The Moments of 2010

A group of programmers, filmmakers, writers and more weigh in on the moving images that defined the year.

Moving Image Source has made an annual tradition of gathering from their contributors, but also artists, writers and others, their pick for the “moving image moment or event” of the year. What makes this list so interesting is that it ranges far past just the movies, to include videos on the web, TV shows, news footage and more, from critics and from creators. The whole thing is worth perusing, but here’s a sampling:

Dan Streible, director of The Orphan Film Symposium

Nothing was more compelling than the latest season of the HBO series In Treatment, in which psychotherapist Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) begins his own talk therapy with a young new doctor (Amy Ryan). She nails him on all of his rationalizations and offers devastating insights into his psyche and his practice. Their verbal duels are sharply written and Byrne, who must carry every episode, creates one of the deepest, most soulful characters to be found on television. Also award-worthy is the performance of Irrfan Khan as Paul’s reluctant patient Sunil, a retired Bengali math professor who has been forced to move to New York to live with his son.

Pedro González-Rubio, filmmaker (Alamar)

Thirty years after Roger Waters wrote The Wall, its main theme has prevailed even though the categorizations for many of its concepts have a different name–we continue to construct walls to separate each other. The world tour that kicked off in September 2010 gives a good dose of self-awareness to a mass concert public. I have chosen the visuals that accompany Goodbye Blue Sky. Flocks of white doves fly away leaving the sky empty to be filled by waves of B-52 bombers over cities, dropping loads of signs: a crucifix, a hammer-and-sickle, a Star of David, a crescent-and-star, a Mercedes sign, a dollar sign, and a Shell Oil sign. This concert uses images very effectively to resucitate a pop icon, The Wall, and to echo issues that can awake an audience.

Gregory Zinman, writer and scholar

Shynola’s title sequence for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World brought the dazzling direct animation techniques of Len Lye, Norman McLaren, and Stan Brakhage to a 21st-century audience. This unexpected showcase for handmade cinema (made on sheets of clear acetate, which were then kicked around on the studio floor to accumulate hair and grime) provided the perfect contrast to Edgar Wright’s restlessly inventive digital filmmaking, and served up the perfect visual metaphor for the emo heart beating at the center of the movie’s 8-bit body.