24 Sept 2016

Barry Jenkins’s Closet Picks

The first Criterion Barry Jenkins ever owned was Ratcatcher . (The second was George Washington .) He also loves Cassavetes, Kieślowski, and Demy.

Barry Jenkins: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

17

12 single, 5 box sets

single films

12

chosen on their own

box sets

5

one choice, many films

films reached

36

the same visit, box sets opened

Criterion's own upload · on criterion.com

This visit as a strip, a cell for each choice: paler the older the film, indigo for a box set, which is one cell however many films it holds. The order is the order Criterion's own page lists them in, which is probably but not provably the order they came off the shelf.

SET The Apu Trilogy 622 Weekend 2011 SET John Cassavetes: Five Films 837 Dekalog 1988 SET Three Colors 381 La haine 1995 834 Blood Simple 1984 259 Fat Girl 2001 489 Monsoon Wedding 2001 743 La Ciénaga 2001 162 Ratcatcher 1999 152 George Washington 2000 138 Rashomon 1950 408 Breathless 1960 SET The Essential Jacques Demy SET The Complete Jacques Tati 804 A Brighter Summer Day 1991

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	The Apu Trilogy box set, 3 films			7
2	Weekend	Andrew Haigh	2011	4
3	John Cassavetes: Five Films box set, 6 films			30
4	Dekalog	Krzysztof Kieślowski	1988	12
5	Three Colors box set, 3 films			9
6	La haine	Mathieu Kassovitz	1995	5
7	Blood Simple	Joel Coen	1984	6
8	Fat Girl	Catherine Breillat	2001	7
9	Monsoon Wedding	Mira Nair	2001	2
10	La Ciénaga	Lucrecia Martel	2001	5
11	Ratcatcher	Lynne Ramsay	1999	8
12	George Washington	David Gordon Green	2000	4
13	Rashomon	Akira Kurosawa	1950	6
14	Breathless	Jean-Luc Godard	1960	6
15	The Essential Jacques Demy box set, 6 films			6
16	The Complete Jacques Tati box set, 6 films			19
17	A Brighter Summer Day	Edward Yang	1991	6

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1950 to 2011, box sets 1949 to 2000

John Cassavetes: Five Films

The Complete Jacques Tati

The Essential Jacques Demy

The Apu Trilogy

Three Colors

a single film, at its year a box set, across the years of its films the collection, by decade

The axis is the same 1920 to 2030 on every visit page, so a haul that stayed inside one decade looks like one. A box set is drawn across the years of the films inside it, which is a range of release dates and not a claim about the set. Nothing here is in the order the choices were made: displayed position moves film year by a fifth of one percent of its variance, which is not a slope worth drawing.

How long this haul is

35 of its 36 films carry a runtime, and those alone run at least 64 hours. One of the others is a television series, which has no total on record at all: TMDB gives one episode's length, not a series'. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

What one of its choices was worth is not published for this visit. That figure divides the whole runtime by every choice, so a total missing one film would understate it rather than be approximately right.

How unusual this haul was

Its 17 choices had been taken by 8.35 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Every one of them has been taken by somebody else too. The least-picked was Monsoon Wedding, taken by 2 visits in total.

This visit reached the work of Andrew Haigh, through Weekend, Catherine Breillat, through Fat Girl and Lucrecia Martel, through La Ciénaga, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com