By Paul Risker. For Life Itself (2014) – a prominent snub by the Academy in the documentary category this year – filmmaker Steve James paints the landscape of a life and maturation of Roger Ebert, the man and the critic. “I wanted to get my arms around it all” explained James, “To show how the way in which he lived […]
Rare Screening of the Films of Jim Krell, Anthology Film Archives, April 17, 2015
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. I’m very pleased to announce that after the preservation of Jim Krell’s originals by Anthology Film Archives about a year ago, Anthology has been kind enough to arrange for a screening of some of Krell’s key works on April 17, 2015. Krell’s films are such utterly […]
Girlhood: A Sundance Review
February 17, 2015
By Jacob Mertens. In an early sequence in Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood, a group of girls walk home at night after a football game, weaving through featureless concrete high rises. One by one, each girl peels off from group as they reach their home until only Marieme (Karidja Touré) remains. In […]
Theeb of the West: An Interview with Naji Abu Nowar
February 17, 2015
By Amir Ganjavie and Shadi Javadi Abhari. The future of the western film genre, with its generic pattern, relation to historical narratives, and cinematic form, is a constant source of concern in cinema. Over the past couple of decades, various filmmakers, including Tommy Lee Jones (2005’s The Three Burials of […]
Waiting Around for Something to Happen: Don Carpenter and The Hollywood Trilogy
February 15, 2015
A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. Don Carpenter killed himself in 1995. He was a writer’s writer, never famous for the ten or so novels, dozens of stories, or screenplays he wrote and published from the sixties to the late eighties. In the 1960s, when he was first publishing and […]
Sundays and Cybèle: Serge Bourguignon’s Oscar Winner Now on Criterion
February 13, 2015
By Jude Warne. On April 8th 1963, at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, it was announced that Serge Bourguignon’s film Sundays and Cybèle had won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Fifty-one years later, Criterion has re-released Bourguignon’s Oscar winner in a remarkably satisfying Blu-ray package that showcases […]
Humanities in the Digital Era
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. We live in the age of the visible invisible; everything is supposedly available to us online, but in fact, only a small fraction of the knowledge and culture of even the most recent past is available on the web. The digitization of our culture is now […]
Games We Play: Nick Antosca and Armen Antranikian on The Girlfriend Game (2015)
By Matthew Sorrento. Of all the writers busy in print and onscreen, it’s great to see Nick Antosca having made a place for himself. With a sizable talent from the start, he began publishing fiction – novels and stories – upon finishing undergraduate work. His early speculative works, like the […]
99 Homes: A Sundance Review
February 8, 2015
By Jacob Mertens. Ramin Bahrani—known in the indie festival circuit for his subtle, observational features Man Push Cart (2005), Chop Shop (2007), and Goodbye Solo (2008)—enters the current festival year with a film that pushes past the scope of the individual and toward grand meaning. Specifically, he seizes on the […]
Finding a Place: Katharine Isabelle on Torment (2013)
By Paul Risker. Katharine Isabelle’s discovery of films could not have been more different than my own. My place has always been on the spectatorial side of the silver screen, whilst for the actor her encounter with film from a young age was interactive and set in motion experiences she […]