Tristan Ettleman
115 episodes listed below
Early cinema, year by careful year.
The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever treats film history as a sequence of lived-in conversations, one year at a time. Recent episodes linger on 1910 and 1911, where shorts, early features, color processes, spectacle, comedy, controversy, and national film industries all compete for attention.
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The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever is a film history series with a deceptively simple frame: choose the best films from a single year, then argue through what those choices reveal. The format gives each episode a clear path, but the conversations are more exploratory than competitive. Recent seasons on 1910 and 1911 show the program at its most useful. They sit inside a period when cinema is changing quickly, with shorts still central to the global industry and European features beginning to stretch narrative ambition. The show notices that tension. It treats animation and Italian epic films as parts of the same unsettled medium. That range matters. A 1911 discussion can move from La Inferno’s studio-made otherworldliness to Asta Nielsen’s screen presence, from Danish social drama to stop-motion putty, from costume spectacle to location shooting in the Spreewald. The pace is calm. The judgments are careful. Guests bring different habits of attention, including preservation, programming, film studies, collections work, and national cinema history. The result is less a countdown than a guided map of what a year made possible. The show also has a strong archival conscience. Episodes return to restoration, online access, survival, color processes, and the uneasy way film history is shaped by what remains available. It is alert to film as business as well as art, touching on fan magazines, adaptation rights, stars, studios, and the slow migration toward Hollywood. It can also handle uncomfortable material without turning away, especially when discussing racial violence after boxing footage, sex-trafficking melodrama, sexual scandal, or moral anxieties around popular entertainment. Its best moments come when affection and analysis share the same space. A film may be dated, familiar, strange, beautiful, crude, or startling, and the show gives each possibility room. For listeners who want early cinema discussed with warmth, specificity, and historical patience, it offers a steady way into a vast and often surprising archive.
Made for: For cinephiles, film students, archivally curious listeners, and anyone who wants early cinema discussed with context rather than nostalgia. It especially suits people who enjoy ranked lists when the real pleasure is the reasoning behind them.
What sets it apart: The show pairs annual canon-building with detailed historical texture, so a best-films list becomes a survey of form, industry, preservation, and reception. Its recent episodes are unusually attentive to the messy coexistence of shorts, early features, spectacle, non-narrative experiments, and national film movements.
The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever features experts and enthusiasts and, well, their favorite films of every year ever. Host Tristan Ettleman sits down with a new guest every week to dive into the history and beauty of some of the best movies to ever come out of the cinematic medium.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Tristan Edelman turns five-film ballots into precise conversations about early cinema's craft, historical context and survival.
Tristan Edelman builds each conversation around five selections from a single year, then lets the guest's choices shape the history. Discussions of 1911 move from experimental shorts to Danish features and international productions, while a 1910 episode connects film…
A century-old film can still start an argument; Tristan Edelman brings curators and historians into yours.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sharp look at 1911 silent films as they move from spectacle toward narrative drama and social meaning.
1911 feels like a moment when silent cinema starts trusting itself as narrative drama. Casper Tibiere, an Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Copenhagen, uses his selections to show that shift from spectacle toward social meaning without overexplaining it.
A loose, engaging archive conversation that makes 1911 feel varied and international.
Eva Hielscher keeps 1911 moving across countries and genres without flattening its unevenness. Tristan Edelman is strongest when he lets her widen the frame, linking the films to location shooting, city-film thinking, and the early rise of screen stars.
A close look at Danish silent cinema, star power, and film grammar taking shape.
Thomas Christensen, curator at the Danish Film Institute, frames a compact Danish program from 1911 that traces silent film's shift from market entertainment toward a more theatrical and socially accepted form.
A focused discussion of non narrative film, recycled footage, and the J. P. Muller context behind it.
Patrick Friel's picks keep this squarely on non-narrative and experimental film, not a general countdown. Tristan gives him room to explain the programming background, and Patrick keeps the focus on why each choice looks and feels different.
A thoughtful conversation that keeps preservation, access, and film heritage in clear view.
Tristan Edelman and Kathy Rose O'Regan shape the conversation around preservation, access, and advocacy, and that focus gives the piece its strongest point of view.
British nostalgia, ranked and cheerfully misremembered.
Oscar history, watched one nominee at a time.
Scholarship, made conversational and public.
This episode discusses the 1911 film season, highlighting the prevalence of short films over features and sharing expert picks for the best films of that year.
Casper joins Tristan to talk about 1911 as a strong year in early cinema.
Tristan Edelman speaks with Eva Hielscher, head of film-related collections at the Deutsches Filminstitut und Filmmuseum in Frankfurt, about her 1911 film picks.
Tristan Edelman speaks with Thomas Christensen, curator at the Danish Film Institute, about a set of 1911 selections that are entirely Danish, almost entirely feature-length, and mostly tied to one director.
Tristan Edelman opens the conversation with educator and programmer Patrick Friel and centers the episode on Patrick's unusually experimental 1911 picks.
Tristan Edelman speaks with Kathy Rose O'Regan, Executive Director of San Francisco Film Preserve, about five films from 1910 and the way they show cinema at a transition point.
Host Tristan Edelman interviews Mario Slugan, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, about his research on fiction and imagination in early cinema, focusing on narrative concepts and his selection of films for 1906.
Host Tristan Edelman interviews Carl Bennett, publisher of SilentEra.com, about his background and the creation of his website dedicated to cataloging early silent films.
Host Tristan Edelman interviews film professor Chris O'Rourke about his book on silent screen acting and his picks for 1905 films, exploring national differences in early cinema.
Host Tristan Edelman interviews silent film enthusiast Sean Hall about his journey into silent cinema, his online presence, and the evolution of film from early actualities to narrative storytelling.
Host Tristan Edelman interviews musician and film enthusiast Dan Willard about his project to watch and review films chronologically by year, starting with 1905, and how it evolved into a website and YouTube channel.