The South

Dec 13, 2011 — Just what is it that makes Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter (1966) so different, so appealing? The cherubic hero in the neat powder blue suit, who looks like he was torn out of a yakuza pop-up book? That hauntingly cornball theme...

Aug 28, 2006 — Pietro Germi’s brilliant satire skewers Italian society’s devotion to appearances and its cultlike obsession with gossip and honor.

Apr 30, 2024 — John Carpenter is an award-winning writer, director, and composer. Born in Kentucky, he studied film at the University of Southern California before making Dark Star and Assault on Precinct 13. An internationally renowned master of the horror genre, Carpenter spawned...

Aug 9, 2021 — Edson Oda is a Japanese Brazilian writer-director based in Los Angeles. He graduated from the University of São Paulo with a bachelor’s degree in advertising and completed his Master of Fine Arts in film and production at the University of...

Sep 28, 2011 — As a film student at the University of Southern California, new to LA and without connections, Patricia Resnick had a habit of following film trucks, just to see where they’d lead. One took her to Westwood and the set of...

Nov 21, 2008 — Independent filmmaker and underground music aficionado David Markey’s films include 1991: The Year Punk Broke (1992) and the Los Angeles punk Super 8 cult classics The Slog Movie (1982), Desperate Teenage Lovedolls (1984), and its sequel Lovedolls Superstar (1986), all...

Sep 13, 2004 — Fifteen years ago I received a letter from a young film director in Texas, who enclosed a tape of his first film, with the unlikely title It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books. It might as well have...

Kara Keeling is a professor of cinema and media studies and of American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. She is the author of two books: The Witch’s Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image...

Allison Anders is an award-winning film and television writer and director who got her first professional break working for her mentor, Wim Wenders, on his movie Paris, Texas (1984). Her feature debut was Border Radio (1987), cowritten and codirected with...

Marsha Kinder, professor emerita of critical studies at the University of Southern California, is the author of Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain and the editor of Refiguring Spain, Luis Buñuel’s “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,”...