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My list is led by emotion. These are the films to which I return, the films that make my heart sing, that have transformed my perception of cinema and what it can be. Films that make me want to dance with the thrill of being alive and having cinema to prove it (and the top three all have liberating solo dance sequences: Dorothy Malone, Leslie Cheung, Denis Lavant!). This list will be different tomorrow (when it will include The Night of the Hunter, Cleo from 5 to 7, Safe, Hunger, The Shop Around the Corner and Leone, Fassbinder, Ceylan, Woo and July. Lurking in the shadows of this list (and tomorrow’s) are a great many beloved films, but today I feel like giving a nod to four short films that almost made the list: Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley’s Suspense; La Jetée; Sadie Benning’s If Every Girl Had a Diary and – as the perfect ode to cinema itself – Guy Maddin’s The Heart of the World.