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.
Film
Posted inArt
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 movies could be seen in color.
Posted inArt
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 passed away last Monday from injuries sustained in a fall.
Posted inArt
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.
Posted inArt
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.
Posted inArt
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 Forum.
Posted inNews
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.
Posted inArt
All Style, No Substance: Williamsburg in 3D
Stereoscopic, or 3D, vision is a technique usually associated these days with blockbuster movies. But, using a simple stereo camera, Carlton Bright rollerbladed around Williamsburg from 2003 to 2013 documenting a series of “modules” or “vignettes” about the neighborhood he loves and calls home.
Posted inArt
Remaking “Carrie” in the Age of Social Media
CHICAGO — Boys don’t cry, and young girls fight back with their psychic powers in director Kimberly Peirce’s films. This past Saturday in Chicago, Peirce, the director of Boys Don’t Cry, Stop-Loss, and most notably the new remake of Carrie, took to the stage with WBEZ reporter Alison Cuddy at Francis W. Parker School to talk about the kids in her films.
Posted inArt
Blue Is the Color of Desire
Blue Is the Warmest Color, which clocks in at just under three hours, may be one of the most ambitious film love stories ever made. There are movies that paint first romance as a coming-of-age story; others try to capture the process and feeling of falling in love; some dissect the series of events leading to the end of a relationship. In Blue, director Abdellatif Kechiche has brilliantly captured all of the above.
Posted inOpinion
Swedes to Apply Gender Ratings to Movies
Four Swedish film organizations are banding together to fight sexism by applying a letter-grade rating to new releases, the Independent reports. That’s awesome news in and of itself, but the idea is even cooler because it’s based on criteria that come from a comic strip by cartoonist Alison Bechdel.
Posted inArt
Rethinking the Retrospective: Jean-Luc Godard in New York
The current Jean-Luc Godard retrospective in New York, admirably entitled The Spirit of Forms, reintroduces the French auteur’s films into familiar territory: namely, the New York Film Festival (NYFF) at Lincoln Center, where his work has made many memorable as well as infamous North American debuts.
