To those who are contributing to BEST OVERLOOKED FILMS, it would be much more rewarding if you could say *why* you are contributing a title, maybe some speculation about why the film was overlooked, maybe even what this has to do with film theory, if this thread does have anything to do with film theory. Wasn't Citizen Kane "overlooked" for ten or fifteen years after its release? Hasn't Abram Room's "Bed and Sofa" been overlooked for many years? This is a gentle,psychological,feminist story about a woman who loves both her husband and a (boarder? live-in friend?), only to decide in the end that they're both using her, as she strikes out for freedom, with the last scene showing her waiting for her appointment at the abortion clinic. Completed in 1927, Jay Leyda calls it a "chamber work," and it's certainly been overshadowed by the self-promotion, institutional support and theoretical and revolutionary glamor of Eisenstein and the others. In fact, after Eisenstein, the history books then mention Pudovkin and Dovzhenko, and then maybe get around to that other master of self-promotion, Vertov. This is not at all to belittle their work, certainly not Vertov's. Just interesting that the manifesto and the techniques of self-promotion in film were functioning well during this revolutionary period. Interesting too that revolutionary theory and film theory were both so useful to the publicity process, and that Room, who worked in his quiet careful way with revolutionary issues of personal life and feminism, but I gather issued no manifestos and promolgated no theories, has been overlooked. Robert