A new book highlights the unheralded contributions of backdrop artists to the history of film.
cinema
Posted inArt
The Bumbling Robots and Awkward Automatons of Silent Cinema
The word “robot” first appeared in Czech author Karel Čapek’s 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots).
Posted inBooks
The Early Color Films Left Out of the History of Cinema
Dorothy stepping into a Technicolor Oz in 1938 is so iconic that the decades of color film history before it are almost forgotten.
Posted inArt
A Fictional Childhood, Filmed in Real Time
The big bet pays off in Boyhood, much like the risks of early life: making friends, changing the way we think and look, the things we do.
Posted inFilm
A Secret Film Smuggled Out into the World
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi continues to make movies. Caged in his perverse, Kafkaesque “larger prison,” Panahi faces a 20-year ban by the Iranian government on filmmaking, international travel, and interviews.
Posted inArt
Where to See Indie and Classic Films: Online Edition
The good news is that movies are increasingly taking up positions in the ether of the internet, in little corners and crooks; some legal, others quite under the table.
Posted inArt
Where to See Indie Fims: NYC Edition
A compendium of the best places to experience the cinematographic arts in New York.
Posted inOpinion
Finally, a Mobile Way to Explore Nollywood
Chew on this … the Nigerian film industry, aka “Nollywood,” overtook Hollywood in 2009 in terms of the number of films produced, and it is outdone only by Bollywood.
Posted inOpinion
The World’s Smallest Film
The world is obsessed with the “biggest” or “smallest” of anything, so … this work of nano-cinema holds the Guinness World Records record for the “World’s Smallest Stop-Motion Film.”
Posted inNews
World’s First Color Films Discovered
After 110 years hidden in a tin at the National Media Museum in Bradford, UK, researchers have discovered what are believed to be the world’s oldest color films. Created by cinematic pioneer Edward Raymond Turner, the films date to 1902 and depict the inventor’s children, a girl on a swing, and soldiers marching. Before this find, the oldest color film was believed to be a 1909 film created in Kinemacolor.
Posted inNews
Censored Iranian Filmmaker Shoots Film Entirely on iPhones
LOS ANGELES — Last year, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was sentenced to six years in prison for “propaganda against the state.” In addition to the prison sentence, he was banned from making films for twenty years. But his latest film is shot entirely on iPhones.
Posted inArt
For the Love of Constructivist Russia
The Tony Shafrazi Gallery is currently showing a rare collection of 95 rare Soviet Constructivist film posters, circa 1920-33, and a model of Vladimir Tatlin’s influential “Monument for the Third International” (1920/1967). These gems of early 20th C. graphic design were cutting edge for their time and they still look fantastic today. The visual imagination of the designers synched up quite well with the heady films during an era when the Soviet Union was still a major center of cinematic production and innovation.