Shine a Light

Jun 29, 2021 — In Dee Rees’s ambitious and lyrical debut, the inner life of a queer Black teenager and poet is summoned in all its nuances and contradictions.

Mar 25, 2021 — In With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together, an autobiography cowritten by legendary creative and life partners Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Dee tells the story of working as a screenwriter on 1968’s Uptight. It’s a brief account, about...

Jun 24, 2009 — The following tribute to Sacha Vierny by Alain Resnais (pictured together above, Resnais left) was published in the October 2001 issue of Positif. It is based on an interview conducted by François Thomas and was translated for Criterion by Nicholas...

Nov 19, 2020 — For most of my life, makeover sequences in film comedies held an irresistible allure. The mousy young woman who realizes her own inner and outer (but mostly outer) beauty after receiving the attentions of the right man (or the right...

May 21, 2020 — Judy O’Brien, a ballerina working in a burlesque show to make ends meet, has finally had enough. In the middle of an especially humiliating performance, the audience’s jeering reaches such a peak that she stops, walks down center stage, hands...

Apr 5, 2018 — “Just a few years in and DOC10 is already a must-hit stop on the festival circuit for the year’s best documentaries,” writes Lisa Trifone in the Third Coast Review. “The brainchild of Chicago Media Project and head programmer Anthony Kaufman,...

Nov 9, 2017 — This year’s AFI Fest opens tonight in Los Angeles with Dee Rees’s Mudbound and was to have closed on November 16 with Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World—until Sony Pictures pulled it from the lineup in the wake...

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...

Jun 29, 2022 — A fresh round on biographies and studies of filmmakers and actors as well as a few novel ideas and critical collections.

Dec 11, 2017 — Before we delve into the city-by-city breakdown, lets note that, following its announcement late last month of its narrative and documentary feature film competition lineups, Slamdance has unveiled the lineups for its Beyond and Shorts programs. Slamdance 2018 will run...