Kenji's "Canon": The Big 1000

Created by Fergenaprido.

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Kenji's MUBI list

"I’ve called this list a canon, cos the original intention was of a wide-ranging canon, including established “classics” but also balancing the domination by Hollywood with a geographical spread. Now i’ve thought better of reinforcing received wisdom and the position of many popular and major films which hardly need promoting and which i’m not so keen on. So it’s become a personal “canon” like Rosenbaum’s 1000. Notable films I intend to see can be found on my “Percy the Porcupine” list. I need to keep extending my viewing in neglected areas of the world- Africa, Latin America, the Balkans and parts of Asia should then be better represented.

We didn’t have a TV till i was 12. My first memory of going to the cinema was Fantasia- my introduction to the devil and dinosaurs. Then there was a film called Emil and the Detectives. My small town’s cinema closed when i was 7- TV was too strong a competitor-, my sole memory of films there of “red Indians” on a hill. The bigger films were at the grand metropolis of the county town of 3,000 people 20 miles away, or an even greater city of a few thousand more in the other direction. How i wept when the childcatcher caught them in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and the sky outside had changed, with castles hidden in the majestic domes of cumulo-nimbus. At 11, The Great Escape was the greatest adventure, at 12, El Cid. At 13, i joined the school film society. I gazed in awe at the naked female on a motorbike in Vanishing Point- more fun than that boring Wild Strawberries. In my mid teens, the best discoveries were North by Northwest and Fred Astaire. At uni, on a French course, my special subject was French Cinema of the 30s- Renoir and Pagnol.. but i really got obsessively hooked on world cinema once i’d bought a video player in the late 80s (ooh those Wenders road movies!) and John Kobal’s book The Top 100 Movies (see my list on that); Tarkovsky and Mizoguchi were new names to me. Soon i saw Andrei Rublev and the rain and light had changed. Then a few years on (less availability in those days) it was the turn of Sansho the Bailiff."

Notes:

#361 Teen Kanya (Three Daughters, 1961) only refers to the segment "Postmaster"
#471 Le plus vieux métier du monde (1967) only refers to the segment "Anticipation, ou l'amour en l'an 2000"
#671 Fanny och Alexander (1982) specifically refers to the television version

1007 entries because....

#6-10 Fantômas (5 episodes) counted as one entry
#339-341 Ningen no jôken trilogy counted as one entry
#603-605 La batalla de Chile trilogy counted as one entry
Kenji's list now has only 999 entries