A Trick of the Light

Mar 17, 2016 — Decades later, Ingmar Bergman’s self-reflexive masterpiece remains a provocative enigma worthy of close investigation.

Aug 12, 2019 — This month we’re looking at titles by or about Chantal Akerman, Orson Welles, Chris Marker, Kathleen Collins, and many more filmmakers and writers.

Mar 30, 2022 — Step into spring with a collection of blaxploitation deep cuts and spotlights on Guru Dutt, Delphine Seyrig, and the early work of John Ford.

May 20, 2009 — Early in Shohei Imamura’s Intentions of Murder, the librarian Riichi distractedly peruses Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization while conversing with his clinging mistress, Yoshiko. One can read the reference in many ways: as a glancing jest, as an (uncharacteristic) Imamurian...

Jan 19, 2021 — In the summer of 1976, my parents took me to see the tall ships in New York Harbor. I was ten, and I remember very little about it other than that I went and that the ships, tall, did not...

Dec 5, 2012 — The following is excerpted from an interview that originally appeared in the February 1, 1981, issue of L’avant-scène: Cinéma. It was conducted by Olivier Eyquem and Jean-Claude Missiaen. Eyquem is a documentalist and former staff member at Positif; he blogs...

Aug 31, 2011 — French sociologist Roger Caillois proposed that every form of human recreation could be placed somewhere on a continuum between two terms: ludus and paidia. The first of these represents games defined almost wholly by their rule systems. Crossword puzzles and...

May 12, 2022 — New York’s Museum of the Moving Image presents a series of nineteen films shot by the accomplished cinematographer.

Jun 24, 2014 — In 1964, Richard Lester harnessed the Beatles’ exploding superstardom for a giddy day-in-the-life pop masterpiece.

Oct 2, 2019 — Retrospectives in New York and on the Criterion Channel mark the hundredth birthday of the pioneering filmmaker.