Even though I'm loving the twitter prompts and reading the responses throughout cinetv, I haven't joined one so far. In my defense, I'm lazy! Anyway, when @thisismylife posted a new prompt, write about your top 5 films, I felt a bit excited and nervous at the same time. True, I also suffer from the common problem we all have—the inability to fixate on 5 films only. Yet, I also know precisely which ones I was going to pick and how I was picking them.
In this case, I'm only choosing films that I not only love but also am deeply influenced by. And these films are chosen in no particular order. And when I make such a list, they usually fluctuate based on my then mood and preference.

The Other Side of the Wind (2018) — Orson Welles

This film that was posthumously released a couple of years ago—is mostly shot during the 70s, and then of course Orson Welles died without finishing it. Even though there's a 40-50 years gap between the formation and the finalization of the film, I felt it was precisely made for the audience of the 2020s. Well, not exactly audiences but filmgoers. While Citizen Kane is certainly the greatest film ever made, I acknowledge that wholeheartedly, The other side of the wind punched a hole in my gut. Welles mocked us, and quite brutally, the people connected to the seventh art one way or the other. He mocked us for loving Antonioni, and showed us he could do what Antonioni did without much of an effort. Now, I don't mind such arrogance coming from Welles. I also know this is purely my cognitive bias towards him.

Battleship Potemkin (1925) — Sergei M. Eisenstein

As I see it, Battleship Potemkin is the first true feature film that can be called pure art. Sergei M. Eisenstein is a methodical filmmaker, yet he made such dramatic films. However, I revere him more for his work as a film theorist, one of the forefathers that established cinema as an art form, in contrast to entertainment. His work on montage and how he used that in Potemkin and his late films is something I consider pivotal for my film understanding.

Fitzcarraldo (1982) — Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog is perhaps my spiritual mentor, and I can confess that I'm a bit obsessed with him and his films. Fitzcarraldo is not only a film for me but a statement from an artist—how far can you go for the love of cinema. And Herzog walked the whole nine yards. I love the impossibilities he faced making the film and how it mirrored the protagonist's impossible dream in the film. While I respect the whole ordeal, reading Herzog's memoir of the time "Conquest of the useless", I'm quite unsure whether I'd ever pull a feat like that!

Amarcord (1973) — Federico Fellini

Now, Amarcord is a bit different in this list—I absolutely adored the way Fellini created the surreal city, that it became a character itself. I took all in, in absolute awe, in fervent fascination! From the town harlot to the accordion player to the motorcyclist riding fast throughout the city! And of course, the central characters were kind of mirrored a time I lost in my childhood. The superb screenplay, the superb direction—the film is like a dream, a dream I never want to wake up from!

The Phantom of Liberty (1974) - Luis Bunuel

A few years ago, I wrote a thesis on how Luis Bunuel makes a film fast-paced while shooting in
enclosed space. And The Phantom of Liberty was one of the films that influenced me to come to the conclusions I drew. In this film, Bunuel follows a character to a scene, and then from the scene, the camera jumps to another character and we follow them to a new sub-story. Now, this is not entirely revolutionary, You can see the technique in French New Wave as well, Jacques Demy's "The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)" comes to mind immediately. But the way Bunuel used it throughout the entire film to take me into a surreal journey of madness and absurdism— I was utterly destructed. And from all the destruction, I grew a love for my destroyer. A kind of love that is inseparable.

So yeah, that's the list for now. I'm pretty sure if I write on the same prompt the next month, I might subtract or add. I'm not that consistent of a person.

Bye then, au revoir!

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