All posts filed under: Editorials

From the desk of Film Quarterly editor B. Ruby Rich

Revisiting the Decade: A World, and Cinema, in Upheaval

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This marks my fortieth and final editorial as I step down from my post as editor in chief of this wonderful journal. Ten years ago, I accepted the helm of Film Quarterly with the intention of transforming it into a journal that I wanted to read, a journal that could offer the field of film and media studies an “alternative commons” instead of the usually siloed areas of identities, nationalities, sexualities, racializations, studies, and specializations that fracture it.

Inflection Points

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As I have often noted here, the US film, television, and streamer industries have failed—now for the sixth year in a row—to deliver any works addressing the toxic political climate or disastrous economics of the United States in the post-2016 era.

Cinema’s Cosmic Shifts

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Last winter, Oscar campaigns may well have rolled through a city near you: visiting stars, catered snacks, diligent handlers, lots of hopes and dreams. Occasionally, a film or actor so exceeds the transactional nature of these events that mundanity is set aside for a moment and the event becomes special beyond its PR function.

Changing Times

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These are fraught days. As I have written in this space too often, it’s past time for filmmakers, curators, producers, exhibitors, distributors, and online platforms to step up to the demands of their historic moment, stop proceeding on automatic pilot, and summon the courage to offer visions of a different future.

Conscience and Controversy

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Not since the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 that ended its Prague Spring, and the Chilean coup of 1973 that ended the presidency of Salvador Allende, has the film world been as galvanized by one country’s struggle as it has been in 2022 by Ukraine’s—though, of course, countless other global conflicts, atrocities, and deaths (Brazil, Yemen, Syria, Gaza) have also deserved such attention.

Stuttering Cinema, Stuttering Democracy, Stuttering Globalism

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As the year 2021 crept along, it became increasingly schizophrenic. Emerging from pandemic lockdowns was euphoric—until news of the redubbed Delta variant began to dash hope and cause doubt or panic. Still, theaters announced their reopenings and cinephiles flocked, some nervously, some exuberantly. The Pacific Film Archive, profiled in this issue, set September 1 as its indoor reopening date.

Theater Openings and Vaccinated Viewings in Pandemic Year Two

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It has been more than a year since this editorial space filled with speculations about streaming films and the closing of theaters. It was with distinct excitement, then, that I began to read the reopening announcements. The beloved Paris Theater in New York City, with its lease now held by Netflix and with programming selected by former Museum of the Moving Image curator David Schwartz, trumpeted an Al Pacino retrospective. The Film Forum, that mainstay of downtown New York tastemaking, announced its theater’s reopening while retaining its virtual marquee, too.