Pioneer

Dec 13, 2022 — A pioneering feminist artist drawn to universal themes, the Swedish director mined the complexity and humor of human behavior in films that courted controversy and cultivated a sense of detachment.

Feb 18, 2022 — This week we’re celebrating pioneers of queer cinema and reading about Melville, Menelik Shabazz, Patrick Wang, and Francis Ford Coppola.

Mar 18, 2019 — The artist and pioneering lesbian filmmaker leaves behind paintings, writings, nearly eighty films, and a grant for aspiring filmmakers.

Jan 21, 2016 — Next week, the Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, will kick off Agnès Varda: (Self)-Portraits, Facts and Fiction, a monthlong series celebrating the pioneering French director’s body of work.

Aug 19, 2013 — This moving drama about gender, race, and class in 1960s Kolkata is a pioneering work from Satyajit Ray.

Apr 16, 2009 — Next week, we release a definitive, three-disc set of the short documentaries of Jean Painlevé (1902–89), the pioneering French scientist-educator-filmmaker (and sometime Dadaist) whose mesmerizing studies of marine life, especially, have been attracting wide audiences and new fans for decades...

An instantly recognizable icon of the twentieth century, this pioneering actor and director blended slapstick humor with poignant social commentary in some of the most beloved comedies of the silent era.

The pioneering video game designer throws a spotlight on treasures of 1950s and ’60s Japanese cinema, including Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Twilight and Nobuo Nakagawa’s Jigoku.

The actor, known for her roles in Transparent and Hustlers, pays tribute to the pioneering subjects of Paris Is Burning, muses about her dream of starring in a future remake of Thelma & Louise, and praises the sexy smoothness of...

Nov 18, 2025 — A pre-Code aviation epic that makes pioneering use of the era’s innovations in cinematic color and sound, Howard Hughes’s directorial debut was Hollywood’s first modern portrait of World War I.