Spotlight
Under the Influence
In this ongoing series of videos, contemporary filmmakers talk to us about the movies that have had a lasting impact on their work.
Current
An online magazine covering film culture past and present
Under the Sign of Sadness: Zbigniew Preisner’s Three Colors Scores
One of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s closest collaborators, the Polish composer suffuses the quotidian images that appear throughout Blue, White, and Red with deep poetry and sacred meaning.
Bergman Island: Form and Feeling
In this shape-shifting exploration of creativity, couplehood, and artistic influence, Mia Hansen-Løve offers a glimpse at the existential heavy lift required by her deceptively simple autofictions.
The Criterion Channel’s February 2023 Lineup
Celebrate Black History Month with a collection of films that survey African American history on-screen, a look at literary legend James Baldwin’s cinematic legacy, and a retrospective devoted to the independent trailblazer Oscar Micheaux.
Bright Lights, Dark Dreams: Alejandro Galindo in Morelia
This great director from the golden age of Mexican cinema drew upon a wide range of styles to explore the conflict between tradition and modernity.
This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection: Staying Power
Filled with evocative images and guided by the unique aesthetic sensibility of the landlocked kingdom of Lesotho, Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s film is an exploration of the power of grief that is paradoxically uplifting.
Something Human: A Conversation with Sofia Bohdanowicz and Deragh Campbell
The frequent collaborators talk about their close friendship, the paths that led them to each other, and the artistic values they share.
Lars von Trier’s Europe Trilogy: Straight to the Bottom of the River
One of contemporary cinema’s most provocative filmmakers launched his career with three deeply unnerving, deliriously genre-blending portraits of Europe.
Imitation of Life: On Passing Between
In its ambivalence toward its provocative themes, John M. Stahl’s groundbreaking exploration of racial identity demonstrates the insolubility of Hollywood’s representational conundrum.
Their Sounds Were Watching God
The films in the Criterion Channel collection Free Jazz chronicle the development of a deeply experimental music that has baffled and enthralled listeners in equal measure.
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Top 10
The Nobel Prize–winning novelist shares a list of films that illuminate his artistic sensibility, including one British classic that inspired him to write his masterpiece The Remains of the Day.
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen: A Reason to Believe
A work of pure, rigorous enchantment, the final film in Terry Gilliam’s “Trilogy of Imagination” employs old-fashioned technical wizardry to bring about its wall-to-wall visual astonishments.
A Year of Essential Reading on the Current
From deeply researched surveys of great filmmakers’ careers to idiosyncratic takes on under-examined corners of cinema history, the writing we published this year offered an array of entry points into the art form we all love.
