https://silentfilm.org/preservation/flipbooks/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWVSnUThG60
- Young Griffo v. Battling Charles Barnett (1895) - Otway Latham
- "Untitled" (1890) - William Friese-Greene
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6504eRh5h6M
- https://catalogue-lumiere.com/repas-annamite/
- https://catalogue-lumiere.com/village-namo-panorama/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_pjZcRdPxY
- https://youtu.be/426mqlB-kAY?si=2lg3OT8NmFmzWQ9M
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdePM1XPeEM
- The Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Race (1895) - Birt Acres
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNSQxXDcafQ
- Bullfight (1896) - Gray Latham and Eugène Lauste
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DpscosT15Q
- Sidewalks of New York (1895) - Otway Latham
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZSLHtaSmaI
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FAj9fJQRZA
- https://friesegreene.com/2021/03/17/who-what-when-where-a-mini-chronology-of-the-start-of-cinema/
- https://friesegreene.com/2020/05/20/happy-125th-birthday-cinema-part-1/
The 1800s E5 - Bryony Dixon
3 JUL 2024 · Bryony Dixon is the curator of silent film at the BFI National Archive and her picks for the 1800s reflect that expertise. Bryony discusses five British films that are emblematic of key developments in the earliest days of film, which align with the end of the Victorian era that she details in her book https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/story-of-victorian-film-9781911239611/.
Bryony is also the author of https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/100-silent-films-9781844573080/ and has written numerous articles and book chapters on silent cinema and archiving. She is co-director of the British Silent Film Festival and has programmed films for many international festivals. She has been lead curator on a number of the BFI’s recent film restorations, including Underground (1928), Shooting Stars (1927), Epic of Everest (1924), The Great White Silence (1924), all nine surviving Hitchcock silent films, and the BFI’s large format Victorian films. Her Twitter is https://x.com/bryonydixon?lang=en.
Visit https://www.the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your own five favorites of the 1800s for a final tally in the season finale!
Films and resources mentioned:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZSLHtaSmaI
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc3ei1tseeM
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE260ElJ7VY
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKsML25GYmk
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgjOnEAsOwA&t=30s
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1VA0PM0Hv8
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OBw0r28qC0
- https://www.amazon.com/History-Kinetograph-Kinetoscope-Kinetophonograph-Dickson/dp/0870700383
The 1800s E4 - Maggie Hennefeld
26 JUN 2024 · Maggie Hennefeld, Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, has literally written the book(s) on early cinematic feminist humor. https://cup.columbia.edu/book/death-by-laughter/9780231559812 and https://cup.columbia.edu/book/specters-of-slapstick-and-silent-film-comediennes/9780231179478 tackle similar themes to those explored in her five picks from the 1890s, which reveal the expansive possibilities of the earliest days of film, from anarchic comedy to those who worked behind the camera.
Maggie is also a curator of the 4-disc DVD/Blu-ray collection https://kinolorber.com/product/cinemas-first-nasty-women-blu-ray and co-director of https://archivesonscreen.org/. Her socials are:
Twitter: https://x.com/magshenny
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hennefem/
Bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/hennefem.bsky.social
Visit https://www.the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your own five favorites of the 1800s for a final tally in the season finale!
Films and resources mentioned:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qre61opE_g
- The Cabbage Fairy (1896) - Alice Guy-Blaché
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kLCaP-AxGk&t=43s
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDnXyXKZRKM
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReNflTgkZDA
- The Dairy Maid's Revenge (1899) - Frank S. Armitage
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6Mgex4DI7M
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-15jwb1ZTMA
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoMW37xfMRw
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iH1sKdwi9k
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47qRYJVIl9k
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCYYa0WxLXA
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwrdeKcXSNI
- https://youtu.be/gOHQOJaHTXo?si=UjFKGbxhgGpKldRx
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NJj12tJzqc
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGCvdlaWUF0
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCm51fg5hpk
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgpWtyT1nxM
- https://youtu.be/o5KsSMMNKps?si=-R-Wvfds0AWMU2tv
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvOeJa74DQo
- https://wfpp.columbia.edu/2019/10/17/do-you-believe-in-fairies-cabbages-victorian-memes-and-the-birth-of-cinema-seeing-sapphic-sexuality-in-the-silent-era/
- https://wfpp.columbia.edu/
- https://muse.jhu.edu/article/856444
- "The Cinema of Attraction[s]: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde" - Tom Gunning
- https://silentlondon.co.uk/
- https://loftcinema.org/
The 1800s E3 - Aurore Spiers
19 JUN 2024 · As a feminist film historian and scholar, Aurore Spiers (she/her) is mainly focused on women’s contributions to film, with her work interrogating historiographical processes—what history gets written, how, and why—through the lens of gender and intersectional and multidimensional feminism. That focus is reflected in her five picks for the 1800s, as the labor behind the camera is explored and expectations of this period in film are challenged.
