Phil Berk with Jane Fonda

Longtime HFPA member and former president Philip Berk (right with Jane Fonda) has been invited by Sight and Sound magazine  to join a prestigious panel to decide the Ten Greatest Films of All Time.

Phil, currently chairman of the HFPA board of directors, will be one of a distinguished group of world critics,  programmers, academics and curators who every ten years take part in the poll. A major worldwide endeavour, the aim is to help remind people of film’s rich history and to refine what is meant by the best of cinema.

Those chosen to take part are being asked to select ten films in no particular order and one vote will be allotted to each film.

Sight and Sound explains: “As for what we mean by ‘Greatest’, we leave that open to your interpretation. You might choose the ten films you feel are most important to film history, or the ten that represent the aesthetic pinnacles of achievement, or indeed the ten films that have had the biggest impact on your own view of cinema.”

Throughout the world the magazine is known for the prestigious critics’ Top Ten Films poll that it conducts every ten years. This first took place in 1952, the only time the poll wasn’t won by Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane —– Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves took the honours that year – and was most recently done in 2002, when Kane beat Hitchcock’s Vertigo by two vote.