Dossier on the New Brazilian Cinema: Aesthetics and Emergencies from Lula to Dilma to Bolsonarismo
Dawn Hudson’s Documentaries and Civil Rights History
Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You
Latin American’s Women’s Pictures
Page Views: the Ethics of Appropriation
Isaac Julien’s Lessons on the Hour
Reinventing the Archive: Susana de Sousa Dias
Watchmen: The Conversation
El Mar La Mar, Coco, 1917
Patricio Guzman’s Autobiographical Turn
Golden Age of Parisian Cinemas
Special Dossier: Asian American Film at Fifty
Joanna Hogg’s Spatial Emotions
Interview: Marina Razbezhkina
Mar del Plata Film Festival
Romance in End of the Century
Indigeneity in Latin America Films
Reading Musicals, Reviving Lino Brocka
Julia Reichert’s Brilliant Career
Marceline Loriden-Ivens: A Posthumous Interview
Decoding Russian Doll
Festivals: FESPACO at Fifty, Bologna, Toronto
Series: Decolonizing Cinema & New Arab Women’s Films
Columns: Mexico in the ’80s, Rural Race Genres & Brown Bodies in Brit Pop Culture
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.
Dirty Data: The Cleaners
Monos in Colombia
Miserabilism in Ray & Liz
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Ecology in Game of Thrones
Interview: Cristina Ibarra and Alex Rivera on The Infiltrators
Festivals: Cannes, Malaga
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.
Interview: Karim Aïnouz
Madame Satã at Twenty
A Night of Knowing Nothing
Refugee Narratives—Before Flee
Insomnia of a Serial Dreamer
Page Views: Lynn Spigel
Thessaloniki Documentary Festival
Cannes Film Festival at Seventy-Five
Columns: Dementia, Close-Ups, Julia Child
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.
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.
