Curators’ Choice

Organized by Chief Curator David Schwartz and Assistant Film Curator Aliza Ma

The inventiveness and vitality of the seven films in this annual year-end survey prove that the art of cinema, in the digital era, is far from dead. Using 3-D technology to expand vision and consciousness, Jean-Luc Godard made one of his greatest films. Meanwhile, Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez used 16mm film to make their mesmerizing ethnographic experiment Manakamana. At once audacious and suspenseful, Stranger by the Lake brought international attention to French director Alan Guiraudie while the German oddity The Strange Little Cat introduced a major new talent, Ramon Zürcher. The prolific Richard Linklater unveiled a masterpiece, Boyhood, that was twelve years in the making, and two of the world’s great filmmakers—Hayao Miyazaki and Tsai Ming-liang—made new work that showed them at the top of their form. And the year’s most memorable performance was by a dog—Godard’s Roxy.