Water and Fire

Jun 26, 2013 — On the life and work of the famous Czech author, and the pleasures and challenges of translating him.

Dec 1, 2025 — One of the most vital playwrights of our era was also an award-winning screenwriter.

Jan 21, 2020 — One of the lesser-known films in Godard’s extraordinary run of 1960s masterpieces, this severe, angular thriller was the director’s first foray into the political territory that would prove so essential to his later work.

Nov 21, 2017 — Terry Gilliam plunges into the filth and absurdity of medieval England with this grim fairy-tale comedy.

Aug 8, 2018 — The concrete bunker looms up surreally from the rolling green countryside, a huge brutalist fortress sprouting from a hillside thick with wildflowers. This is the Library of Congress’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, also known as the Packard...

May 2, 2017 — On a trip to the Library of Congress’s Mostly Lost workshop—affectionately known as “film-geek heaven”—Imogen Sara Smith joined early-cinema aficionados in uncovering treasures from the vaults.

Jul 6, 2021 — Howard Hawks’s madcap battle of the sexes is a reminder of how necessary and sneakily profound silliness can be.

Sep 11, 2018 — There is a brief, nearly throwaway scene early in Olivier Assayas’s Cold Water (1994) that testifies to the transcultural power of rock and roll. In an apartment outside Paris in 1972, we see two teenage brothers wrestling over a portable...

May 13, 2024 — Among this month’s highlights are a bustling summer barbecue of amply peopled movies full of unforgettable performances, a collection of films with great synth soundtracks, and Adventures in Moviegoing with Paul Schrader.

Sep 26, 2023 — The winner of a Special Jury Prize in Venice and a box-office hit in Poland now heads to the New York Film Festival.