Dachimawa Lee

Aug 12, 1991 — It is 1945. For the first time in four years, the Southern Pacific stops in Black Rock.  A one-armed man named John J. MacReedy (Spencer Tracy) steps off the train. This brooding stranger makes the few residents who inhabit the...

Dec 15, 1986 — It has been estimated that one out of four feature films made in America before the mid-1960s was a western. Since approximately 35,000 features were released in this country in the 70 years after the introduction of film, this would...

Dec 11, 1986 — If events had turned out differently, Orson Welles’s second film might well be widely regarded as “the greatest film of all time.”

May 14, 2020 — Restoration Spotlight I was just coming of age as a moviegoer when digital video hit the big screens, around the turn of the twenty-first century. At the time, I remember being every bit as entranced by the gritty horror of...

The writer, director, and producer praises Black Orpheus and Killer of Sheep as his favorite works of Black cinema, talks about the influence of Risky Business on his film House Party, and admires the depth of Bruce Lee’s performance in...

The musician, producer, filmmaker, author, and actor reminisces about discovering Black Orpheus through Prince, shares his love for concert films like Monterey Pop and Gimme Shelter, and talks about how Spike Lee’s films have always been ahead of their time.

The director of Compensation shares what Bruce Lee’s films taught her about cinematic movement, praises Sarah Maldoror’s revolutionary Sambizanga, and shouts out filmmakers she loves, from Cauleen Smith and Cheryl Dunye to Alice Diop and Ousmane Sembène.

The actor joins the director of his new film The Piano Lesson in the Criterion Closet, where they shout out the importance of Menace II Society, reflect on the beauty of Jacques Demy and Agnès Varda’s artistic relationship, and praise...

Barry Michael Cooper is an award-winning journalist and screenwriter. He wrote the films New Jack City, Sugar Hill, and Above the Rim. Cooper also worked as a writer and supervising producer on Spike Lee’s Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It....

Stephanie Dennison is a full professor of Brazilian studies and the director of the Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures at the University of Leeds. She is the author of Remapping Brazilian Film Culture in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge,...