A Special Day

Sep 22, 2009 — Something very heavy happened at Monterey last weekend. Those very odd three days began in Friday’s cool gray air as the first of the crowd began to circle through the booths of the fairground. The only word for it then...

Sep 15, 2009 — Words are the trained fleas in David Mamet’s sidewalk circus—dirty words, often bloodstained, usually swarming, that perform their acrobatic stunts for gawkers who will likely get their pockets picked. That’s the reputation, anyhow. More than thirty years after he made...

Nov 19, 2008 — My first trip to Paris took place inside the darkened cafeteria of Warnsdorfer Elementary School in East Brunswick, New Jersey. A few times each year, the entire student body was brought together to watch movies cast from a rickety 16...

May 22, 2006 — Luis Buñuel’s merciless satire concerns the smallness of our vision of progress and our narrow attempts to achieve it through rational or moralistic planning.

Aug 20, 2001 — Carl Dreyer considers the work of art’s soul in this excerpt from Dreyer in Double Reflection.

Oct 15, 2050 — Voice-over narration has existed since the beginnings of cinema and has been an integral part of some of the great masterworks of narrative film, from The Magnificent Ambersons to Double Indemnity to Jules and Jim to Taxi Driver. It spans...

Sep 28, 2021 — Melvin Van Peebles’s feature debut riffs on the French New Wave to tell a love story that portrays interracial intimacy and unflinchingly confronts the distortions of racism.

May 20, 2024 — From documentaries and stop-motion animation to multimedia projects, the richly varied work of this veteran director is a testament to her innovative spirit and her commitment to the everyday beauty of African American experiences.

Jun 4, 2021 — The festival returns with a full-to-bursting official selection that includes an entirely new program.

Oct 19, 2016 — Martha Karsh, editor of The Beatles A Hard Day’s Night: A Private Archive, published in September by Phaidon, talks about her family’s Beatlemania and assembling a book about the world’s most famous rock band.