The Greatest Directors You Don't Know
 

I found this video earlier today. Though I'm familiar with a few of the directors listed in it, many of them are new to me. I'm definitely going to check them out in the future. As for the films which I have seen from this video, I've seen Zulawski's Diabel, Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon and At Land, Angelopoulos' Landscape in the Mist, Shektiko's The Ascent, and several of Brakhage's short films (Dog Star Man and Mothlight are the most significant ones I've seen from him). Films like Possession, Touki Bouki, and Marketa Lazarova have been on my watchlist for some time, but I haven't gotten around to them yet. I might bump them up the queue

Anyways, just wanted to share.


https://youtu.be/9g94T_xNdAk

Re: The Greatest Directors You Don't Know
 

I've known about him for a long time, but for me, the only director who started after my golden age (1930-70s) who was good was Finland's Aki Kaurismaki

Re: The Greatest Directors You Don't Know
 

guess I'm going to keep putting off checking out Kaurismaki then

But seriously, I've only recently discovered this channel and, while I tend to take issue with titles that presuppose an audience's frame of reference (like this one I heard of before that counted the likes of Near Dark or Re-Animator as "horror movies you'd never heard of"), I have to admit it's an effective tactic for drawing attention to filmmakers such as those who have pushed the notions of what film as an art form can do (especially someone like Lav Diaz).

Re: The Greatest Directors You Don't Know
 

Nice video. I've seen some of those directors but not others. I'm aware of them all though, but some like Lav Diaz I've been putting off because of the sheer length of their films. The MUBI library currently has a load of Diaz films though so will be useful to getting round to them eventually.

MUBI is pretty great for unknown directors overall. Their new library makes it a lot easy to explore them too as it categories directors and sections of cinema nicely. Personally Manoel de Oliveira is a director who I'm really looking forward to eventually getting to.

Re: The Greatest Directors You Don't Know
 

I've only managed to watch one Diaz film in full - From What Is Before, which is a comparatively short six hours. Made it halfway through one that was like eight hours before it expired off the service. The lengths are intimidating enough that I don't go straight for them, but I don't consider that to be a fault once I'm actually watching them.

Brakhage? Dog Star Man? Who is he and whatever film is it that it's a 'thing'? :p

Craig Baldwin is another most have never heard of. But he's amazing too.

You should check out Dog Star Man. It would make for a good forum username.

Meshes of the Afternoon and The Ascent are my favorites of the films I've seen from this list. Meshes is among my favorite short films, while The Ascent is among my favorite Soviet and War films. I'm definitely going to watchlist a lot of the films by the directors listed in the video. A handful of them are new for me.

Deren, Angelopoulos, Shektiko, and Brakhage shouldn't be on a list with that title. They've had an almost privileged amount of coverage in the major film press during their careers.*

Just reading those names in your OP makes me not want to watch the video.

Re: The Greatest Directors You Don't Know
 

It's not like they're household names, though (especially when you have to use a qualifier as dubious as "almost privileged" to describe their coverage). There's always got to be a first time for someone to hear about them, after all.

There's a huge gap between household names and obscurity.

"Almost privileged" wasn't a qualifier — I'm referring to how mainstream press routinely favored covering those specific filmmakers over other independent/international ones (who were ignored for quite some time as a result).

Brakhage and Deren were major factors during the very public Mekas/Sarris vs Kael critic feud that spanned multiple years. After Angelopoulos' film Landscape in the Mist was praised a ton, journalists began turning their full attention towards his work whenever he screened festivals. Etc etc.

Those filmmakers are indeed not household names. But compared to hundreds of others that haven't been decently covered in the mainstream West — some of whom have had their work relegated to scholarly work exclusively — they have indeed been almost privileged, and you can even drop the "almost" in all honesty.