Nov 22, 2022 — Spike Lee’s transcendent portrait of an American hero is an urgent call for the nation to live up to everything it claims to be.

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...

Apr 18, 2019 — Michael Imperioli is an actor, director, and writer. He is best known for his role on The Sopranos, for which he won an Emmy Award in 2004. He has also appeared in many films, including Goodfellas, Jungle Fever, Bad Boys,...

The writer and director of Sinners talks about the impact of seeing Malcolm X in his youth, compares the work of Michael Mann and Christopher Nolan, and praises the rebellious spirit of Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu.

Apr 21, 2022 — In 1948, leftist filmmaker Leo Hurwitz directed a documentary whose title summed up the uncertainty of its moment: for America’s antifascists, the end of the Second World War was a Strange Victory indeed. Using newsreels from the war’s front lines,...

Mar 25, 2021 — In With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together, an autobiography cowritten by legendary creative and life partners Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Dee tells the story of working as a screenwriter on 1968’s Uptight. It’s a brief account, about...

Mar 8, 2021 — “I see the beauty now,” my mother told me when I asked her what she thought of Cicely Tyson’s face, about a week after the pathbreaking actor died in January at ninety-six. “But I didn’t then.” By “then,” she meant...

Jan 28, 2021 — Channel Calendars We’re thrilled to be celebrating Black History Month on the Criterion Channel with a lineup that salutes African American filmmaking pioneers like Gordon Parks and Madeline Anderson, spotlights the brilliant career of actor and activist Ruby Dee, presents...

Jul 1, 2026 — Film at Lincoln Center rolls out a series of ten films probing the secrets and suspicions of a nation that seems perpetually on edge.

Feb 25, 2026 — A survey of Black cinema and memories of watching movies with John Ashbery are among this month’s highlights.