The Criterion Collection
Features
Jun 29, 2016 — In this essay, first published in Grand Street in 1994, Dr. Strangelove coscreenwriter Terry Southern offers a lively behind-the-scenes look at the film’s production.
Nov 24, 2008 — Filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker (Dont Look Back, Monterey Pop, The War Room) and Chris Hegedus (The War Room, Startup.com), creative partners and husband and wife, offer their favorites. Read Pennebaker’s top ten here.Photo by Kit Pennebaker
Nov 21, 2008 — Filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker (Dont Look Back, Monterey Pop, The War Room) and Chris Hegedus (The War Room, Startup.com), creative partners and husband and wife, offer these favorites. Note: “This list was supposed to be ten in number, but I...
The writer, director, and actor returns to the Criterion Closet, where he shares how he and cinematographer Maceo Bishop studied documentaries like The War Room when making their new film The Smashing Machine, shouts out the singular performances in Carnal...
Essays
Mar 20, 2012 — Even more than with most documentaries that set out to record events as they happen, there was a lot of luck involved in producing The War Room (1993). When they turned their attention to Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992,...
Jun 28, 2016 — When Stanley Kubrick bought the motion picture rights to the 1958 thriller Red Alert, by the retired Royal Air Force navigator Peter George, he meant to direct an action film about a nuclear war triggered by a solitary madman. Some...
Sneak Peeks
Mar 20, 2012 — As revealing as Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker’s The War Room is, there was even more happening behind the scenes of Bill Clinton’s 1992 election campaign that it doesn’t show. For instance, what was really going on with those...
Short Takes
Sep 15, 2016 — Need some respite from the twenty-four-hour news cycle? Bill Hader and Fred Armisen’s hysterical IFC Channel series Documentary Now! returns with some comedic salve for our weary election-season souls.
On the Channel
Jun 17, 2025 — This July, find love under the sun with our Summer Romances collection and flirt with the seductive dangers of Miami’s most thrilling neonoirs.
On the Channel
Dec 28, 2022 — We’re getting real in January with a spotlight on cinema verité, a movement that revolutionized documentary filmmaking.