Sisu

Feb 20, 2018 — In this wildly inventive revenge drama, director Kon Ichikawa blurs the line between stage and screen, infusing kabuki traditions with his own extravagant visual sensibility.

Aug 11, 2017 — A new video essay on our edition of The Breaking Point breaks down the fluid visual style of one of Hollywood’s most dependable and prolific masters.

Nov 15, 2016 — Akira Kurosawa lays bare his deepest fears in this visually astonishing interpretation of folklore, myth, and the director’s own dreams and memories.

Jun 17, 2015 — From a shrewd adaptation by André Gregory and Wallace Shawn, Jonathan Demme fashions a visually inventive dreamscape out of an Ibsen classic.

Aug 13, 2013 — John Frankenheimer burrows into the insidious side of the American sixties in his visually dazzling thriller.

Dec 4, 2012 — Misunderstood by Hollywood, embraced by critics, this fatalistic fantasy remains Terry Gilliam’s ultimate trip.

Dec 3, 2008 — Gliding on silvery reels of steel, and tricked out with Lars von Trier’s panoply of visual effects, the film ravishes with its elaborately storyboarded tunnel vision.

Once widely misunderstood, this French master of suspense dealt in misanthropic, black-humored tales and is now recognized to be among the greatest directors of the 1950s.

Phoebe Chen is a writer, lecturer, and historian of visual culture based in Brooklyn. Her essays and criticism can be found in the New York Times, Artforum, the Nation, the New York Review of Books, Apartamento, Aperture, and more. She...

Dessane Lopez Cassell is a New York–based editor, writer and curator. She gravitates toward film and visual art concerned with race, gender, labor, and myths of paradise.