Body of Work

May 6, 2021 — Fame, as the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño once observed, is reductive. “Everything that ended in fame and everything that issued from fame was inevitably diminished,” he wrote in 2666, an epic novel published after his death.What Bolaño identified as the...

Aug 11, 2020 — The Complete Films of Agnès Varda In September 2018, I screened Agnès Varda and JR’s Faces Places for the Michigan State University Film Collective. We had a lively discussion that went past the scheduled ending time. As I was getting...

May 8, 2020 — The opening and closing credits in a film are a form of housekeeping, fulfilling a legal obligation to compile the names of cast and crew who made the final product possible. Visionary designer Saul Bass saw the aesthetic potential in...

Sep 12, 2019 — A new web resource spearheaded by Su Friedrich celebrates women editors from around the world, highlighting work that has long been obscured by the masculinism of auteurist film culture.

Nov 2, 2018 — The branding of Bergman, the arrival of The Other Side of the Wind, and more highlights of the week.

Sep 21, 2018 — The complete works of French cinema rebel Jean Vigo are coming to theaters in gorgeous new restorations.

Apr 9, 2018 — Ingrid Bergman’s work in her native Sweden was an early showcase for her dazzlingly precocious talent and emotional depth.

Oct 11, 2017 — The shower scene in Psycho remains one of the most iconic scenes in film history. Alexandre O. Philippe, director of the new documentary 78/52,explains why it touched a nerve with audiences.

Sep 21, 2017 — Tonight, Shotgun Cinema in New Orleans screens a piquant sampling of the wildly idiosyncratic documentaries of Les Blank.

Dec 6, 2016 — This elegiac meditation on impermanence showcases Laurie Anderson’s playfully experimental approach to sound and image.