Hopefully you’re not too tired of hearing about how 1910 and its surrounding years are part of a transitional era, but this season’s conversations also revealed how diverse the global medium was at the turn of a new decade with offbeat modes, genres, and subjects. With a record slate of submissions from listeners, in addition to the guests’ selections, 1910’s collective list paints a broad picture of the year’s releases.

Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to see every film submitted by guests and listeners!

Films mentioned:

• Jeffries-Johnson World’s Championship Boxing Contest (1910) - unknown
• Le Rembrandt de la Rue Lepic (1910) - Jean Durand
• The White Slave Trade (1910) - August Blom
• The Abyss (1910) - Urban Gad
• Frankenstein (1910) - J. Searle Dawley
• White Fawn’s Devotion (1910) - James Young Deer
• A Christmas Carol (1910) - J. Searle Dawley, Charles Kent, and Ashley Miller
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1910) - Edwin S. Porter
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910) - Otis Turner

As Executive Director of San Francisco Film Preserve, Kathy Rose O’Regan works hard to highlight our shared film heritage. Her five picks certainly paint a picture of the international nuances of 1910 filmmaking, with each hailing from a different country and operating in a different narrative mode (or lack thereof).

Kathy also served as the Senior Film Restorer for San Francisco Silent Film Festival, overseeing all operations of the preservation department and managing the restoration of dozens of silent era titles. Previously, she managed the preservation department of the Bay Area Video Coalition.

Films and resources mentioned:

• The Aerial Submarine (1910) - Walter R. Booth
• The Abyss (1910) - Urban Gad
• Dutch Hairstyles and Types (1910) - Alfred Machin
• Frankenstein (1910) - J. Searle Dawley
• The Youghal Clock Tower Animation (1910) - Philip, James, and Thomas Horgan
• The White Heather (1919) - Maurice Tourneur
• The Airship Destroyer (1909) - Walter R. Booth
• Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) - James Cameron
• The Abyss (1989) - James Cameron
• The Mill (1909) - Alfred Machin
• Mad God (2021) - Phil Tippett
• Frankenstein (2025) - Guillermo del Toro
• Frankenstein (1931) - James Whale
• The Irish Lumières: The Horgan Brothers (2024) - Darina Clancy
• Hamnet (2025) - Chloé Zhao
• Wicked (2024) - Jon M. Chu
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910) - Otis Turner
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1910) - Edwin S. Porter
• Timeline of Historical Colors in Photography and Film
• Uncovering the Film Company of Ireland with Veronica Johnson

Kynan Dias, Assistant Professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is no stranger to podcasting as co-host, with Lester Ryan Clark, of a series of film history podcasts on the TruStory.FM network. His picks reflect some of the conversation surrounding this 1910 season regarding literary adaptations and real-world impact, but the discussion finds new angles to explore, including a landmark work of Native American filmmaking.

Kynan earned a B.A. in film from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he pursued acting, screenwriting, and directing. Later, Kynan earned his MFA in screenwriting from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he developed a love for writing TV sitcoms that was further nurtured during his time studying improv comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade.

Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your five selections for 1910!

Films and resources mentioned:

• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1910) - Edwin S. Porter
• Frankenstein (1910) - J. Searle Dawley
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910) - Otis Turner
• White Fawn’s Devotion (1910) - James Young Deer
• Jeffries-Johnson World’s Championship Boxing Contest (1910) - unknown
• Boxing Cats (1894) - William K.L. Dickson and William Heise
• The Dancing Pig (1907) - unknown
• The Great Train Robbery (1903) - Edwin S. Porter
• The “Teddy” Bears (1907) - Edwin S. Porter
• Alice in Wonderland (1903) - Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow
• Alice in Wonderland (1951) - Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske
• Alice in Wonderland (1933) - Norman Z. McLeod
• Frankenstein (1931) - James Whale
• Frankenstein (2025) - Guillermo del Toro
• Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994) - Kenneth Branagh
• Bride of Frankenstein (1935) - James Whale
• A Christmas Carol (1910) - J. Searle Dawley
• The Wizard of Oz (1939) - Victor Fleming
• The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914) - J. Farrell MacDonald
• The Wizard of Oz (1933) - Ted Eshbaugh
• Wicked (2024) - Jon M. Chu
• The Wizard of Oz (1925) - Larry Semon
• Cabin in the Sky (1943) - Vincente Minnelli
• The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays (1908) - Francis Boggs and Otis Turner
• The Birth of a Nation (1915) - D.W. Griffith
• The Red Girl and the Child (1910) - James Young Deer
• The Toll of the Sea (1922) - Chester M. Franklin
• Stagecoach (1939) - John Ford
• Smoke Signals (1998) - Chris Eyre
• Glenroy Bros. (1894) - William K.L. Dickson
• Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) - Stanley Kramer
• Brokeback Mountain (2005) - Ang Lee
• Norma Rae (1979) - Martin Ritt
• Triumph of the Will (1935) - Leni Riefenstahl
• The Great White Hope (1970) - Martin Ritt
• A Trip to the Moon (1902) - Georges Méliès
• The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney - Richard Schickel
• Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only - The Life of America's First Black Filmmaker - Patrick McGilligan

Laura Horak, Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University, is the author of Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressing Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema. Therefore, most of the conversation addresses the transgression, or lack thereof, of films that depicted such changes in dress, a rich topic represented by four of her five picks.

Laura is also the director of the Transgender Media Lab and Transgender Media Portal. She is co-curator of the 99-film Bluray set Cinema’s First Nasty Women and co-editor of Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space and Unwatchable.

Films and resources mentioned:

• The Red Girl and the Child (1910) - James Young Deer
• The Girl Spy Before Vicksburg (1910) - Sidney Olcott
• The House with Closed Shutters (1910) - D.W. Griffith
• Le Rembrandt de la Rue Lepic (1910) - Jean Durand
• The Abyss (1910) - Urban Gad
• White Fawn’s Devotion (1910) - James Young Deer
• The Fabelmans (2022) - Steven Spielberg
• The General (1926) - Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman
• The Sealed Room (1909) - D.W. Griffith
• Hamlet: The Drama of Vengeance (1921) - Svend Gade and Heinz Schall
• Motion Picture Paradise: A History of Florida’s Film and Television Industry - David Morton
• The American Girl Goes to War: Women and National Identity in U.S. Silent Film - Liz Clarke
• Danish Silent Film

David Morton, Lecturer at the University of Central Florida, is the author of Motion Picture Paradise: A History of Florida’s Film and Television Industry. With this expertise in mind, the opening of the conversation covers the American film industry’s halting migration to the southern state, but moves on to American migrations to other locations and censored films.

David received his Ph.D. in Texts and Technology in 2019 from University of Central Florida in 2019. He was a 2017-18 recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship and served as a visiting scholar at the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies at Ghent University.

Films and resources mentioned:

• Ramona (1910) - D.W. Griffith
• Jeffries-Johnson World’s Championship Boxing Contest (1910) - unknown
• The Lad from Old Ireland (1910) - Sidney Olcott
• The White Slave Trade (1910) - August Blom
• Frankenstein (1910) - J. Searle Dawley
• In Old California (1910) - D.W. Griffith
• Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) - Jack Arnold
• Mank (2020) - David Fincher
• Broken Blossoms (1919) - D.W. Griffith
• Ben Hur (1907) - Sidney Olcott and Frank Oakes Rose
• An Irish Honeymoon (1911) - Sidney Olcott
• Mississippi Burning (1988) - Alan Parker
• Psycho (1998) - Gus Van Sant
• The White Slave Trade (1910) - Alfred Cohn
• The Abyss (1910) - Urban Gad
• Taken (2008) - Pierre Morel
• Frankenstein (2025) - Guillermo del Toro
• Frankenstein (1931) - James Whale
• Dracula (1931) - Tod Browning
• The Crowd (1928) - King Vidor
• Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) - F.W. Murnau
• Early American Cinema in Transition: Story, Style and Filmmaking - Charlie Keil
• A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government’s Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes - Helen Hunt Jackson
• At the Picture Show: Small-town Audiences and the Creation of Movie Fan Culture - Kathy Fuller-Seeley
• The O’Kalem Collection: Two Views - Michael Patrick Gillespie
• Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon - Shelley Stamp
• Danish, But Not Lutheran: The Impact of Mormonism on Danish Cultural Identity, 1850–1920 - Julie Allen

