Issues
Featured
Lost in the Funhouse
Illustration by Clay Hickson
Say you’ve built a career as a reliable sitcom mainstay and are forced to pivot when sitcoms go out of fashion in the 2010s. Along with every other actor angling to lead a prestige limited series, you work on a… Read more
Let John Early Cook
John Early (photograph by Eve Alpert)
The creative team behind Maddie’s Secret takes its cues from 1980s TV message movies, Paul Verhoeven, and Bon Appétit’s Test Kitchen.
Personal Effects: Boots Riley and His Collaborators on Crafting I Love Boosters
Boots Riley BTS on I Love Boosters
Boots Riley has directed two movies and one TV show over the past decade, but he’s been telling stories through music for more than 30 years. “I usually think about my songs the same way I think about movies,” said… Read more
Minnesota Fierce: Documentary Filmmaker Joua Lee Grande Reports From Operation Metro Surge
Image: Kazua Melissa Vang & Sheng Elizabeth Lor
Though Joua Lee Grande studied cinema and media culture in college, she built much of her early career in nonprofits based in the Twin Cities. “I was mentoring young people about how they should follow their dreams, and I was… Read more
-
Slow Your Roll: Can Durational Cinema Save Us?
You know the feeling: the algorithm catches you one lazy afternoon, and hours melt in the blink of an eye. You come to, dehydrated, achy, struggling to focus. Or at night, your couch sucks you in. You bounce from Netflix to Hulu to HBO, trying to find your “next show” or catch up on one that all the memes insist you simply have to watch. Instead, you start 15 minutes of three different series and two mid-’90s movies, then retreat to your phone. Before long, a sickly yellow fog buzzes behind your eyes—the undeniable mental vertigo of brain rot. The […]
-
Reel to Reel: Is “Content” So Different From Edison’s Early Cinema?
The churn is relentless. The demand, insatiable. The output, rushed and raw but undeniably compelling. Working with cutting-edge communications devices, a rotating cast of tinkerers comes together each day to produce new pieces of short-form visual entertainment, racing to keep up with an attention economy that demands new thrills, new sensations, new captured moments that, often enough, go on to permeate the wider culture. Sometimes, these snippets of footage simply isolate and examine something universal from real life; other times, they tell a story. Naturally, there are collaborations with commercial interests and guest appearances from celebrities hoping for a quick […]
-
Hooray for…Jerseywood?
In 2006, when Cameron Zonfrilli and John Welsh shifted their film production business, Parlay, to a full-fledged multistage Jersey City studio, their clients mainly consisted of small reality-based cable shows, multicams, and commercial work. At the time, there wasn’t a lot of film production in New Jersey. “A lot of little independent commercials and agency work,” Zonfrilli says. Twenty years later, the film landscape in the Garden State is experiencing a boom. Big state-of-the-art studios are being built, renovated, and expanded all over the state. And top Hollywood players like Lionsgate, Netflix, and Paramount are coming to town, teaming with […]
-
Making Sense of Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Monumental Life’s Work
Last year, I stumbled on a bootleg copy of Twists in the Cord (1994), an experimental documentary shot on video by Lynn Hershman Leeson. I’ve followed the prolific artist for years, but I had never heard of the piece until it appeared in a search result when I was looking for something else. It’s classic Leeson, depicting technology as a catalyst to subvert identity and authenticity. She was an established—if unsung—artist in the 1970s when she started making films and videos, and her just-published memoir, Private I, reveals this turn was less of a second act than a lifelong pull […]
-
How Ridgewood Became New York City’s Communal Cinema Hub
A white, windowless storefront in Ridgewood, Queens, has the distinction of being the neighborhood’s first new cinema in nearly 100 years. Co-founded last year by filmmaker John Wilson alongside collaborators Davis Fowlkes and Cosmo Bjorkenheim, Low Cinema features 42 seats (sourced second-hand), digital and 16mm projection, and even a papier-mâché E.T. Handmade by Wilson, the cheerful alien hovers beneath the ceiling by the front door. The day I visited the microcinema in late February, I was greeted by a veritable cinematic symphony. Corn was freshly popping, ticket holders poured in for an afternoon showing of Nirvanna the Band the Show […]
-
Who Wants to Be White Famous?
After covering film and TV for more than 25 years, I’m still surprised at how long it takes some Black artists to become White Famous. What’s White Famous, you ask? It’s the state of being recognized by the mainstream media, something many Black performers experience long after first coming to the attention of Black audiences. Being White Famous has its benefits. Your IMDb ranking goes up, as does your salary quote for your next project. Your agents, managers, and publicists will be thrilled. “You’ve crossed over,” they’ll say, and they’ll mean it as a good thing. But White Fame can […]
