Film
Hunger and Thirst: Chantal Akerman's 'Je tu il elle'
Chantal Akerman’s death by suicide in October 2015, led me to revisit many of her films and to watch new ones, among them Je tu il elle of 1975.
Film
Books
A New Film and Book Seek the True Hieronymus Bosch
Roughly 30 minutes into Pieter van Huystee’s first feature-length film, Hieronymus Bosch: Touched by the Devil, Gabriele Finaldi, former deputy director of conservation and research at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, gives a sterling, succinct answer as to why El Bosco (as the Dutch artist is known i
Art
Conservators Reverse-Engineer the First Noncommercial 35mm Film Strip
Using salvaged machines and a hand-cranked camera, conservators at the George Eastman Museum created the first strip of 35mm motion-picture film not produced by a commercial company.
Film
The Lobster in Brief: Doctor Moreau and B.F. Skinner Captain the Love Boat through Orwell's Dreams
Like the diabolical spawn of Franz Kafka and Michael Haneke, the Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos sets unfortunate humans loose in mazes of arbitrary, absurd authority and films them with an indifference that borders on cruelty.
Film
The Lasting Effects of a Broken Home in a Follow-Up to a 1983 Documentary
Martin Bell's Streetwise (1984) endures. It's a documentary that has spawned countless discussions on homeless children over the years.
Art
Mel Chin Crowdfunds a Film About Climate Change, Featuring an Inuit Hunter and Poodles
Artist Mel Chin's plan was to film an Inuit hunter racing through the streets of Paris on a sled pulled by seven fluffy white poodles, timing this vision of the Arctic in the French capital with the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) in December of last year.
Film
A Psychological Portrait of Eva Hesse
Telling the story of Eva Hesse's life and work presents one major challenge: as a narrative arc, it is necessarily truncated.
Film
From an Oakland Muralist to a Failing Goat Farm, Artful Highlights from Boston's Indie Film Festival
BOSTON — The Independent Film Festival of Boston started out earnestly and enthusiastically in 2003, blowing the minds of locals and filmmakers by being a polished, world-class (and yet 100% volunteer-run) operation from the get-go.
Film
A Documentary About the Artist Who Stole Banksy’s Work Out of Spite
The Banksy Job looks remarkably like the 2010 mockumentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, but its co-directors maintain that the whole thing is unscripted.
Film
Filming a Memorial Ride to the Massacre at Wounded Knee
The US Cavalry massacred over 300 unarmed men, women, and children at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota in 1890, and those who didn't die from the bullets were left to freeze in the bitter December cold.
Film
A Day in the Life of the ‘New York Times’ Obituary Writers
The New York Times is one of the few publications with full-time obituary writers on staff, who each morning tackle a new life suddenly at its end, summing up in a few hundred words how this one person changed our world and why we should care.
Film
A Documentary Tribute to Chris Burden's Extreme Oeuvre
Perhaps most surprising about the new film Burden, directed by Timothy Marrinan and Richard Dewey and screening at the Tribeca Film Festival, is its depiction of artist Chris Burden’s dramatic transformation from a rabble-rousing student in the 1970s to a mild-mannered landowner in 2014.