† The Silent Lie

Mar 3, 2020 — American cinema is over 125 years old, and African Americans have been a part of it from the beginning. This participation has often been fraught, stymied, and curtailed, but the desire to use motion pictures to craft a self-image has...

Aug 14, 2019 — There is a scene in Henry King’s State Fair (1933) that ranks among the most poetic moments in all of 1930s American cinema. There is not much to it, just a family driving through the dusk in their rattling pickup...

Sep 8, 2025 — Father Mother Sister Brother and The Voice of Hind Rajab win top awards in Venice.

Apr 27, 2023 — Over the course of her four-decade career, the pioneering Indian documentary filmmaker has demonstrated the important roles that joy and pleasure play in the process of political change.

Sep 20, 2019 — A fresh reading of Dr. Caligari, a deep dive into War and Peace, Terry Zwigoff’s “immersive screenings,” and Beyoncé’s multimedia project are among this week’s highlights.

Dec 23, 2017 — Let’s first take a quick break from 2017 and look back fifty years (as I suspect we’ll be doing a lot in 2018). For Little White Lies, Justine Smith has been rifling through various archives and has put together a...

Oct 16, 2025 — Beyond New York, upcoming events include a Jean Epstein retrospective in Vienna and extensive Frederick Wiseman series in Berkeley and London.

Dec 14, 2021 — Handsome volumes on Wes Anderson and David Fincher, a biography of Greta Garbo, and a memoir from Mel Brooks are among this month’s highlights.

Apr 20, 2018 — Let’s catch up with the new issue of cléo journal, this one dedicated entirely to the work of Agnès Varda. When the journal launched five years ago, it took its name from Varda’s 1962 classic, Cléo from 5 to 7....

Sep 26, 2017 — Let’s start today’s round with a few books. Next month sees the release of Movies That Mattered: More Reviews from a Transformative Decade, Dave Kehr’s followup to his 2011 book, When Movies Mattered. Before he became a curator in the...