In the time it took for planet Earth to orbit around the sun, a growing proportion of this world’s seven billion inhabitants decided it had a story to tell. This story was too important to be merely whispered to a neighbor over the hedges or shouted across a loud bar or confessed over a campfire. It would need to be committed to a screen and broadcast to the globe. Some of these stories would stall out on their way to funders’ desks, some early starts would make it to your Facebook feed in an attempt to get Kickstarted; a lucky couple thousand would be chosen to show at film festivals; a select score propelled into year-end critics polls and; unjustly perhaps, only a few will wind up in the annual political circus that are the awards shows. By the time those shows close in what is always an apocalyptic media meteor shower, a new year in film will be sprouting in its wake. But until such time, we at Keyframe are doing our best to review what, exactly, occurred in the Year in Film 2013. Instead of offering the usual, and, you have to admit, often repetitive Top Ten exercise, in which the same twenty commercial releases are shuffled, we’ve asked contributors to offer unique lists that in some way sum up their year in film and, we hope, offer you a new way to understand yours.
What follows is a list of the lists. We’ll be adding links to the latest each day in December, as they are published. Please let us know what you think of these 365 days of cinema as we move along.
Thirty-one Days of Year-End Lists
1. Five Surprise Fascinations of 2013, by Calum Marsh
2. Top Ten Conceptual Strategies of 2013, by David Ehrenstein
3. Expecting the Unexpected: 2013, by Beatrice Behn
4. The Year in Cinematic Disappointments, by Sara Maria Vizcarrondo
5. The Absolute Best (and Worst) of Nearly Everything MMXIII, by Jonathan Marlow
6. Best Restorations, by Aaron Cutler
7. Best Avant-Garde Films of the Year, by Jordan Cronk
8. The Top 5 Sex Scenes of 2013, by Lauren Treihaft
9. Most Memorable Female Performances, by Anna Tatarska
10. Ten Moments That Mattered, by Chuck Bowen
11. Ten Best Political Docs, by Steven Erickson
12. Ten Best Political Films, by Tomas Hachard
13. Ten Best Confrontations, by Adrian Martin
14. The Ten Best Shots of the Year, by Glenn Heath Jr.
15. Out of the Past, by Max Goldberg
16. Best Theatrical Experience, by Shari Kizirian
17. One-Week Wonders, by Simon Abrams
18. The Best of the Rest, by Michael Sicinski
19. The National Film Registry: Class of 2013, by Michael Fox
20. Top Ten Documentaries, by Caveh Zahedi
21. Video: The Best Films of 2013, All on One Screen, by Kevin B. Lee
22. Deep Cuts: The Year in Movie Music, by Calum Marsh
23. Funny Moments of 2013, by Tina Hassannia
24. Video: Lessons Learned from 2013’s Films, by Kevin B. Lee
25. My Nine Bests and Three Bummers of 2013, by Cory Vielma
26. Violence on Film in 2013, by Simon Abrams
27. Ten Great Disc Debuts for 2013, by Sean Axmaker
28. Cities Light and Dark: 2013, by Ehsan Khoshbakht
29. Best Evolutions in Genre, 2013, by Sean Axmaker
30. Best Child Performances, by Tomas Hachard
31. Top Ten Shorts, by Michael Pattison
32. Songlists Decoded, 2013, by Tina Hassannia
For the complete index of the films on these lists, go to 2013 Year in Review: Indexed.
