Once There Was a Woman

Dec 4, 2006 — William Greaves’s masterpiece uses a single situation as the basis for a theme-and-variation structure that interrogates every aspect of the filmmaking process as well as the categories of fiction and documentary.

Oct 16, 2006 — Alfonso Cuarón’s first film—a sex farce that pokes fun at Mexican culture, including a public-service AIDS campaign—emerged from Mexico’s beleaguered state funding system for cinema, and was initially shelved by the government.

Mar 27, 2006 — Louis Malle’s World War II–era drama follows a young collaborationist in rural France and asks how people with no interest in politics become active participants in brutal torture.

Oct 24, 2005 — Hideo Gosha’s swordplay drama captures rebellion against the Japanese feudal system, pitting its twin protagonists against each other but also, together, against the very notion of authority itself.

Mar 14, 2005 — A director is naturally a man like everyone else. Yet his life isn’t normal. For us, seeing is a necessity. For a painter, too, the problem is to see. But while the painter has to discover a static reality, or...

Aug 2, 2004 — This kinetic and ineffably voluptuous musical is the happiest and most exuberant ripple in Jean Renoir’s career as a river of personal expression.

Jan 5, 2004 — Jacques Tati’s second tale about the whimsical wanderer Monsieur Hulot, this classic comedy presents a world in which characters are defined solely by their actions.

Jun 9, 2003 — In Stan Brakhage’s films we enter into momentary perceptual transactions in which we trade unhindered assimilation of images for intensified contact with pictorial or sensory features that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Nov 19, 2001 — Luis Buñuel’s drama is a seductive work that exemplifies, even as it studies, the perversity of human desire.

Aug 20, 2001 — Carl Dreyer’s modern tragedy eschews melodrama, striking a balance between suffering and triviality.