Ned Thanhouser is president of Thanhouser Company Film Preservation and grandson of film pioneers Gertrude and Edwin Thanhouser. It makes sense, then, that he and Tristan discuss the founding of his family’s studio, which released its first film in 1910, but they also move on to Ned’s picks of classic literature adaptations and controversy.

Ned directed the 2014 documentary The Thanhouser Studio and the Birth of American Cinema. He has been active in film preservation since 1986, produced 17 DVDs containing over 120 surviving Thanhouser films, and published Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History by Q. David Bowers.

Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your own picks for 1910!

Films mentioned:

• Frankenstein (1910) - J. Searle Dawley
• Ramona (1910) - D.W. Griffith
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1910) - Edwin S. Porter
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910) - Otis Turner
• The Abyss (1910) - Urban Gad
• The Actor’s Children (1910) - Barry O’Neil
• The Winter’s Tale (1910) - Barry O’Neil
• Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1896) - Auguste and Louis Lumière
• Rip Van Winkle (1910) - unknown
• Willing Wendy to Willie (1916) - unknown
• Frankenstein (2025) - Guillermo del Toro
• The Birth of a Nation (1915) - D.W. Griffith
• Intolerance (1916) - D.W. Griffith
• The Great Train Robbery (1903) - Edwin S. Porter
• Alice in Wonderland (1903) - Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow
• A Dog’s Love (1912) - Jack Harvey
• Wicked (2024) - Jon M. Chu
• The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays (1908) - Francis Boggs and Otis Turner
• Cinderella (1911) - George Nichols
• The Cry of the Children (1912) - George Nichols
• The Evidence of the Film (1913) - Lawrence Marston and Edwin Thanhouser

The start of the 1910s doesn’t quite immediately usher in the cinematic measurement that would come to rule the decade: the feature film. But proto-forms of what would become the narrative standard arise in 1910, and otherwise, exciting images, narrative experiences, and affecting displays of historical milieu can be found in the productions of the year.

Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your top five picks for 1910!

Films mentioned:

• The Broken Oath (1910) - Harry Solter
• The Railroad Porter (1912) - William D. Foster
• The Birth of a Race (1918) - John W. Noble
• The Birth of a Nation (1915) - D.W. Griffith
• The Actor’s Children (1910) - Barry O’Neill
• In Old California (1910) - D.W. Griffith
• Ramona (1910) - D.W. Griffith
• In the Sultan’s Power (1909) - Francis Boggs
• The Heart of a Race Tout (1909) - Francis Boggs
• The Lad from Old Ireland (1910) - Sidney Olcott
• The White Slave Trade (1910) - August Blom
• Jeffries-Johnson World’s Championship Boxing Contest (1910) - unknown
• Frankenstein (1910) - J. Searle Dawley
• A Christmas Carol (1910) - J. Searle Dawley
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1910) - Edwin S. Porter

One of the most diverse lists of films selected for any season so far defines this brief conclusion to 1909. The unique array of selections does ultimately lead into a universal appreciation for comedy, rising above some of the efforts to “legitimize” the cinematic medium as has been discussed at the tail end of the first decade of the 20th century.

