My 10 essential films of all time.

Bell Lightbox the new heart for the Toronto International Film Festival on track to open in 2010. The $129 building should be ready in time for the 2010 festival. While the Festival is perhaps the most important festival (cultural or otherwise) in Canada, it is not the only thing that the Toronto Film Festival Group does. TIFFG has a breadth of programming and activities that celebrate film including many educational initiatives throughout the year. I recently received an email from TIFFG (Noah Cowan, artistic director) asking me to participate in their Essentials of World Cinema Survey. This survey will be a "key component of our inaugural programming for Bell Lightbox." The survey asks for one's "Ten essential films of world cinema." The following is my list, in no particular order:

Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)

Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)

Modern Times (Chaplin)

La Dolce Vita (Fellini)

Citizen Kane (Welles)

The Godfather (Coppola)

Les Quatre cents coups (Truffaut)

Kagemusha (Kurosawa)

Napoleon (Abel Gance)

2001 a Space Odyssey (Kubrick)

Popcorn, anyone? Action!
Jaime Horwitz