Courtney Stephens

Courtney Stephens participated in “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025, a first-ever poll of its kind as a collective love letter to the art of short-form moving image. yanco and Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, in collaboration with Talking Shorts, invited filmmakers, curators, distributors, critics, and scholars worldwide to nominate 10 audiovisual works under sixty minutes that they personally consider the “greatest” of all time. This was Courtney Stephens’s submission:

Movie Original Title Director Country Year Duration
The House Is Black Khaneh siah ast Forugh Farrokzhad Iran 1963 22’
Gap-Toothed Women Les Blank USA 1988 31’
Small Deaths Lynne Ramsay United Kingdom 1996 11’
Parallel Series Harun Farocki Germany 2016
Measures of Distance Mona Hatoum Canada, United Kingdom 1988 15’
The Blazing World Jessica Bardsley USA 2013 20’
Maria (Peasant Elegy) Alexander Sokurov Soviet Union, Russia 1988 40’
La Soufrière: Warten auf eine unausweichliche Katastrophe La Soufrière: Waiting for an Inevitable Catastrophe Werner Herzog Germany, Guadeloupe 1977 31’
Home When You Return Carl Elsaesser USA 2021 30’
Glas Glass Bert Haanstra The Netherlands 1958 10’