actor profiles
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book reviews
director profiles
documentaries
experimental &
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film reviews
gay & lesbian
hong kong films
horror
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Director Profiles
in issue 66
Just Say Oui: An Interview with the Yes Men
"I'm shitting bricks, thinking he's onto me."
By Damon Smith
Film and Film and Film: An Interview with Jonas Mekas
"One who knows how to, as they say, 'read' the images, can tell everything about me."
By Jon Lanthier
Roman Polanski: What's on Trial?
By Karin Luisa Badt
In My Father's Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles, by Chris Welles Feder.
By Joseph McBride
in issue 65
The Miracle Worker: An Interview with Arthur Penn
"If the system is inimical to you, then you do whatever you can to alter your relationship to the system."
By Damien Love
in issue 64
"Monsieur Hulot and Time": By André Bazin — "In their blend of social satire, wry charm, imaginative physical gags, and ingenious aural as well as visual devices, Jacques Tati's movies have not been surpassed by those of any other postwar cinematic comic — French or otherwise."
in issue 63
Jerry Lewis: b. Joseph Levitch, Newark, New Jersey, 1926, res. Hollywood — "Each film is an elaborately choreographed movement around the problem of Jerry's uncertain relationship to the world around him."
John Cassavetes: The First Dogme Director? — "The major point of convergence between Cassavetes and the Dogme movement is an oppositional realist form that blurs the boundaries between being and performing."
Out Of His Head: Metaphysical Escape Attempts in the Screenplays of Charlie Kaufman — "Kaufman's homunculi schema is an implicit mockery of our bottomless ignorance of the nature of consciousness."
Looking at Charlie — City Lights: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin — "If you could only see me as I really am, not as I appear but as I really am, as I am in my heart."
Hotels and Homelands: After Ken and Rosa — Neither will be the same
Maps and Movies: Talking with Deepa Mehta — "I think it's really important for you, or anybody who wants to be a filmmaker, to really be honest with yourself."
Of Bullies and Blood Drinkers: Talking to Tomas Alfredson about Let the Right One In — "I think the most horrifying images are the ones you make yourself. Is there someone standing behind the door, or is it just two shoes standing there?"
in issue 61
The Kids Are Not All Right: Larry Clark on Wassup Rockers and More — "For me it was like, How do I manipulate this kid so he can do this and he's comfortable?, which is all part of directing."
Paradise Betrayed: Talking with Terence Davies about Of Time and the City — "You can't stop time. It stops you."
Object in Mirror May Be Closer Than It Appears: Stuart Gordon Talks about Horror, the Absurd, and Stuck — "These two people are stuck in life."
The Mole Man: Going Underground with Alejandro Jodorowsky — "I think Spielberg is the son from when Walt Disney fucked Minnie Mouse."
in issue 60
Dream Documents of Civil War: Three Films by Miklós Jancsó — "Jancsó's controlled aesthetic acts as a dissonance that vibrates expressively with scenes of violence, torture, and shame."
Looking at Charlie — The Circus: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin — Life in the ring
A Quiet Storm: Charles Burnett on Namibia and His Post-Killer of Sheep Career — "Each film requires for me its own approach."
From a Line of Ancestors: Talking with Doris Dörrie and Natasha Arthy — "We in the West trample on them."
Birds Do It, Bees Do It: Isabella Rossellini Talks About Bug Sex, Human Sex, and Green Porno — "A laugh and information!"
Man with a Movie Camera: Visiting Jonathan Caouette — "I could somehow control my own story"
in issue 59
Wes's World: Riding Wes Anderson's Vision Limited — Paging crackle, energy, and wit. Come in, please.
in issue 58
Beyond the Fifth Generation: An Interview with Zhang Yimou — "I know myself, and know that I can't really be separated from the land where I grew up."
Looking at Charlie — The Gold Rush: An Occasional Series on the Art and Life of Charlie Chaplin — Hats off, dudes! A masterpiece!
Made in China: Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky on Their Travels Across Manufactured Landscapes — "We've created a world that buffers us from nature."
in issue 57
Secret Window: The Erotic Gaze of Tom Lazarus — "Lazarus doesn't pathologize the locked-in gaze, he lets us feel it."
Constructive Empathy: Speaking with Kadri Kousaar About Magnus — "People can die without love."
Stay Well, or Else . . .: Michael Moore's Sicko — "What these Americans have could happen to us. And this is frightening."
Silent Light or Absolute Miracle: An Interview with Carlos Reygadas at Cannes 2007 — "I hate the idea that film is actually telling a story!"
Back to Basis: Talking with Paul Verhoeven — On Black Book and his recent Hollywood defection
Close to Home: The Films of Su Friedrich on DVD — Autobiography sometimes trumps art in these uneven works
in issue 56
Nearer My Corman to Thee: Roger Corman Remembers, and Roger Corman Remembered — Give us another naked nurse and some more explosions!
Our Time of Troubles: Ken Loach on War, Irish History, and The Wind That Shakes the Barley — "But I was accused of enjoying walking up and down the red carpet! Their rage knew no bounds."
in issue 55
The Accidental Auteur: A Dialogue with Abbas Kiarostami — "The fruitful tree bends."
Spirit in the Dark: Barbara Kopple on Filming the Group That Wouldn't Shut Up & Sing — "Just put your sneakers on and go. Go on the journey."
Reflecting the Theoretical Beyond: The Quay Brothers Talk About Art, Life, and The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes — "It's hard to be intuitive when you've got 42 crew behind you and they're like, 'Look, they don't know what to do here. They're panicking, look at them!'"
Caveh Zahedi's PSA: Talking with the Auteur of I Am a Sex Addict — "Not only is it personal — it's downright embarrassing."
