Lives of Performers

Dec 17, 2014 — Trenchant in its portrayal of gender dynamics, sophisticated in its look at the actor’s life, and, of course, hilarious, Tootsie is Hollywood comedy at its finest.

Mar 11, 2014 — Presenting  five poor, black and white North Carolina preteens as they awaken to love and death, George Washington (2000) tells a common adolescent story, yet the film is distinguished by the poetic, ruminative style of its twenty-five-year-old director, David Gordon...

Apr 28, 2026 — In April 1992, John Singleton was en route to the set of his second film when he heard the verdict on the radio. A predominantly white jury had acquitted four police officers who, a year earlier, had been caught on...

Mar 16, 2026 — Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another wins six, and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners wins four.

Feb 24, 2023 — This week we celebrate Michelle Yeoh and revisit classics by Kim Ki-young, Marguerite Duras, and Bill Forsyth.

Dec 1, 2022 — Three complementary series in New York will serve as tributes to Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Marie Straub.

Jan 1, 2022 — Ring in the new year with the French New Wave, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and a look back at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival.

Dec 1, 2021 — Celebrate the holidays with our 21-film Alfred Hitchcock retrospective and a series dedicated to collaborations between female directors and cinematographers.

Aug 18, 2020 — Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker’s restless, captivating Direct Cinema triumph Town Bloody Hall is a work of oceanography, documenting one splashy moment in the cresting and crashing of American feminism’s second wave. The film chronicles the “Dialogue on Women’s...

Feb 25, 2020 — In these times of Trumpidation, thirty years after its auspicious release, Paris Is Burning seems even more relevant than it did in early 1991, when I wrote the following for Black Film Review about Jennie Livingston’s phenomenal documentary on New...