Aurore received her PhD in Cinema and Media Studies from The University of Chicago in 2022. Since 2015, she has been a contributing editor to the Women Film Pioneers Project, edited by Jane Gaines, Monica Dall’Asta, Radha Vatsal, and Kate Saccone, and published by Columbia University Libraries. Her Twitter handle is https://x.com/AurSpiers.
Visit https://www.the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your own five favorites of the 1800s for a final tally in the season finale!
Films and resources mentioned:
- The Dairy Maid's Revenge (1899) - Frank S. Armitage
- https://vimeo.com/305144396
- The Cabbage Fairy (1896) - Alice Guy-Blaché
- https://youtu.be/2kLCaP-AxGk?si=RRxKJkW6ZWnmnTmY
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TwV4uCrDhY
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zqCRVhiNGk
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2_ioXKuxoQ
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo1Q97Jx_gw
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOHQOJaHTXo
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy7iUTHGUsA
- The Lily of Life (1920) - Loie Fuller
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FAj9fJQRZA
- https://wfpp.columbia.edu/
- https://wfpp.columbia.edu/cinemas-first-nasty-women/
- https://wfpp.columbia.edu/2019/10/17/do-you-believe-in-fairies-cabbages-victorian-memes-and-the-birth-of-cinema-seeing-sapphic-sexuality-in-the-silent-era/
- https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Auguste-Lumi%C3%A8re-Jacques-Rittaud-Hutinet/dp/0571175457
- https://www.dukeupress.edu/japonisme-and-the-birth-of-cinema
- https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789089646576/fantasia-of-color-in-early-cinema
The 1800s E2 - J.J. DiUbaldi
12 JUN 2024 · As the first guest of The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever and its 1800s season, writer and avid "prehistoric" film watcher J.J. DiUbaldi explores sound, color, and positive racial depictions (among other topics) through his five picks; things one might not expect to find in the earliest motion pictures of the 1880s and '90s.
J.J. maintains https://zepfanman.com/, an eclectic hodgepodge of his interests over the years. His goal is to connect people and facilitate sharing in a way that only the internet can provide, which includes a 10 Years 10 Films blog series that is not unlike this podcast. You can also follow him on Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/zepfanman/.
Visit https://www.the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your own five favorites of the 1800s for a final tally in the season finale!
Films and resources mentioned:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEQO0Fj9AtQ (1897) - Louis Lumière
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDnXyXKZRKM (1898) - William Selig
- https://www.loc.gov/item/2006691786/ (1887) - Eadweard Muybridge
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6b0wpBTR1s (1894 or '95) - William K.L. Dickson
- https://youtu.be/tdV4dL1VW4E?si=pqMdRv0gWvES60CJ (1899) - Georges Méliès
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYbsB8yrPds (1934) - Lloyd Corrigan
- The Movie Orgy (1968) - Joe Dante
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twq4XwHplMY (1896) - William Heise
- Nope (2022) - Jordan Peele
- https://filmcolors.org/
- https://flickeralley.com/products/123006195-mlis-fairy-tales-in-color
The 1800s E1 - The Invention of Cinema
5 JUN 2024 · Welcome to The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever. Ahead of guests and listeners sharing their picks for the first decade or so of cinema up until the end of the nineteenth century, instructor and host Tristan Ettleman provides some context on the podcast and the creation of “moving pictures.”
The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever features experts and enthusiasts and, well, their favorite films of every year ever. Host Tristan Ettleman sits down with a new guest...
show more
The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever features experts and enthusiasts and, well, their favorite films of every year ever. Host Tristan Ettleman sits down with a new guest every week to dive into the history and beauty of some of the best movies to ever come out of the cinematic medium.
show less
Information
| Author | Tristan Ettleman |
| Organization | Tristan Ettleman |
| Categories | Film History , TV & Film , Film Reviews |
| Website | www.the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com |
| trettleman@gmail.com |
Copyright 2024 - Spreaker Inc. an iHeartMedia Company
