Alex Barrett

Alex Barrett is an independent filmmaker based in London. He is currently in development on his debut feature film, 'Life Just Is', and runs the blog Night on Planet Earth. For more information on him and his work, please visit AlexBarrett.net.

Although I found it fairly easy to shortlist my selections from the pre-defined pool (partly because there were so many I hadn't seen!), selecting my ten free choices ended up being a much harder process. As a result, the ten films that I finally chose should be seen as also representing a number of other films I wasn't able to include: so, for instance, 'Les affaires publiques' stands equally for 'Les anges du péché', 'The Parson's Widow' for 'The President', ' Once Upon a Time' and 'Leaves From Satan's Book', and 'Dreams' for both 'After the Rehearsal' and 'All These Women'. 'Lourdes', meanwhile, stands for a number of more recent films (such as 'Born & Bred', 'The Father of My Children', 'The Portuguese Nun' and Brian Welsh's extraordinary 'Kin') which I hope will still gain wider exposure and distribution. Other notable omissions from my list include a host of recent American Indies ('The Exploding Girl', 'Medicine for Melancholy', 'Hannah Takes the Stairs', 'Quiet City', etc), further silents ('Phantom', 'Goddess', etc) and Chris Newby's 'Anchoress', a film which appears to me to be unique in the history of British cinema and in desperate need of further discovery. Finally, I'd like to add that I was surprised to find two Pudovkin's and three Rossellini's in the pre-defined pool: I had no idea they were so under seen. Hopefully this poll will help put that right.

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