It’s been twenty-five years since cinema bid the twentieth century farewell with an extraordinary batch of films. In retrospect, 1999 was a time of intriguing cross-pollinations between the studios and independents, national and international productions, and high and low culture. Bringing togeth...

What happened to America in the 1960s? Amid the stream of social upheavals, a wave of films emerged depicting mental illness, madness, extreme emotional states, and chilling violence—jarring transmissions from a new generation of Hollywood iconoclasts that seemed to evoke the very breakdown of th...

Venice can be the most magical and romantic of movie settings—or the most sinister and haunting. With its ornate architecture set upon a maze of canals as dense as its history, the city has provided the unforgettable backdrop to countless stories of dreams, nightmares, and intrigue—from the lumin...

While for many major Hollywood studios the 1950s marked the beginning of their decline, for Columbia Pictures it was a decade of ascendance. Spurred by the desire to differentiate their cinematic output from their television programming, the studio went bold with ambitious prestige productions li...

As independent Asian American filmmakers took the matter of self-representation into their own hands, many turned inward: to their own families, personal histories, and private musings. Some used their own experiences to stand for the larger Asian American community, whose stories were written ou...

Whether traveling the open roads of his native Germany, the American West, or—as in his acclaimed latest, PERFECT DAYS—the streets of Tokyo, Wim Wenders maps both the inner worlds of wanderers and dreamers and the outer spaces they inhabit. In this edition of Adventures in Moviegoing, Wenders sit...

Two island metropolises enter into rich cross-cultural dialogue in these East-meets-West melodramas that double as explorations of diasporic identity. As Hong Kong’s film industry exploded in the 1980s and ’90s, mounting pre-Handover political pressures at home spurred a wave of overseas emigrati...

How much drama can one night contain? Marvels of compression, these films tell their stories over the course of just a few hours between quitting time and dawn, the perfect setting for horror (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD), romance (BEFORE SUNRISE), deep conversation (MY DINNER WITH ANDRE), and actio...

Extreme diets, elaborate prosthetics, uncannily convincing (and sometimes less so) accents: the late twentieth century witnessed the rise of a new strain of screen acting that saw stars deploy extensive research, long preparation processes, and often staggering physical transformations to create ...

Founded by Martina Attille, Maureen Blackwood, Robert Crusz, Isaac Julien and Nadine Marsh-Edwards in London in 1983, the Sankofa Film and Video Collective sought to give expression to the complexities of Black British identity in an era of turbulent social and racial strife. Encompassing documen...

From indie darling to helmer of 2023’s biggest (and pinkest) blockbuster, Greta Gerwig has blazed a unique trail by remaining true to her idiosyncratic voice—forged by a lifelong passion for literature, theater, and dance—at every step of her evolution. In this edition of Adventures in Moviegoing...

Hong Kong is home to one of the world’s most exciting pop-filmmaking traditions—and there’s no bigger event in its box-office calendar than Lunar New Year, typically reserved for the industry’s most crowd-pleasing releases. These genre-blending touchstones bring audiences together for an escape i...

Founded in 2019, the Dweller festival celebrates the Black roots of electronic dance music, spotlighting a lineage of trailblazing musicians, producers, and DJs who created the sound that spread to clubs across the world and amplifying the contemporary artists who carry on their legacy. This dive...

Get in the mood for love with a Valentine’s bouquet of shorts that celebrate passionate human connection in its many forms. Featuring gems from past masters like John Hubley (TENDER GAME), Pierre Etaix (HAPPY ANNIVERSARY), and Shirley Clarke (SAVAGE/LOVE) as well as insightful contemporary looks ...

Cofounded by former Beatle George Harrison in 1978, the storied production studio and distribution company HandMade Films gave new life to British cinema in the 1980s, taking chances on risky projects and first-time directors to bring audiences future classics like THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY, WITHNAIL ...

Take a European vacation full of danger, suspense, and surprise with some of the most stylish, nerve-twisting films ever to make their way across the pond. There’s murder on the Mediterranean (PURPLE NOON), mystery in the Land of the Midnight Sun (INSOMNIA), paranoia among the shadows of Prague (...

In the aftermath of World War II, Britain cultivated its own form of film noir with a distinctly English accent. Marked by fatalistic wit, visual lyricism, and a pronounced concern for working-class lives, British crime dramas reflected an era of turbulent change, as generational and class confli...

Images of unforgettable terror and strange beauty exist side by side in these darkly imaginative works that fuse genre chills with formal innovation. Tapping into horror’s potential to manifest our subconscious fears, visionary directors like David Lynch (ERASERHEAD), Dario Argento (SUSPIRIA), an...

Spotlighting the rich stories and courageous lives of trans men, butch lesbians, and gender-nonconforming heroes, this collection—curated by writer-archivist-filmmaker Jenni Olson and critic Caden Mark Gardner—journeys through nearly four decades of cinema history in search of authentic, complex ...

The 1980s marked the first decade of Asian American feature filmmaking—a period defined by restless thematic and stylistic exploration as trailblazing directors sought to express their complex cultural identity on-screen. In this decade, filmmakers like Wayne Wang (whose CHAN IS MISSING emerged a...

Founded by Richard Linklater in 1985 as a screening series dedicated to bringing experimental and art cinema to Austin, Texas, the Austin Film Society has since grown into a cultural powerhouse and cornerstone of the city’s creative community—all while remaining true to its edgy, eclectic roots. ...

The story of Black Americans is, in many ways, the story of America itself. Though the African American experience has long been relegated to the margins of the big screen, a vital cinematic legacy endures thanks to the work of pioneers like Fronza Woods (FANNIE’S FILM), Kathleen Collins (LOSING ...

Sometimes all it takes to restore your faith in humanity is a simple, good-old-fashioned love story. Refreshingly free of cynicism, these unabashedly starry-eyed tales of all-consuming passion and sweep-you-off-your-feet romance are sexy, sweet, and maybe even a little sappy—just the way a good l...

In the 1960s, filmmakers on both sides of the Atlantic spilled into the streets in search of cinematic truth, armed with lightweight cameras that allowed for an unprecedented level of intimacy and liberated documentary from the conventions of voice-over narration and talking-head interviews. Toda...