The High Sun

Feb 2, 2018 — For nearly a decade now, the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville has been a low-key event of high significance to the world of music. Writing about the 2016 edition in the New York Times, Ben Ratliff noted that it “has...

Jan 26, 2018 — Death has been greedy this week, taking not only artists who have left their mark on cinema but others, too, who have made an impact on our culture overall. The week began with the passing on Monday of Ursula K....

Jan 17, 2018 — “My appreciation for his inspiring and innovative cinema grows deeper as the years go by,” writes Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa in an essay that Jonathan Rosenbaum’s posted on his site, “Reflections on Kiarostami’s Two-Way Mirrors.” A new and expanded edition of their...

Jan 6, 2018 — New York. The Metrograph is currently presenting seven films by Max Ophuls and, in the Village Voice, Bilge Ebiri argues that it’s “essential” to see his work on the big screen. “His characters were often women—women scorned, women in love,...

Nov 27, 2017 — New York. For the Village Voice, Leo Goldsmith surveys the Film Society of Lincoln Center series The Non-Actor, running now through December 10: “Drawing together nearly three dozen films, the program traces a fascinating lineage of amateur performance across history,...

Nov 22, 2017 — We begin with the latest entry in Reverse Shot’s symposium on time, Chris Wisniewski’s, on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971). The focus here is on “a sequence that seems at first ordinary and unravels under scrutiny,...

Sep 20, 2017 — New York. “Like a modern character from Crete’s ancient Minoan culture, trailblazer artist Joan Jonas weaves symbols and media to transfigure feminist and psychological themes,” writes Mónica Savirón for BOMB. “Her work juxtaposes sculpture, painting, film, video, and performance as...

Sep 18, 2017 — New York. “The Whole World Sings: International Musicals, a weeklong, thirteen-film series at the Quad, is an education in song-and-dance practices outside the Hollywood one,” writes Nick Pinkerton for 4Columns. “René Clair’s Le Million (1931) [image above] is the earliest...

Jul 26, 2017 — “The rarely screened Le gai savoir (1969), translated as ‘Joy of Knowing’ in the 2K restoration that makes its world premiere at the Quad on Friday, exemplifies a typical Godardian paradox,” writes Melissa Anderson in the Village Voice. “Profuse and...

Jun 28, 2017 — New York. “Rapturously received but mysteriously forgotten after its 1964 New York opening, Jacques Becker’s prison drama, Le trou (The Hole), returns, digitally restored, for a week at Film Forum,” begins J. Hoberman in the New York Times. “Becker served...