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This singularly audacious B-movie visionary made purposefully crude, elegantly stripped-down films that laid bare the dark side of American culture.

In a national cinema dominated by behemoth Hollywood studios, independently produced films have always made for refreshing alternatives.

Aug 4, 2010 — Québécois filmmaker Xavier Dolan’s debut feature, I Killed My Mother, won three prizes in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, and his follow-up, Heartbeats, competed for the festival’s Un certain regard. An avowed Criterion addict, Dolan...

Jul 19, 2010 — “It is the most erotic film that I have ever made,” wrote Michael Powell of Black Narcissus. “It is all done by suggestion, but eroticism is in every frame and image, from the beginning to the end.”

There’s more in the collection than just the spine-numbered titles. Check out the releases that include short films as supplemental treasures.

Surreal, structural, et cetera: A handful of visionary, largely nonnarrative works belong to the collection, from some of the most important experimental film artists around the world—Jean Painlevé, Kenneth Macpherson, Stan Brakhage, and Chantal Akerman among them.

Jul 7, 2010 — Frederick Elmes has served as cinematographer on some of the most acclaimed American movies of the past four decades, including Eraserhead, River’s Edge, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Broken Flowers, and Synecdoche, New York. The films in the Criterion Collection...

Call it star-spangled skepticism—these are films that wrestle with the idea and reality of America.

Jun 17, 2010 — Prolific Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To has directed more than forty films, including Election, Exiled, and Mad Detective. His latest, Vengeance, is currently in some North American theaters, from IFC Films.

May 13, 2010 — Samuel Beam is an American singer-songwriter (and former film studies professor!) better known by the stage name Iron and Wine. His last album was 2007’s The Shepherd’s Dog, and a follow-up is in the works. When selecting his top ten...