The Past

Jun 30, 2025 — An up-and-coming director reflects on the resourcefulness and scrappy ingenuity that went into making his three films, now playing on the Criterion Channel.

Jul 23, 2024 — Chen Kaige’s sweeping epic chronicles the history of twentieth-century China through the story of two childhood friends, contrasting the unchanging traditions of their Beijing-opera milieu with the nation’s swift and turbulent transformation.

Apr 28, 2023 — This week’s highlights whiplash from a vibrant club scene to the chaotic final days of the Ceaușescu regime, hitting several disparate points in between.

Oct 28, 2022 — The role of the vampire has given talented actors throughout film history—from Bela Lugosi to Catherine Deneuve—the chance to embody physical and moral extremity.

Oct 18, 2022 — The winner of top nonfiction awards at Sundance, Cannes, and London arrives in theaters.

Jul 29, 2021 — As André Bazin put it, Marker created “a new and modern reality based as much on language and words as on the power of the image.”

Jul 12, 2021 — Far more than a behind-the-music tribute, Haynes’s first documentary reanimates American culture in the mid-1960s.

Jan 28, 2021 — Channel Calendars We’re thrilled to be celebrating Black History Month on the Criterion Channel with a lineup that salutes African American filmmaking pioneers like Gordon Parks and Madeline Anderson, spotlights the brilliant career of actor and activist Ruby Dee, presents...

Nov 30, 2020 — Channel Calendars As the year draws to an end, we’re turning our gaze toward things to come, with an international, intergalactic program of Afrofuturist visions of Black creativity, resistance, and freedom. That’s just the beginning of our holiday bounty: we’ve...

Jan 3, 2020 — This week we’ve been reading about Orson Welles, Nina Menkes, Martin Scorsese, Luc Moullet, and the late Robert Frank.