I think it’s long past due we start talking about Spike Lee in the same reverence and awe we talk about other distinctly American filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and John Huston. Here sits a director in his 60’s, prolifically making movies just as vibrant, vital, and varied (I hate that most of his career has… Read more »
Though certain filmmakers have been making films for personal reasons, rather than institutional or financial ones, since the days of silent cinema, this tendency toward authorial independence only began to coalesce into a bonafide artistic movement in the United States during the 1940s – the decade in which American filmmakers like Maya Deren and Kenneth… Read more »
Andy Warhol’s films are infamous for extremely long takes, static shots, and excessive lengths. Though not all his movies fit that mold perfectly, films like Empire (1965) are formative for how audiences and critics have conceived his cinematic works. In this video essay, I look at Warhol’s relationship to time, suggesting that his cultivation of boredom… Read more »
An iconoclastic talent, Barbara Hammer has been leaving her mark on cinema for over five decades. The author of numerous thought-provoking, audacious works, Hammer has received many awards and honors, while also breaking barriers with her exploration of such topics as lesbianism, aging, the female body, and mainstream portrayals of women and homosexuality. Later this… Read more »
Man with a Movie Camera (1929) is Dziga Vertov’s most well-known film. Film schools teach it as a classic example of montage, the city film, and early documentary. It gets screened by repertory cinemas and can easily be located on DVD or online. However, Man with a Movie Camera did not always enjoy top billing… Read more »
Guest post by Joan Hawkins, Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at Indiana University. It’s hard for people coming up now to understand how important movies were in the 1960s. 1968 especially. 1968 was a year of international revolution. It was the year of the Chicago Democratic Convention; Prague Spring and the subsequent Soviet… Read more »