The ten most influential films poll

Recently I was reading up BFI’s Sight and Sound magazine special issue on the most influential films in cinematic history. There were a few regular contenders like Welles Citizen Kane, Hitchcock’s Vertigo, and Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. That got me thinking quite a bit, and interestingly too : What then, are the ten most influential films for me, as an animation/media student ? By influential I do not just mean favourite movies but in the sense that the movie have had a certain impact in changing the way you look at films, the way you would create a treatment should you be making an animation or film, maybe even the way you look at life. It doesn’t even have to be an award winner or anything. And so on. Inspirational stuff. I sorted through my memories archives and came with this ten : ( not in any order of importance )

1) Love Letter ( Iwai )

2) Akira ( Katsuhiro )

3) Ghost in the Shell ( Oshii )

4) Amelie ( Jeunet )

5) Mononoke Hime ( Miyazaki )

6) Gattaca ( Niccol )

7) Il Mare ( Seung )

8) Hackers ( Softley )

9) Contact ( Zemeckis )

x) One Fine Spring Day ( Jinho )

Introspective : Starting out as an animation student, the earliest and biggest influences were obviously animation works, but Akira in itself I percieve more as a sophisticated, stylized work of film art for its unprecented use of avante garde camera works and framing, superb cinematic devices and grand scale of motion. Its also worth noting that other for 3 english shows and 1 french, the rest of the list is dominated by Asian movies/animation for which I feel still exert a very significant influence over the way I look and treat films.

Perhaps evil rei and Gatchaman ( or anyone else that view this blog ) might be interested to cast their own poll for a wider demographic.