Films mentioned:

• The Mill (1909) - Alfred Machin
• Mr. Flip (1909) - Gilbert M. “Broncho Billy” Anderson
• Why Girls Leave Home (1909) - unknown
• First International Competition for Airplanes in Brescia (1909) - unknown
• The Man in the Moon (1909) -  Étienne Arnaud and Émile Cohl
• To Demonstrate How Spiders Fly (1909) - F. Percy Smith
• Princess Nicotine; or, the Smoke Fairy (1909) - J. Stuart Blackton
• The Spider and the Butterfly (1909) - Georges Méliès
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1909) - Charles Kent and J. Stuart Blackton
• The Airship Destroyer (1909) - Walter R. Booth

Paul Flaig, Lecturer in Film Studies at University of St Andrews, wrote a stellar synthesis of disciplines with his new book Weimar Slapstick and Hollywood Comedy Transformed. While it clearly deals with a later period than 1909, he still works German and American (and French!) comedy into his picks, in addition to a sound novelty and an actuality with a connection to Franz Kafka.

Paul is also the co-editor, with Katherine Groo, of New Silent Cinema and co-director, with Dora Osborne, of the German Screen Studies Network (GSSN). His writing has appeared in many journals and edited collections, including Cinema Journal, Screen, Camera Obscura, animation, and Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (JCMS).

Films and resources mentioned:

• Klebolin Sticks to Everything (1909) - Heinrich Bolten-Baeckers
• Those Awful Hats (1909) - D.W. Griffith
• The Happy Microbes (1909) - Émile Cohl
• What Is a Flag (1909) - Alice Guy-Blaché
• First International Competition for Airplanes in Brescia (1909) - unknown
• Rain (1929) - Mannus Franken and Joris Ivens
• Good Glue Sticks (1907) - Georges Méliès
• A Sticky Woman (1906) - Alice Guy-Blaché
• L'Arroseur Arrosé (1895) - Louis Lumière
• At the Crossroads of Life (1908) - D.W. Griffith
• Miller’s Crossing (1990) - Joel and Ethan Coen
• Fantasmagorie (1908) - Émile Cohl
• Brains Repaired (1911) - Émile Cohl
• The Yawner (1907) - Segundo de Chomón
• Princess Nicotine; or, the Smoke Fairy (1909) - J. Stuart Blackton
• Daddy-Long-Legs (1919) - Marshall Neilan
• Original Films of Frank B. Gilbreth (1910-1924) - Frank B. Gilbreth
• Bad Film Histories: Ethnography and the Early Archive - Katherine Groo
• “Women's Hats and Silent Film Spectatorship: Between Ostrich Plume and Moving Image” - Maggie Hennefeld
• Emile Cohl, Caricature, and Film - Donald Crafton
• Kafka Goes to the Movies DVD set
• Kafka Goes to the Movies - Hanns Zischler
• Motion Study: A Method for Increasing the Efficiency of the Workman - Frank Gilbreth

Yuki Irikura, Assistant Professor at Waseda University, mostly selects D.W. Griffith films for her 1909 list, reflecting the director’s growing powers and appeal. She concludes, however, with old-school tricks and the debut of Japan’s first film star.

Yuki’s research focuses on Japanese and American silent film history. She earned her Ph.D. in February 2024 with a dissertation on Bluebird Photoplays, examining the company’s production of five-reel feature films, their popularity in Japan, and the contributions of the company’s female filmmakers and actresses.

Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your own top five for 1909!

Films mentioned:

• Those Awful Hats (1909) - D.W. Griffith
• The Country Doctor (1909) - D.W. Griffith
• Lines of White on a Sullen Sea (1909) - D.W. Griffith
• Whimsical Illusions (1909) - Georges Méliès
• Goban Tadanobu (1909) - Shôzô Makino
• A Corner in Wheat (1909) - D.W. Griffith
• True Heart Susie (1919) - D.W. Griffith
• The Birth of a Nation (1915) - D.W. Griffith
• A Trip to the Moon (1902) - Georges Méliès
• The Wizard of Oz (1939) - Victor Fleming
• Hugo (2011) - Martin Scorsese
• Metropolis (1927) - Fritz Lang
• Jiraiya the Hero (1921) - Shôzô Makino
• Orochi (1925) - Buntarō Futagawa