From What Is Before

Mar 4, 2020 — A series in New York celebrates the under-recognized work of Alma Reville and Joan Harrison.

Oct 3, 2019 — By the time Charlie Chaplin was making The Circus, from 1925 into 1928, his production company was a smooth-running organization. Numerous problems plagued the comic during the shoot—scratches on the first month of rushes, a fire that damaged the studio...

Aug 28, 2019 — 1. Before he became a filmmaker, D. A. Pennebaker’s ambition was to play stride piano like Fats Waller. “What changed your mind?” I asked him. “Well,” Penny replied, “after I saw Fats play . . . ” Penny would have...

Jul 26, 2019 — Brought to harrowing life in this film adaptation, George Orwell’s dystopian vision continues to ring true today. But so does his belief in the power of love and hope to overthrow the darkness.

Mar 28, 2019 — Flashbacks No filmmaker of his generation from Eastern Europe could match the charisma and originality of Dušan Makavejev. Forever bustling from festival to festival with his inspiring wife Bojana Marijan—who contributed to the sound and music on many of his...

Aug 23, 2018 — The director of Computer Chess and Support the Girls finds in John Cassavetes a surrealist whose weirdest set pieces could make David Lynch blush.

May 20, 2018 — A lifelong movie collector remembers the thrill of discovering the granddaddy of all monsters on Super 8.

Mar 9, 2018 — Ryan Coogler is on the cover of the new March/April 2018 issue of Film Comment, and Devika Girish writes about how “the mythology of Black Panther is keenly attuned to the present even as it undoes the past: it is...

Feb 27, 2018 — Director Tony Richardson refracts the bawdy spirit of the 1960s through this brilliantly distilled take on an eighteenth-century picaresque.

Sep 29, 2017 — One of the most elusive artists in American cinema opens a window onto his private life and creative methods in this revelatory documentary.