Jun 22, 2010 — In the autumn of 1989, the Iranian magazine Sorush printed a story about an unusual crime: a poor man had been arrested for impersonating a celebrated film director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, to a middle-class family in northern Tehran. Although the accused,...

Mar 24, 2016 — Repertory PicksThis week, the University of Chicago’s Doc Films kicks off a two-month-long Abbas Kiarostami series, starting with the Iranian director’s 1990 masterwork Close-up. Taken from the real-life story of Hossain Sabzian, a young man put on trial in Tehran...

Apr 18, 2025 — When Mayor John Lindsay made it easier for filmmakers to shoot on location in New York City, he paved the way for a string of movies that captured the troubled metropolis in the late sixties and early seventies.

Jul 1, 2025 — The screening venue and library celebrates with the film that gave it its name—and much more.

Feb 27, 2019 — Studio Visits Growing up in Houston, Texas, in the 1970s and ’80s, Greg Ruth fell in love with art but had a hard time imagining himself pursuing it professionally. But almost three decades of devotedly plying his craft as an illustrator in a...

Mar 14, 2019 — As a new collection of Tarkovsky’s writing is released, the Close-Up Film Centre presents presents side-by-side series of work by the two friends.

Oct 15, 2050 — Voice-over narration has existed since the beginnings of cinema and has been an integral part of some of the great masterworks of narrative film, from The Magnificent Ambersons to Double Indemnity to Jules and Jim to Taxi Driver. It spans...

Jan 11, 2011 — Given the scarcity of information available in the sixties, director Byron Haskin did a remarkable job of representing some of the conditions on our nearest planetary neighbor, nearly a year before the first close-up views of the real Martian surface.

Mar 10, 2003 — The Swedish director of I Am Curious explains how he fused the themes of eroticism, self-exploration, voyeurism, and nonviolence into a film about the new freedoms of the young. QUESTION: I Am Curious seemed to be a cinematic Tristram Shandy,...

The rapper and musician talks about finding inspiration in Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales, shares his love for the work of Sidney Lumet, and takes home favorites like Close-up and La notte.