“Le tentazioni del dottor Antonio” (“The Temptations of Doctor Antonio”)

Apr 20, 2018 — “Jiri Trnka didn’t craft his puppet-cartoon shorts and features merely to imitate life,” writes Michael Sragow for Film Comment. “His endlessly original and inventive movies incorporate life, or transcend it. Trnka insisted that he was ‘local,’ and drew many of...

Apr 5, 2018 — “Isao Takahata, who co-founded Studio Ghibli with Hayao Miyazaki in 1985, has died at eighty-two, according to Yahoo! Japan.” Michael Nordine for IndieWire: “Takahata was a revered director in his own right, helming such animated classics as Grave of the...

Jan 15, 2018 — On Saturday, Fireflies founding editors Annabel Brady-Brown and Giovanni Marchini Camia will launch Issue 5 at Wolf Studio in Berlin. The event will feature live performances from artists Sam Smith (video), Puck Vonk (sound), and Eli Cortiñas (lecture), all of...

Aug 12, 2017 — At Shadowplay, David Cairns has posted David Melville Wingrove’s tribute to Conchita Montenegro, whose career in theater and film took her around the world from the late 1920s through the mid-40s. Her “triumphant final film” would be the 1944 Spanish...

May 31, 2017 — New York. The BAMcinématek series Varda in California opens today and runs through June 13. The New Yorker’s Richard Brody recommends Lions Love (. . . and Lies) (1969): “Filming this docu-fiction in Los Angeles in June, 1968, the week...

Oct 26, 2010 — A coming-of-age story about a clique of teenage schoolgirls who will never grow old and a demon spirit in the guise of a spinster who was never young, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s eye-poppingly demented, jaw-droppingly inventive House is 1970s Japanese pop culture...

Jan 21, 2008 — Married thrice and divorced from all of his wives at a time in Western culture when such marital fluctuation was rare, the playwright August Strindberg undoubtedly used his own dramatic life as a sourcebook.

Jan 14, 2014 — Jules Dassin’s atmospheric, genre-defining heist thriller combines American virtuosity with French cool.

Oct 21, 2011 — Our favorite Finn didn’t have an easy time picking his ten favorite titles in the Criterion Collection. On the eve of Janus Films’ 2011 release of his Le Havre, Aki Kaurismäki had this to say: “I didn’t really concentrate for...

Mark Rappaport is a filmmaker and writer. His films include Rock Hudson’s Home Movies and From the Journals of Jean Seberg. He is a regular contributor to the French film magazine Trafic, edited by Raymond Bellour. A collection of his...