World Poll 2019 — Introduction

It is the project here at Senses of Cinema that we love to present every single year – the annual World Poll. It’s a mammoth effort involving contributors from across the world from a wide range of film-centric arenas. It acts as a review, a testimonial, a thrown gauntlet, a celebration of what we watched and loved through 2019. And it’s a chanced to acknowledge and appreciate the incredible work from writers and directors and DoPs, producers, designers and animators from across the globe.

From a personal perspective, one of the things I love most about the World Poll is its looseness, the way that people reflect on their year in film and television in a fluid, borderless way. It doesn’t matter if the experience is a short or a feature, a contemporary blockbuster or a restoration from the silent era, or indeed a streamed or theatrical or DVD release: the World Poll celebrates it all. And then consider how the World Poll allows people to make sense of that year of experiences in any way that is meaningful for them – because let’s be honest, we all process our film experiences differently. As an example, have a look at the way Jeremy Chamberlain or Adrian Danks structure their submissions, and then look at how Darragh O’Donoghue or Jose Sarmiento Hinojosa have approached their lists. We have entries that take specific perspectives on national cinemas or film festivals, and others that construct wider perspectives on the year in film taking in trends and movements that have shaped the cinema. One thing is for sure, once you dive in, your next twelve months of catching up on what you missed is laid out before you. And however you want to use the positions in the World Poll are up to you. Fill out your diaries, add them to your Letterboxd watchlists, hunt for them at the cinemas or your streaming hub of choice, and share in this celebration of what 2019 brought to us.

It’s a tremendous pleasure to bring you the World Poll this year. And first and foremost thanks must go to the contributors cited here. I am overwhelmed every year with the passion with which you engage in this project and the breadth of your experiences: curators and academics and journalists and writers and PhD students and filmmakers and cinephiles. What a tremendous community of contributors we have to this, and I thank each and every one of you for making this such a joy each year. And to my fellow editors – Michelle Carey, Danny Fairfax, David Heslin and Cesar Albarran Torres – thanks for everything throughout 2019, and for continuing to bring the World Poll and Senses of Cinema to an audience and a community keen to engage in the world of screen culture. And finally, enormous thanks to Bradley Dixon, our fearless webmaster, who has worked tirelessly to bring this project to us all.

Thanks again to everyone who has contributed and assisted with this incredible project for another year, and a warm welcome to the Senses of Cinema World Poll for 2019!

Mark Freeman

THE ENTRIES