José Emilio González

José Emilio González is a Mexican film critic and programmer based in Catalonia. His writing has been published in El Cine Probablemente, photogénie, Variety, Notebook, Talking Shorts, among others. In 2023, he collaborated with the chapter “Háblame cantadito: The Multiple Possibilities of Language in Mexican Cinema (1940-60)” for the book Spectacle Every Day: Essays on Mexican Classical Cinema, which accompanied the “Popular Mexican Cinema Retrospective” in Locarno. As a programmer, he served as the Programming Coordinator at BOGOSHORTS (2022-24) and is currently a member of the programming team at the Los Cabos Film Festival. In 2025, he was a part of the Locarno Critics’ Academy.

José Emilio González 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 José Emilio González’s submission:

I took the fact that in your invitation, you mentioned that only five films under 60 minutes made it to the 250 from the Sight and Sound list as provocation. I didn't want to include those five titles because their place in the canon is already safe. I just couldn't leave out Sherlock Jr. Cinema started in the form of short films. This specific duration allows freedom and creative freedom that feels like making jewelry. Then I followed my taste, my cinephile autobiography, taking into consideration the short films that have impacted me the most. It was really hard: I had to leave many great ones out. My final criterion was to mix this personal taste with the relevance these films have for film history, trying to cover different decades, genres, and regions. I tried to keep it as balanced as possible.

— José Emilio González

Movie	Original Title	Director	Country	Year
Sherlock Jr.	Buster Keaton	USA	1927	44’
I couldn't leave out some representative of the American comedy from the early years of cinema. And this might be its best. A metacinematographic film with few precedents.
At Land	Maya Deren	USA	1944	15’
There must be one of Maya Deren's films in my list. The way in which she shifts from space and time from one shot to the other, blurring and challenging physical dimensions, is unique and brilliant.
Le Tempestaire The Storm-Tamer	Jean Epstein	France	1947	22’
My no-brainer in this list. My absolute favorite short film of all time, one that I should probably include in my top 10 of all time, including shorts and feature. A film that powerfully expresses the desire of cinema to encapsule the forces of nature. Blending folklore with a love story, Le tempestaire captures what cinema aims to be.
Nuit et brouillard Night and Fog	Alain Resnais	France	1955	32’
This short film addresses the nowadays so commonplace question of "how can we film the unfilmable?" . In just thirty minutes, this is one of the most accomplished answers for that question.
Anticipation of the Night	Stan Brakhage	USA	1958	42’
One of the most mystical experiences I've ever had. One of the most beautiful titles in Art History. Very few I can add to that.
The House Is Black Khaneh siah ast	Forugh Farrokzhad	Iran	1963	22’
I could easily have made this list just out of Iranian short films. But The House Is Black is really the most outstanding of them all. A film that really defines that cinema is the art of dignity. This is a poem by philanthropist of which very few remain.
On the Other Island En la otra isla	Sara Gómez	Cuba	1968	41’
An ode to youth. A film that still believed in the possibilities of social change thanks to listening carefully, and to the importance of education, sport, art, encounters in our life.
Lemon	Hollis Frampton	USA	1969	7’
One of the most radical films ever. A lemon can be a Sun, a Moon, an egg yolk, a yellow football. But it's just a lemon as it's extremely beautiful like that. Time, movement, light, color, all the elements that make cinema what it is achieve a shocking emotional impact in this single seven minute shot of a lemon.
The Vampires of Poverty Agarrando Pueblo	Carlos Mayolo , Luis Ospina	Colombia	1977	29’
A statement of Latin American cinema that still works as a critical resource to read what the European film festivals want our cinema and our countries to be (but which they are not).
Nazarbazi	Maryam Tafakory	Iran, United Kingdom	2022	19’
Maryam Tafakory is one of the most interesting filmmakers working nowadays. This is one of the really few cases where I feel that I'm witnessing Film History with the beginning of a career. Nazarbazi is the first work I watched by her and that's the reason I choose it, but any of her films can be here. The unique, exhaustive way in which she works and re works with the Iranian cinematographic traditions, but transcending the essayistic to a level of physical, desireful images is noteworthy.