The Next of Kin

Oct 13, 2021 — When I was growing up in the 1970s, the Black Panther Party’s trademark Afros and black leather jackets were a familiar sight. But it wasn’t until I began studying the Black Panthers in my late teens that I became familiar with...

Sep 1, 2021 — New films by Pedro Almodóvar, Jane Campion, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Paul Schrader, and Paolo Sorrentino are set to premiere in competition.

Mar 19, 2021 — We’ve been watching and reading about films by Cecilia Mangini, Cheryl Dunye, Claire Denis, and Nina Menkes.

Nov 18, 2020 — In Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (1983), often considered the essay film, we meet the wildcat video game designer Hayao Yamaneko, who imports scenes from his life into his memory machine. The machine is shown only in parts: a slider being...

Oct 16, 2020 — This week we’re reading Jacques Rancière on Pedro Costa, J. Hoberman on Pietro Marcello and Jack London, and Sasha Frere-Jones on Jóhann Jóhannsson.

Oct 2, 2020 — This wild week we’re celebrating William Greaves, watching Denis Lavant dance, and listening to Léonce-Henry Burel’s juicy stories about Robert Bresson.

Jun 26, 2020 — This week’s history-seeped highlights explore queer cinema legacies, black stories on screen, and marketing movies while a pandemic rages.

Dec 11, 2019 — One Scene “Who can prove the genuineness of our feelings?” a character asks at one point in the Cannes-award-winning sci-fi drama Little Joe, the first English-language film by Austrian director Jessica Hausner. The question is as good a summation as...

Aug 12, 2019 — This month we’re looking at titles by or about Chantal Akerman, Orson Welles, Chris Marker, Kathleen Collins, and many more filmmakers and writers.

May 28, 2019 — Songbook Some songs are so beautiful that it takes six or seven or fifty listens before you really hear the words. High on the list of the greatest American songwriters, Jerome Kern crafted many such melodies: perfect enough to momentarily...