City of Life and Death

Dec 21, 2008 — In 1962, Roberto Rossellini called a press conference in a bookshop in Rome and announced that the cinema was dead. “There’s a crisis not just in film but culture as a whole,” he explained. Increasingly, Rossellini had understood the great...

Mar 26, 2007 — Across five films, the Swedish director defined his guiding themes and cinematic style.

Sep 29, 2026 — With their mix of comedy, ecstasy, and aesthetic strangeness, the French auteur’s first three features grant us access to psychic states that we might not otherwise be able to enter.

Aug 13, 2026 — BAM’s sun-drenched series features films by Ozu, Kurosawa, Oshima, Kitano, Obayashi, Shinji Somai, and more.

Aug 7, 2026 — This week: Conversations with Jane Schoenbrun, Ngozi Onwurah, and Kent Jones and writing on Jean Epstein and Stanley Kwan.

May 22, 2026 — This week brings a look back at Cronenberg’s Crash and conversations with Boots Riley and Wallace Shawn.

Feb 18, 2026 — Among this month’s highlights are a celebration of VHS and how it revolutionized film culture, a spotlight on the Romanian New Wave, and a retrospective of pioneering queer filmmaker Monika Treut.

Jan 26, 2026 — The new year brings an ode to Judy Garland, conversations with Martin Scorsese, and a novel by John Sayles.

Dec 17, 2025 — This January, savor multiple levels of nostalgia with a survey of ’90s cinema’s riffs on the ’70s, or turn a new page with a collection of films about dreamers seeking fresh starts in life.

Nov 24, 2025 — This month brings new collections from Melissa Anderson and A. S. Hamrah and a whole shelf of lives lived with the movies.