11 Oct 2023
Raven Jackson’s Closet Picks
The writer and director of All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt selects films that have left an indelible mark on her sensibility, praising the revelatory inspiration of Lynne Ramsay’s short films and the visceral effect of The Piano Teacher, and shouting out the “legend” Barry Jenkins.
Raven Jackson: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest
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.
| Chose | Director | Year | Taken by | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Eve’s Bayou | Kasi Lemmons | 1997 | |
| 2 |  Ratcatcher | Lynne Ramsay | 1999 | |
| 3 |  The Piano Teacher | Michael Haneke | 2001 | |
| 4 |  Amores perros | Alejandro G. Iñárritu | 2000 | |
| 5 |  Medicine for Melancholy | Barry Jenkins | 2008 | |
| 6 |  Fat Girl | Catherine Breillat | 2001 | |
| 7 |  Weekend | Andrew Haigh | 2011 | |
| 8 |  Faya dayi | Jessica Beshir | 2021 | |
| 9 |  La Ciénaga | Lucrecia Martel | 2001 | |
| 10 |  The Devil’s Backbone | Guillermo del Toro | 2001 |
How far across film history it reaches
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
Its 10films run 18.1 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.
That is 108.6 minutes of film for each of its 10 choices, counting a box set as the one choice it was. Across the 375 visits with a complete total, the median is 136.4 minutes.
How unusual this haul was
Its 10 choices had been taken by 5.1 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. One of them has been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Eve’s Bayou, taken by this visit alone.
This visit reached the work of Andrew Haigh, through Weekend, Barry Jenkins, through Medicine for Melancholy, Catherine Breillat, through Fat Girl, Guillermo del Toro, through The Devil’s Backbone and Lucrecia Martel, through La Ciénaga, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.