The Blue Light

Nov 19, 2019 — In 1989, film critic Raphaël Bassan coined the term cinéma du look. Describing a tendency in French cinema that had begun in the early eighties and would continue into the nineties, Bassan identified commonalities in the work of Jean-Jacques Beineix,...

Jul 12, 2018 — Hong Sangsoo, Bruno Dumont, and Radu Muntean are among the filmmakers premiering new work at the seventy-first edition.

Jun 24, 2018 — During a period when studios gave him carte blanche, Josef von Sternberg created a sublime cinematic language that shrugged off one orthodoxy after another.

Apr 18, 2018 — Sofia Coppola lets us behind closed doors in ways that are beyond the imagining of the novel’s boy narrators.

Jun 8, 2017 — When we think of American cinema in the 1970s, it’s the “New Hollywood” that first comes to mind, landmark films such as The Godfather and Taxi Driver, Nashville and Chinatown. In his new book, Opening Wednesday at a Theater or...

Aug 14, 2016 — While considered to lie outside the highly policed boundaries of film noir, films like Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind and Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes nevertheless share many of noir’s stylistic and thematic tropes.

Apr 3, 2026 — This week: Mani Haghighi, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sophy Romvari and Martha Coolidge, and Ken and Flo Jacobs.

Jan 27, 2026 — Unencumbered by the white gaze, Reginald Hudlin’s groundbreaking feature-film debut is a celebration of a Black community in all its diversity, featuring fully realized characters who exist not as spectacle but as reality.

May 3, 2024 — Hiroshi Shimizu and Oscar Micheaux retrospectives open in New York and cinematographer Hélène Louvart talks about working with Varda, Wenders, and more.

Jul 19, 2023 — This month we’re reading Pasolini, Chris Marker, Christian Petzold, Lorenza Mazzetti, Derek Jarman, and more.