Still haven't finished my Top Ten, so I did something else instead. I compiled a list of my favorite films which I discovered for the first time in 2007. I tried to arrange them in order of preference, though it was difficult work. The final decision was made after considering how much pleasure and personal satisfaction the individual screening gave me. 

So here are the old new films I enjoyed the most. Hope this will serve as an inspiration and a reminder to check out obscure stuff. Usually, it's worth it. 

1. The Man Who Left His Will on Film (Nagisa Oshima / Japan / 1970) - Cinema 
2. Lived Once a Song-Thrush (Otar Iosseliani / Soviet Union / 1970) - Cinema 
3. Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch, Edgar Morin / France / 1962) - Cinema 
4. Heaven's Gate (Michael Cimino / USA / 1980) 
5. Vixen! (Russ Meyer / USA / 1968 ) 
6. Scattered Clouds (Mikio Naruse / Japan / 1967) - Cinema 
7. The Apple (Samira Makhmalbaf / Iran, France / 1998 ) - Cinema 
8. Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero / USA / 1976) - Cinema 
9. Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini / Italy / 1962) - Cinema 
10. Tarzan, the Ape Man (John Derek / USA / 1981) - Cinema 
11. The Innocents (Jack Clayton / UK / 1961) 
12. Suspiria (Dario Argento / Italy / 1977) - Cinema 
13. Carlito's Way (Brian De Palma / USA / 1993) 
14. Two-Lane Blacktop (Monte Hellman / USA / 1970) 
15. A Touch of Zen (King Hu / Taiwan / 1969) 
16. Tokyo Eyes (Jean-Pierre Limosin / Japan, France / 1997) - Cinema 
17. Blackboards (Samira Makhmalbaf / Iran, France / 2000) - Cinema 
18. The Fall of the House of Usher (Jean Epstein / France / 1928 ) - Cinema 
19. Farewell (Egon Guenther / East Germany / 1968 ) - Cinema 
20. One Armed Boxer (Wang Yu / Taiwan, Hong Kong / 1971) 
21. Burst City (Sogo Ishii / Japan / 1982) 
22. Assunta Spina (Francesca Bertini, Gustavo Serena / Italy / 1914) 
23. Family Nest (Béla Tarr / Hungary / 1977) - Cinema 
24. Bullitt (Peter Yates / USA / 1968 ) 
25. Naples... and nothing else (Eugenio Perego / Italy / 1928 ) - Cinema 
26. Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (Shunya Ito / Japan / 1972) 
27. Deep Red (Dario Argento / Italy / 1975) 
28. The Age of the Earth (Glauber Rocha / Brazil / 1980) - Cinema 
29. Peeping Tom (Michael Powell / UK / 1960) 
30. Full Contact (Ringo Lam / Hong Kong / 1992) 
31. Taipei Story (Edward Yang / Taiwan / 1985) - Cinema 
32. Gods of the Plague (R.W. Fassbinder / West Germany / 1969) - Cinema 
33. Los perros hambrientos (Luis Figueroa / Peru / 1976) 
34. Fontane - Effi Briest (R. W. Fassbinder / West Germany / 1974) - Cinema 
35. Almost Human (Umberto Lenzi / Italy / 1974) 
36. Harold Stevenson No.1 and No.2 (Danny Williams / USA / 1965) - Cinema 
37. Nightmares come at Night (Jess Franco / Belgium, Liechtenstein / 1970) 
38. Where the Sidewalk Ends (Otto Preminger / USA / 1950) 
39. Have Sword, Will Travel (Chang Cheh / Hong Kong / 1969) 
40. Uncle Tom's Cabin (Gza von Radvnyi / West Germany / 1965) - Cinema 
41. The Castle of Cagliostro (Hayao Miyazaki / Japan / 1979) 
42. Stein (Egon Guenther / East Germany / 1990) 
43. Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks / USA / 1959) - Cinema 
44. The Marriage of Maria Braun (R.W. Fassbinder / Germany / 1979) - Cinema 
45. Behind Locked Doors (Budd Boetticher / USA / 1948 ) 
46. The Image (Radley Metzger / USA / 1975) 
47. Horrors of Spider Island (Fritz Boettger / West Germany / 1960) -Cinema 
48. Tarkan versus the Vikings (Mehmet Aslan / Turkey / 1971) 
49. The Widow of Saint-Pierre (Patrice Leconte / France / 2000) - Cinema 
50. The Sob (Atif Yilmaz / Turkey / 1953) 
51. The Social Secretary (John Emerson / USA / 1916) - Cinema 
52. Nana (Jean Renoir / France / 1926) - Cinema 
53. Something New (Nell Shipman, Bert Van Tuyle / USA / 1920) - Cinema 
54. Geissel des Fleisches (Eddy Saller / Austria / 1965) - Cinema 
55. Gone in 60 Seconds (H.B.Halicki / USA / 1974) - Cinema 

And I should mention that the first 30 minutes of Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew were filmmaking at its best. If only the rest of the film had been like this... 

2007 was an interesting year for discoveries, but definitely one of the weakest since I've been watching films. None of the films on the list achieved a higher rating than 9/10, and none of them were even close to a 90/100 rating. I think the highest was Samira Makhmalbaf's first feature with 83, followed by Oshima's film with 80. Compared to some rewatches of past favorites, this was quite disappointing, though many of the films listed here were still better than most new releases I saw. 

EDIT: I forgot to include The Escape on the Fast Freight (J.P. McGowan / USA / 1915), a film I enjoyed very much, and although I rated it extremely poor I should have probably also included East is East (Henry Edwards / UK / 1916), which gave me a lot of joy. I should also mention that the quality of the print / DVD, projection, and musical accompaniment, naturally influenced my evaluation and enjoyment of the various films to a large degree. It is a huge difference if you are standing in front of an original Van Gogh, or merely looking at a picture in a book. Some of the prints I saw were of pristine quality. If such a thing is possible, they seemed even clearer and sharper than most new prints of recent films I saw (for example the Oshima, Iosseliani, Naruse, Renoir, or Williams). Others were a bit damaged, or shown in the wrong format, sometimes even with dubbing or a lame piano score. The worst example on the list is "The Sob" by Atif Yilmaz. The DVD-R was in horrible quality, without subtitles, and accompanied by a bad live translator. Still, sometimes this is the only possible way to see a certain film, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have seen it. Yet, nothing can top the experience of seeing a film as it was meant to be. In excellent quality on a huge screen.