The Criterion Collection
Vida T. Johnson is professor of Russian film and culture at Tufts University and the co-author, with Graham Petrie of The Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue, Indiana University Press, 1994.
Interviews
May 24, 2024 — During a period of seismic change in U.S. history, the Hollywood studio system began to fracture beyond repair, resulting in a new freedom in how movies explored themes of violence, psychosis, and social breakdown.
Essays
May 16, 2023 — Inspired by golden-age monster movies and the story of a real-life mass murderer, Peter Bogdanovich’s debut feature evokes the psychic dread of America in the 1960s, a decade defined by long-distance and increasingly high-profile gun violence.
Jun 30, 2026 — The distinction between social and political cinema is not always clear. The former category, which focuses on realistic portrayals of the everyday lives and struggles of the working class, generally includes the films of Italian neorealism and British social realism,...
The Daily
Jun 29, 2026 — In the run-up to the country’s 250th birthday, several venues are offering prompts for celebration and reflection.
The Daily
Jun 25, 2026 — On its fiftieth anniversary, Mikey and Nicky is back in theaters, and A New Leaf and Ishtar are screening in New York as well.
The Daily
Jun 18, 2026 — Martin Scorsese, Agnès Varda, Lars von Trier, and Katharine Hepburn are just a few of the names you might be adding to your summer reading list.
The Daily
Jun 5, 2026 — We’re wrapping the week with conversations with Lilly Wachowski, Shunji Iwai, and Tsui Hark as well as essays on Ozu and Ghatak.
The Daily
Jun 1, 2026 — The world’s most desolate film festival expands to nearly a hundred theaters in seventy-three cities.
Apr 29, 2026 — Deep Dives You look at Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Third Generation (1979), and you see the snarky, risky spirit of the New Wave movements that emerged around the world in the 1960s and ’70s in full, defiant bloom. But what...