Film
Film Reels Dredged from the Sea Become an Eerie Meditation on Mortality
Bill Morrison’s new documentary The Village Detective: A Song Cycle is an eerie meditation on mortality made from forgotten parts of cinema history.
Documentary
Interview
A New Documentary Explores the Life of Unheralded Civil Rights Activist Pauli Murray
Filmmakers Betsy West and Julie Cohen talk to Hyperallergic about Murray’s archives and holding themselves accountable as white women biographing a Black figure.
Film
Bob Ross the Dreamer Got a Rude Awakening
The new documentary Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed pulls back the curtain to expose the realities of Bob Ross, Inc. but does it go far enough?
Film
Don’t Miss These Experimental Works at the New York Film Festival
With films touching on protest in France, China’s one-child policy, and Indigenous life in Canada, the 2021 Currents program stays both culturally and politically forward-thinking.
Film
The Story of the “First Lady of Religious Broadcasting”
The Eyes of Tammy Faye features a riveting performance from Jessica Chastain, but proves less interesting than the documentary it’s based on.
Film
There Are Now Not One But Two Documentaries About the Salvator Mundi Saga
Both The Lost Leonardo and Savior for Sale dig into how museums and galleries are not merely complicit with the unregulated art-industrial complex, but are necessary to it.
Interview
Unearthed Interviews Shed New Light on Truman Capote
Ebs Burnough’s documentary The Capote Tapes uses hundreds of hours of newly discovered interviews about the infamous author to take a deeper look at his life.
Film
20 Years After the September 11th Attacks, What Does “Never Forget” Mean?
Much of what the media deems important coverage of the attacks is in fact retraumatizing gawking or empty nationalism.
Film
After a Year Off, Experimental Film Returns to Toronto Film Fest
With works about student protests in India, colonialism in South Korea, the history of trains in cinema, and more, this edition of Wavelengths is the festival’s best in years.
Opinion
Fortnite Turns Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream Into a Sci-fi Nightmare
“March Through Time,” an interactive educational experience inside the popular online game, recreates the March on Washington, with embarrassing results.
History
The Photographers Who Captured Russia on the Eve of Its Revolution
Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky and Maxim Dmitriev documented drastically different facets of Russia in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Film
The 500-Year-Old Ghost of a Conquistador Wanders Mexico
The documentary/fiction hybrid film 499 uses a fictional character to speak to real-life contemporary colonized people.