Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde—Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop by J. Hoberman
Twenty years ago, I discovered a Web page compiling nearly three decades’ worth of J. Hoberman’s Top Ten Films of the Year lists for The Village Voice. This precious URL became my de facto cinema syllabus in high school. It was my introduction to one-of-one directors such as Chantal Akerman, James Benning, and Tsai Ming-liang. (Despite not being particularly into sports, I even tracked down a VHS copy of Game Six of the 1986 World Series on eBay, Hoberman’s pick for the fifth best “film” of that year.)
Consisting of “reporting week after week on out-of-body experiences in a parallel universe,” Hoberman’s approach to criticism and list-making was “an exercise in autobiography (however veiled) and a contribution (however modest) to the history of the present.” He began under Andrew Sarris—popularizer of the auteur theory—and the championing he gave during his 35 years at The Village Voice to art-house, experimental, and international films made him one of the defining cinephilic critics of his time.
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