The Portrait

Oct 7, 2017 — “In just two adaptations,” begins Benedict Seal at Vague Visages, “author Brian Selznick has developed a reputation for inspiring intelligent and magical children’s films. After John Logan adapted The Invention of Hugo Cabaret for Martin Scorsese’s wonderful Hugo, Selznick has...

Mar 28, 2022 — Rosine Mbakam’s documentaries are exercises in reconfiguring relations of power. Her first three nonfiction features are all portraits of Cameroonian women, each of whom is invited to participate in coconstructing a cinematic space of testimony, candor, and expressive autonomy. Filmed...

Aug 28, 2015 — Wim Wenders’s movie career has been a heck of a journey. The director, who turned seventy this month, was one of the prime movers behind New German Cinema in the seventies and, in the decades since, has gone on to...

Feb 5, 2009 — “Around the time that the KKK rode to victory in The Birth of a Nation (1915), Al Jolson applied burned cork to his face in The Jazz Singer (1927), and scores of African-American actors bowed, scraped, shucked, and jived in...

Mar 5, 1990 — Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist masterwork is one of the greatest portraits of old age and loneliness ever brought to the screen.

Jun 27, 2023 — With a divided self that reflected the fissures in his country in the wake of World War II, the most courageous and dangerous Italian artist of his generation transcended dogma and resisted affiliations.

Oct 27, 2025 — The self-trained filmmaker examined postindependence Nigerien society in morality tales that showcased his visual ingenuity and sly sense of humor.

Aug 13, 2024 — In films that elude categorization, the Ukrainian director developed a boldly experimental aesthetic that evokes her mercurial inner dialogue and the leaps and stutters of her imagination.

Mar 18, 2022 — Ukrainian cinema, suspense vs. dread, and the opposite of synesthesia are on our minds this week.

Oct 30, 2020 — Channel Calendars With Thanksgiving around the corner, we’re grateful to the tireless preservationists who keep film history alive. Founded by Martin Scorsese in 1990, The Film Foundation has been an indispensable pillar of moving-image culture for the past three decades,...