The Small Back Room

Jun 22, 2016 — In honor of the semicentennial anniversary of Kartemquin Films, the influential documentarian discusses his groundbreaking, Kartemquin-produced 1994 film Hoop Dreams, what his work with the company has meant for him, and how Kartemquin has grown over the past fifty years.

Nov 4, 2015 — Linklater circa 1990 In 1985, six years before the release of Slacker, Richard Linklater's iconic portrait of a generation, the Texan filmmaker founded the Austin Film Society. The group began as a small band of cinephiles eager to see classic,...

Jul 14, 2015 — Carroll Ballard’s film is a work of rapture, a mesmerizing adventure that envelops the viewer in the beauties of the natural world.

May 1, 2015 — In his first feature, Jean-Pierre Melville found subtly radical ways to adapt Vercors's underground French novel about quiet resistance against the German occupation.

Aug 30, 2012 — In the 1960s, Mailer, already a literary legend, was inspired by the avant-garde film movement to take a stab at his own, anti-Warholian underground cinema.

Jan 26, 2010 — If Paris, Texas is a love letter to America and American cinema, it now also has something of the feel of a farewell: the world to which Wenders pays homage is vanishing fast.

Dec 1, 2009 — Mick Jagger’s former assistant remembers the joy and chaos of touring with the Stones.

Sep 29, 2003 — Rainer Werner Fassbinder dedicated his final energies to bringing the lost, gray years of postwar Germany back to life.

May 8, 2026 — Film Comment relaunches, Richard Kelly writes, Lynne Ramsay prepares, and in 1976, Roberto Rossellini talked.

Mar 10, 2026 — Metrograph presents a retrospective of work by a filmmaker championed by Godard, Rivette, and Bazin.