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.
Mar 29, 2016 — Les Blank’s long-lost documentary revels in the trippy, eccentric world of and surrounding Tulsa Sound pioneer Leon Russell, transforming what might have been a standard concert movie into a genuine work of art.
Mar 24, 2016 — With Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day finally available in the U.S., screenwriter Hung Hung talks about his working relationship with Yang, the film’s truncated distribution and slow path to acclaim, and the real-life roots of its narrative.
Mar 23, 2016 — We had come to expect Chantal Akerman’s periodic gifts of small and large cinematic gems. Certain of this flow, we were devastated when, all too abruptly, we were forced to think of her latest film, so beautiful, as her last.
Production Notes
Mar 21, 2016 — 1. This week, we’re proud to release our long-awaited 4K restoration of Edward Yang’s 1991 masterpiece A Brighter Summer Day. Long unavailable on home video in the United States, this incomparable work of Taiwanese cinema is now out on Blu-ray and DVD,...
Essays
Mar 17, 2016 — Decades later, Ingmar Bergman’s self-reflexive masterpiece remains a provocative enigma worthy of close investigation.
Features
Mar 3, 2016 — By the time Charlie Chaplin began work on what would be his first feature-length film, in 1919, he had been sneaking up to the longer format for some time.
Essays
Feb 24, 2016 — Fifty years after its initial release, Antonio Pietrangeli’s I Knew Her Well is only now emerging as a dazzling peer of the classics of 1960s Italian cinema.
Feb 16, 2016 — In Death by Hanging, Nagisa Oshima spins a complex aesthetic web around his documentary-like structure, packing detail, history, politics, and emotion into his surrealist inquiry into capital punishment.
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...