The Criterion Collection
On the Channel
Jul 31, 2019 — From her early, New Wave–defining films to the quicksilver documentaries she made in the twenty-first century, Agnès Varda led a long and remarkable career devoted to experimentation with film form. A perfect illustration of the complexity and restless inventiveness of...
Feb 22, 2018 — Bengali cinema icon Uttam Kumar stars as a matinee idol on the brink of failure in this deeply introspective meditation on art and fame.
Sep 22, 2008 — With their rotating casts of sourpuss Finns and their stringent compositions, Aki Kaurismäki’s films would seem the least likely candidates for laughs, yet his black-comic precision has made him one of the most warmly embraced filmmakers on the international art-house...
Essays
May 26, 2026 — Of all the performing arts, stand-up comedy may be the most ephemeral, even more so if the humor is considered dangerous or taboo. Stand-up relies on the charged dynamic between a comedian and an audience, with both sides often bringing...
Nov 17, 2021 — Having won major prizes in Berlin and Cannes, the director has been talking openly about his background, influences, and working methods.
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...
The Daily
Feb 26, 2018 — The new Spring 2018 of Cineaste is out, and online, we find just a few previews of what’s inside, but a whole lot of web exclusives. “The Nixon presidency? Suddenly, it seems almost quaint,” writes Jonathan Kirshner. “But it was...
Interviews
Jun 5, 2014 — The following is excerpted from an interview with Red River editor Christian Nyby that critic Ric Gentry conducted in 1991.
Essays
Apr 29, 2014 — One legendary American director pays tribute to another.
Aug 15, 2011 — Celebrated as Stanley Kubrick’s first mature film and made when he was only twenty-eight years old, The Killing (1956) is remarkable for boldly announcing so many of the stylistic and thematic preoccupations that would become important constants of his cinema....