REFLECTIONS ON FILM CULTURE

The Year in Film: 2013

GRAVITY

‘Gravity’

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.

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