Let There Be Light

Aug 31, 2011 — City symphony or spa burlesque? Polemic or caprice? From the outset, even in his manifesto lecture “Towards a Social Cinema,” delivered to the Groupement des Spectateurs d’Avant-Garde at Paris’s Le Vieux-Colombier before what was only the second public screening of À propos...

Feb 28, 2011 — In 1969, director Alexander Macken­drick retired from the film industry and became founding dean of the film school at the newly established California Institute of the Arts. Passionately interested in the pedagogy of cinema (“Film writing and directing cannot be...

Oct 16, 2006 — Screenwriter Carlos Cuarón delves into the character played by Luis De Icaza.

Dec 12, 2023 — In the history of cinema, French director Albert Lamorisse is a unique figure. His intense focus on three subjects—children, animals, and flight—is distinctive, and the fact that all of his works clock in under ninety minutes (and most under an...

Dec 4, 2019 — Songbook Midway through Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank (2009), the plot pivots on a song. “You’ve got some weird shit in here,” says Joanne (Kierston Wareing,), riffling through the CDs in her new boyfriend’s car. It’s the morning after a boozy...

Oct 24, 2019 — D irector Ishiro Honda gathered his crew and gave them an ultimatum. He was about to put his career at risk, and he would only work with those who approached his current project—a movie about a radiation-spewing prehistoric reptile that...

Jul 7, 2017 — “To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Mario Bava's horror classic Kill, Baby...Kill!,” begins Dustin Chang at ScreenAnarchy, “New York's newly renovated Quad Cinema has organized a near-complete retrospective of the highly influential Italian horror maestro's filmography. But the main draw...

Jun 5, 2014 — The following is excerpted from an interview with Red River editor Christian Nyby that critic Ric Gentry conducted in 1991.

Jun 18, 2026 — Martin Scorsese, Agnès Varda, Lars von Trier, and Katharine Hepburn are just a few of the names you might be adding to your summer reading list.

Nov 7, 2024 — Critics argue that the fortieth feature directed by Clint Eastwood deserved more than a limited weeklong theatrical release.