One of the great things about living in DC is that so many of our cultural institutions are free to the public. This includes some of the Smithsonian’s special events, like the annual Made in Hong Kong film festival hosted by the National Museum of Asian Art. The festival is virtual this year due to […]
Continue readingCategory Archives: Directors
New Acquisition!
Media Services’ first new acquisition of 2020 is…. The Farewell, directed by Lulu Wang! This movie (BLU 16732) was snubbed by the Academy, but Awkwafina made history at the Golden Globes when she became the first woman of Asian descent to win in a leading actress film category. Yes, it took until 2020 for that […]
Continue readingRemembering Agnès Varda
On March 29th, the world lost Agnès Varda, one of the most quietly influential filmmakers of the 20th (and 21st) century. Varda, who released her first film in 1954, is considered by many to be the ‘godmother’ of French new Wave cinema, if not the first New Wave filmmaker. Her first film, La Pointe-Courte, predated […]
Continue readingBlack History Month: Contemporary Black Directors Part 1
Part of working at a university library is accumulating and highlighting diverse creators in our collections. For Black History Month, I didn’t just want to just slap a list of Black Films up on our blog and call it a day. Instead, this will be the first of two posts featuring contemporary Black Directors, and […]
Continue readingBernardo Bertolucci and Stephen Hillenburg
This week saw the death of two artists, giants in their respective fields. On Monday, Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci died at age 77. Bertolucci rose to fame with the 1973 release of Last Tango in Paris, a controversial film that was earned an X rating after extensive cuts. One of these scenes depicted a middle […]
Continue readingBlade Runner 2049
Blade Runner 2049 comes out tomorrow, October 6th, playing basically everywhere.It’s supposed to be a not-awful sequel, which is easy to believe after watching the trailer: Naturally, the library has Blade Runner (HU DVD 1064), as well as Villeneuve’s Incendies (HU DVD 3563), Prisoners (HU DVD 11188), and Sicario (DVD 12919). Oh, and Arrival (HU […]
Continue readingYou can now watch Jean-Luc Godard’s first narrative film
Once in a while, a lost film appears, delighting film buffs and historians. In the past few years, we’ve seen a lost Méliès film, a Hitchcock, and a Star Wars-related short all turn up after decades of absence. But this weekend, someone uploaded the Holy Grail: Jean-Luc Godard’s first narrative film. Une Femme Coquette (embedded […]
Continue readingNew blood or old blood? What experienced directors bring to big movies
You might have missed that a new Steven Spielberg movie came out this year. The BFG was a bit of a flop, a surprise considering the beloved director at the helm. As movie studios are learning, director choice holds less and less sway over audiences as studios recruit new talent to headline their films somewhat […]
Continue readingA new lost Méliès was discovered… after it was mislabeled
A Trip to the Moon, not Match de Prestidigitation First there was the lost Hitchcock film. Then, the lost Laurel and Hardy sequence. Now, film conservationists have found a long-list film by Georges Méliès, one of the pioneers of cinema. Méliès was one of the pioneers of film as an art form, especially in the […]
Continue readingRIP Andrezj Wajda, a voice for Poland in film
Yesterday, Polish director Andrezj Wajda died at age 90. He was among the most distinguished Polish filmmakers of his generation or in general: his accolades include a Palme d’Or for his labor rights film Man of Iron and a 1999 honorary Oscar for his lifetime body of work. As with Man of Iron, many of […]
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