What Happened Was...

Aug 20, 2025 — He locked eyes with audiences in films by Pasolini, Soderbergh, Frears, Stephen Elliott, and Edgar Wright.

Aug 5, 2025 — From Grosse Pointe Blank to Singles to Trainspotting, some of the decade’s most memorable fusions of music and cinema brought underground culture to new heights of pop consciousness.

Jun 30, 2025 — An up-and-coming director reflects on the resourcefulness and scrappy ingenuity that went into making his three films, now playing on the Criterion Channel.

Jun 17, 2025 — Drawing from over a dozen hours of black-and-white footage, Direct Cinema pioneer Charlotte Zwerin created this elliptical and moving portrait of one of American music’s most original artists.

May 27, 2025 — In the singular mid-1980s TV show Eternity’s Pillar, the jazz iconoclast gives viewers a chance to experience the healing powers of her music—and the intense spiritual practice that fuels it.

Apr 29, 2025 — To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the director of Three Seasons discusses a selection of landmark films that have shaped how we remember this devastating and divisive conflict.

Feb 21, 2025 — This week we’re revisiting work by Zeinabu irene Davis, Chantal Akerman, Claude Lanzmann, Wang Bing, and Joan Micklin Silver.

Sep 26, 2024 — The directors discuss their award-winning documentary Bad Press and their effort to invert the exploitative dynamics that have long existed between documentary filmmakers and Indigenous communities.

Aug 20, 2024 — Delon brought to the films of Melville, Visconti, Deray, and Losey one of the most beautiful faces in all of cinema.

Aug 13, 2024 — This month brings riveting courtroom dramas, New American Cinema classics, giallo shockers, pre-Code gems by women screenwriters, and a new episode of Adventures in Moviegoing.