Closet Picks

9 Oct 2024

André Holland’s Closet Picks

The actor and star of Exhibiting Forgiveness talks about his hero, the late James Earl Jones, and his performance in Claudine ; shares how Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun sparked his desire to perform; and selects films by friends and collaborators Dee Rees and Barry Jenkins.

André Holland: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices
7
6 single, 1 box set
single films
6
chosen on their own
box sets
1
one choice, many films
films reached
10
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.

single film, with its spine number box set

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1961 to 2011, box sets 1967 to 1972
Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films
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

Its 10films run 16.9 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 145 minutes of film for each of its 7 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 7 choices had been taken by 6 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. One of them has been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was A Raisin in the Sun, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Barry Jenkins, through Medicine for Melancholy, Charles Burnett, through To Sleep with Anger and John Sayles, through Matewan, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com