American History

Sep 17, 2007 — Today we are used to seeing dance artistically presented on television and in movies—these films about Martha Graham helped to make that happen.

Sep 23, 2002 — In 1940 and 1941, David O. Selznick won back-to-back Academy Awards for Best Picture. In 1942, unsurprisingly, he was depressed. His wife, Irene, persuaded him to seek help, and, less than one year later, hale and hardy, he was eager...

Dec 6, 1987 — Mike Nichols’s treatment of a young man’s initiation into the mysteries of sex at the hands of an older married woman has become a model for this common fantasy.

May 27, 2025 — A landmark of independent cinema, Charles Burnett’s debut feature captures daily life in Watts, Los Angeles, with a depth and precision that evokes the history of Black American music.

Andrew Sarris (1928–2012) was a longtime critic at the Village Voice (from 1960 to 1989) and the New York Observer (from 1989 to 2009), and the author of numerous books, including The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968 and “You...

May 5, 2022 — Has Asian American cinematic representation really reached unprecedented heights, as almost all recent film coverage on the subject claims? In the past two years, critics’ polls, New York Times features, and Golden Globes scandals have marked the newfound success of...

Apr 24, 2019 — American cinema has lost one of its most visionary artists.

Aug 20, 2018 — The star and producer of The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez made a trailblazing intervention in an iconically American genre, creating an indelible portrait of a Latino American hero.

Nov 18, 2016 — For Film Comment, Marc Walkow surveys the career of director Tomu Uchida, currently the subject of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Like many commercial Japanese directors of his era, Uchida has long been underappreciated in the West,...

Jun 9, 2025 — Within the past few days, we’ve lost a vital film historian and a vibrant artist.