Art
Debuts Distinguish BAMcinemaFest 2014
Opening tonight with the New York premiere of Boyhood, Richard Linklater's highly anticipated coming-of-age tale, the sixth incarnation of BAMcinemaFest finds the festival itself approaching maturity.
Film
Film
One Day Pina Asked... and Chantal Akerman Listened
Beginning life as an installment in a European television series on modern dance, One Day Pina Asked… (1983) is the best cinematic reflection on the late, great modern dance choreographer Pina Bausch.
Art
Faster than Sound: Color in the Age of Silent Film
Looking back now, there is the impression that all old silent films were black and white, the advent of sound in the mid-to-late 1920s marking the first great milestone on the march to our 3D, high-definition contemporary world. Yet by the early 1920s — years before cinema found its voice — 80% of m
Art
A Guide to Surviving the 2014 Summer Blockbuster Tsunami
Before tut-tutting Hollywood for another summer of what A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis have called “sequel season, when the movie studios celebrate their lack of imagination by disguising it as populism” — a moment of reflection for one of cinematic-summer's greatest visionaries, H. R. Giger, who pas
Film
Al Carbee’s Art of Dolls and Yearning: “Oh, for a real, live Barbie!”
Al Carbee was an old man who liked dolls.
Art
Celebrating the Art of Documentary
Just as the history of cinema is filled with questions and contestations — did the Lumière brothers invent motion pictures, or does the Edison company's kinetoscope deserve the credit? — so too is the history of documentary.
Art
Auteurs Go Wild
That protean, motley preoccupation sometimes called film theory has shown many faces over the years. But before today’s engagements with the medium’s correspondence with digital technologies and television, there was auteur theory.
Film
Why a New Film on Particle Physics Is Essential Viewing
In terms of understanding the very nature of our world, it's hard to overestimate the significance of the Large Hadron Collider, and a new documentary makes a very convincing case.
Film
Invisible Cities: Matthew Barney's Blindspot
Let’s look past the globules, barnacles, and goo. At its heart, Matthew Barney’s River of Fundament is a film about white, male America’s failure to comprehend urbanism.
Film
Capturing Slow Portraits of People and Landscapes
Koyanisqaatsi, a debut collaboration between filmmaker Godfrey Reggio and composer Philip Glass, broke ground in so many ways in the 1980's for exploring film as a poetic, rather than narrative or theatrical expression. Over ten years later, Reggio and Glass have come together to produce Visitors, a
Art
Barbara Stanwyck, Proto-Feminist Hollywood Star
It’s a sure sight for sore eyes to see the name “Stanwyck” emblazoned on a cinematheque marquee. Then again, not everyone today may be familiar with this name — but the uninitiated have every reason to stop in for one of the afternoon or evening double bills playing all through December at Film Foru
News
Two Long-Lost Peter Sellers Films Discovered in a Trash Can
Today's "holy crap!" story is the discovery of two long-lost Peter Sellers films that were salvaged from a trash can.