By Piers Handling As We Approach
nada's ten by Piers Handling As we approach increasing fragmentation of values, and their feet wet and not take the full the end of the second millennium, it is a proliferation of various agendas, plunge, a ten best program was a very becoming difficult to be original, and which has meant that many of us are sensible way to capture their attention. certainly ten best lists are almost as old even more aware of the contradictions And if we solicited lists from critics, as the movies theii.asels.7 When film in assembling lists of this kind. As perhaps they would have a vested reviewing became ini ortant to the Mike Hoolboom so interestingly interest in the results and write about industry, and the industry realized pointed out in last year's Perspective them. At the time, we needed all the how critics could be utilized, it became Canada panel entitled "Whose publicity we could garner for the retro- common practice for the major critics Canon?" (reprinted in part in Take spective. to assemble their ten best lists at the One No. 4, and in its entirety in the In 1984, we polled approximately end of each year. I have always been LIFT newsletter, December 1993), 100 or so critics, professors and indus- intrigued by Sight and Sound's survey establishing a canon is pregnant with try people in Canada and around the (published by the British Film implications. world. We approached people who Institute) of the ten best films of all When the Festival of Festivals decid- had worked extensively in the area and time which they conduct once a ed to present a mammoth retrospective who we felt would have a background decade.
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