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New Waves: This is Not a Film
In 2010, after Jafar Panahi was arrested and charged with producing propaganda against the Iranian government, he was banned from making films or operating a camera for twenty years. In 2011 he made This is Not a Film, which was shot entirely in Panahi’s home, using the help of his friends, a camcorder, an iPhone, and the legal loopholes in his ban. The film debuted at Cannes after being smuggled into the festival inside a cake. With a playful charm,…
Knock Down the House
At a moment of historic volatility in American politics, insurgent candidates Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Amy Vilela, Cori Bush, and Paula Jean Swearengin decided to fight back and embarked on a journey that would change their lives and their country forever. Knock Down the House (2019) follows the grassroots campaigns of these four ambitious women as they challenge powerful incumbents in the 2018 congressional race. Despite their lack of political experience and corporate donations, these women work to redefine community values and…
Meet John Doe
When D. B. Norton (Edward Arnold), an oil magnate with political ambitions, takes over a city newspaper and begins firing employees by the dozen, columnist Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck) fights back, penning a fake letter from a jobless “John Doe,” who in protest against the state of the world threatens to commit suicide by jumping off the City Hall roof. After the letter becomes the talk of the town, Mitchell and her editor hire a washed-up baseball player (Gary Cooper)…
Special Effects: They Shall Not Grow Old
Drawing on period footage from England’s Imperial War Museum and BBC radio interviews with World War I soldiers, director Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) deploys state-of-the-art digital restoration technology to reanimate some of the world’s earliest war footage. Released in commemoration of the war’s centennial and dedicated to Jackson’s own grandfather who fought in the war, the film is an astonishing portal to the past that offers viewers a surprisingly intimate view of the everyday lives of…
Special Effects: Beetlejuice
In Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988), Barbara and Adam Maitland (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) find themselves trapped as spirits haunting their old home after their untimely death in a car accident. To make matters worse, the residence has now been sold to the unbearable Deetze family (Catherine O’Hara, Jeffrey Jones, and Winona Ryder). When the Maitlands have little success in scaring the new residents away, they turn to rogue “bio-exorcist” Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton), an unpredictable spirit whose “help” quickly turns…