The Goumbé of the Young Revelers

May 9, 2018 — 1. Born Arutin Sayadyan, eighteenth-century Armenian poet Sayat-Nova—whose pen name means “King of Songs”—served as the initial inspiration for The Color of Pomegranates. Sayat-Nova was an ashugh, a troubadour whose verses were set to music that he played on a...

Apr 8, 2018 — Saige Walton and Nadine Boljkovac introduce the dossier “Materializing Absence” in the new issue of Screening the Past: “We start from the central premise that absence in screen media is not ‘nothing’—that absence itself is always invested with material attributes....

Apr 4, 2018 — “It has been half a century since Werner Herzog released his first full-length feature, Signs of Life (1968) which depicts a wounded German WWII paratrooper losing his mind on a torpid Greek island,” writes Joseph Hincks, introducing his interview for...

Mar 30, 2018 — In a new conversation on the Criterion Channel, filmmaker Rebecca Miller talks about her formative experiences as a movie lover and what she’s drawn to in on-screen acting.

Mar 28, 2018 — A touchstone of contemporary independent cinema since its release in 2007, Frownland makes its debut on the Criterion Channel this week. Here’s an excerpt from a new conversation with director Ronald Bronstein.

Mar 27, 2018 — We have to begin today’s round on projects in the works with news of upcoming series because, frankly, that’s where the action is at the moment. Tireless Steven Soderbergh will executive produce and Gregg Araki will co-write and direct all...

Mar 7, 2018 — Acclaimed cinematographer Ed Lachman introduces Ulrich Seidl’s trio of unnerving explorations of desire, abjection, and womanhood in contemporary Europe.

Mar 5, 2018 — Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water has won four Oscars, including best picture, directing, production design, and score. The nominations were announced in January, and you can scan that full list here. Below, a quick overview of all of...

Feb 26, 2018 — Film scholar Meheli Sen discusses the particular qualities that made Bengali actor Uttam Kumar a star and the perfect leading man for Satyajit Ray’s The Hero.

Feb 26, 2018 — In a new video for the Criterion Channel on FilmStruck, Marvel Comics mastermind Stan Lee talks about his friendship with Alain Resnais.