Chris Hegedus’s Top 10
Filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker (Dont Look Back, Monterey Pop, The War Room) and Chris Hegedus (The War Room, Startup.com), creative partners and husband and wife, offer their favorites.
1. Fellini is my favorite director, and this brilliant movie is one of my inspirations.
2. Haunting and magical. The way that Fellini dealt with Juliet’s dreams, subconscious, relationships, and the church—I had never seen anything like it.
3. I adore Jean-Luc Godard’s early films. Stylish, contemporary, and innovative, this is one of his best—and Brigitte Bardot, well!
4. I thought that this was one of Ingmar Bergman and cinematographer Sven Nykvist’s most beautiful and haunting films.
5. The first time I saw this film, it felt so real it was frightening. I watched it again recently, and it is an amazing piece of filmmaking, still relevant and possibly even more frightening.
6. This film is a comic delight. Sturges is a master. Veronica Lake is unforgettable.
7. I remember being thrilled by the way this film begins. Actually, the whole movie is charming. Michael Powell is one of the best.
8. My introduction to the French new wave. The way Truffaut dealt with relationships seemed so different. Jeanne Moreau is magical.
9. Great documentaries happen when the filmmaker is lucky enough to be there at the rare moment in time when things are changing. Monterey Pop captures the music but also that innocent moment in the sixties.
10. A classic direct-cinema documentary drama made with ordinary people, it demonstrated for me, early on, that even without celebrities documentaries can be as compelling as any fiction film.