The Criterion Collection
Apr 26, 2016 — “It is not an exaggeration to say that before Primary, documentary as we know it today—the art of candid observation—didn’t exist,” writes Thom Powers.
Essays
Mar 17, 2016 — Decades later, Ingmar Bergman’s self-reflexive masterpiece remains a provocative enigma worthy of close investigation.
Short Takes
Feb 2, 2016 — In November of 1974, German filmmaker Werner Herzog began walking from Munich to Paris. He had just learned that his friend and mentor, the film historian Lotte Eisner, was gravely ill and had been hospitalized in Paris, and Herzog decided...
Production Notes
Jan 15, 2016 — The filmmaker and cinematographer had a lifelong commitment to the camera and how it could be used to foster dialogue and action.
Dec 15, 2015 — Burroughs: The Movie, the culmination of late director Howard Brookner’s NYU thesis project, follows William S. Burroughs over the course of five years and provides “an authorial profile such as has never been and may never be matched.”
Nov 5, 2015 — Julien Duvivier’s early sound films offer emotionally rich explorations of life in prewar France.
Jul 23, 2015 — The composer is credited with scoring eleven films for Bergman—among them Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), Wild Strawberries (1957), and The Magician (1958)—the last being The Virgin Spring (1960), with its evocative use of medieval instruments.
Jun 29, 2015 — This work of hallucinatory lyricism was one of the final and freest expressions of the rule-flouting New Wave movement in Czechoslovakia.
Essays
Mar 30, 2015 — The astonishing intimacy and scope of this remarkable, aesthetically captivating epic ushered in a new era of narrative documentary filmmaking.
Mar 11, 2015 — More than thirty years after his death in 1977, Roberto Rossellini is remembered by your average film buff as the father of Italian neorealism (Rome, Open City, 1945; Paisan, 1946; Germany Year Zero, 1948) and of actress and model Isabella...