The Undistributed

By Susan Gerhard

If you believe the best films in the world are the ones that make their way to your local multiplex via a carefully calibrated selection process, you also believe in peanut butter, and can now clap your hands! The rest of us skulk through the year with the suspicion that there are better films out there, films carted to the great vaults of greedy distributors who won’t release them until they’re dusty, stale, and completely irrelevant. Yet these films are kept alive, somehow, and even discussed in year-end polls — some year after year, even, as their loyal fans scream, plead, and demand their rescue from obscurity. This year, critics in indieWIRE’s first-annual poll who’ve had the joy of seeing the year’s best “undistributed” films at festivals (along with a few of the worst, it must be noted), offer hints to the movie-businesspeople about what might just be worth picking up. And in a heroic gesture, indieWIRE itself will be presenting another of its “Undiscovered Gems“ series at — hopefully — a theater near you, featuring some of the following titles.

Best Undistributed Films/indieWIRE Critics Poll

1. “Woman on the Beach” (30 points) is “a deadpan, melancholy erotic comedy,” according to J. Hoberman of the Village Voice.

2. “Still Life” (27 points) “offers an unusual kind of beauty, both astringent and monumental,” says Shelly Kraicer in Cinema Scope.

3. “Colossal Youth” (19 points) “prioritises rhythm and texture over any form of conventional narrative and Costa’s proficiency as a director is writ large in the deft way he stretches the film’s visibly meager budget,” writes David Jenkins for Time Out London.

But wait, there’s more!

4. “In Between Days” (18 points)

5. “Private Fears in Public Places” (10 points)

6. “Day Night Day Night” (8 points)

7. “Dong” (8 points)

8. “Honor de Cavalleria” (8 points)

9. “Gardens in Autumn” (7 points)

10. “The Journals of Knud Rasmussen” (6 points)

11. “Opera Jawa” (6)

12. “Interkosmos” (6)

13. “Funky Forest: The First Contact” (6)

14. “Half Moon” (5)

15. “The Sun” (5)

16. “John and Jane Toll-Free” (5)

17. “The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema” (5)

18. “The Wayward Cloud” (5)

19. “Brand Upon the Brain!” (5)

20. “The Go Master” (4)

21. “Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait” (4)

22. “Southland Tales,” Cannes cut (4)

23. “The Last Communist” (4)

24. “Falling” (4)

25. “The Magicians” (4)

And there are, of course, more. For the rest, see complete poll results at indieWIRE.

01.05.2007