Film
Superman Was Born Woke
Superman’s real power has perhaps never been X-ray vision or being faster than a speeding bullet. It may rather have been the character's overall consistent penchant for social justice. Even when it wasn’t — or isn’t — popular.
A Camera on His Army Service
In “Shivtown,” documentary filmmaker Hillel Ben-Zeev Perlov tells the story of three unhappy years he spent as a photographer at a remote Israeli army base, asking penetrating questions about universal concerns like generational trauma and why we perpetuate cycles of hatred and wars.
How South Korea’s Directors Took Their Discontent Global
Contemporary South Korean film and television present the capitalist system that emerged following the peninsula’s war over 70 years ago as fundamentally broken, generating class divisions that cannot be penetrated through perseverance or hard work. Their message is uniform: Either we destroy it, or it destroys us.
Unearthing a Dark Chapter in Chile’s History
Felipe Galvez Haberle’s “The Settlers” (“Los Colonos”) is anything but a typical Western. Utterly devoid of heroism or romance, it explores a dark chapter in Chile’s history, deconstructing not only the morality of the gunslingers but also the historical setting in which they operated.
A Film Critic Reflects on the Artistic Journeys and Vision of the Late French Director Jean-Luc Godard
Godard and his critical colleagues comprised the first generation of cinephiles who treated film history as part of cultural history.
A Movie Stoked Political Movements Across the Globe
Many articles, across magazines, journals and websites, claim “The Battle of Algiers” was a major influence on the Black Panthers, the IRA and the Pentagon’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. Digging into these claims reveals how the film turned into an instruction manual on insurgency and counterinsurgency.