The Reckless Art of Erich von Stroheim: Part One: The Pinnacle — "Like every other skilled fabulist on earth there would forever be a part of Stroheim that truly believed his own fantasies."
Looking at Charlie: The Idle Class, Payday, The Pilgrim, and A Woman of Paris: An Occasional Series on the Art and Life of Charlie Chaplin — "Now, Goliath was a big man."
in issue 53
Looking at Charlie — First National, Shoulder Arms, and The Kid: An Occasional Series on the Art and Life of Charlie Chaplin — "LOST CHILD WANTED — Last seen with a little man with large flat feet and a small moustache"
Acts of Revenge — Director Park Chan-wook Discusses Lady Vengeance and More — Grand Guignol, Korean style
in issue 52
Four Films in Search of an Author: Egoyan Since Exotica — Scattered pleasures and frequent irritations
Notes on Naruse: An Auteur Ascends — Pitch-black pessimism, unsparing emotional truths, and women on the verge
in issue 51
Auteur in Distress: On Wallace Beery, von Sternberg, and Sergeant Madden — Cinema's supreme pictorialist surrenders to "the cop on the beat"
in issue 50
Darkness, Darkness: The Films of Val Lewton: Looking Back at a B-Movie Master — Lewton's struggles to make magic had their own horrors
The Immortality Blues: Talking with Fruit Chan About Dumplings — And other tasty subjects
Revisiting Satyajit Ray: An Interview with a Cinema Master — "Everybody has access to me, anyone who wants to see me. . ."
On Caché (Hidden): Talking to Michael Haneke at Cannes 2005 — "All of us have these hidden moments in our lives . . ."
in issue 49
The Human (Tragi)Comedy: Talking to Arnaud Desplechin — Of Kings and Queen and other subjects
The Kid Behind the Camera: Chatting up Darren Stein — Put the Camera on Me's queer wunderkind speaks
At War with Myself: A Word with Lars von Trier at Cannes 2005 — On Manderley and more
in issue 48
Two Weeks in Another Town: Interview with Douglas Sirk
in issue 47
"Plant Your Feet and Tell the Truth": An Interview with Clint Eastwood — On Million Dollar Baby and a million-dollar career
What Is Love? Mania Akbari Talks About Life, Love, and 20 Angosht (20 Fingers) — This first-time director from Iran inspires cheers — and controversy
Doing What Moves Them at the Moment: Five of Cassavetes' Best on DVD — The master of improv gets his due courtesy of Criterion's extras-laden box set
Talking to Hirokazu Kore-eda: On Maborosi, Nobody Knows, and Other Pleasures — "I simply want to look at people as they are."
in issue 46
Capra's Corn? Dante... Dickens... Capra... — George Bailey's wartime America looks eerily familiar
in issue 45
Looking at Charlie: Keystone and Essanay Days — The first in an occasional series of articles on the life and work of Charlie Chaplin
F for Fake: The Ultimate Mirror of Orson Welles — In which Welles deflates expectations of greatness — and transcends them
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Cool: Appropriation & Prospects of Subversion in the Works of Quentin Tarantino — Overthrowing the patriarchy, one flush at a time
in issue 44
"Too Busy Making Work": Honoring Michael Snow at the 2004 Thessaloniki Film Festival — Painter, photographer, sculptor, composer, musician — and here, seminal experimental filmmaker
Forgotten Master: Gregory La Cava — Lubitsch wasn't the only one with a "touch"
"You Look Pretty Splendid Yourself, Orson: A Conversation with Curtis Harrington — On unfinished projects and friendship
in issue 43
Lars von Trier: Pornographer? — Impossible...
in issue 42
Alfred Hitchcock: A Hank of Hair and a Piece of Bone — A photo study of the Master's festishes — uh, motifs
Keep on Truckin': An Interview with Joe Gage — A gay-porn pioneer speaks
in issue 41
Steven Spielberg: A Jew in America: Deconstructing Catch Me If You Can — "If only I knew then what I know now."
Dancing with Werewolves: John Sayles in Roger Corman's Hollywood — It Came from New World Pictures!
in issue 40
Through a Glass Darkly: Bergman as Critical and Cultural Bellwether — As Bergman goes, so go attitudes toward European art cinema
Making History: D. W. Griffith on DVD — A weighty package of early films by the cinematic titan
in issue 37
South of the Chocolate Mountains: Scattered Impressions of The Hitch-hiker — Ida Lupino: Mother of us all!
in issue 36
The King Steps Out: Goodbye to Billy Wilder — "A brain full of razor blades and a heart full of chutzpah"
Catch Me If You Can: The Tarantino Legacy — Has Tarantino gone underground or is he revving up to zap the box office with another mega hit?
Anti-Heroics: The Superman Films of Richard Lester — In Lester’s hands this superhero ain’t nothin’ but a sandwich
in issue 35
Sure, I’ll Do It: An Interview with Robert Wise — This movie master is still busy after all these years
in issue 34
Sergei Paradjanov — What was it about this jovial, bearlike man that invoked the unending wrath of Russian censors?
Luis Buñuel on DVD
Despite his godlike status as one of cinema’s great artists and rebels, Luis Buñuel has only recently arrived on DVD
Richard Kern — Kern's trashy teens fight and fuck their way through an incomprehensible world
Herschell Gordon Lewis: The Wizard of Gore — An interview with the man who created one of cinema's most enduring genres
John Ford — Joseph McBride's new biography shows that this exceptionally powerful but also deeply flawed man hid behind his films and behind a carefully constructed identity that was always in danger of cracking, and sometimes did
in issue 33
Blood Spear, Mt. Fuji: Uchida Tomu’s Conflicted Comeback from Manchuria — Resurrection and renewal in postwar Japanese cinema, as seen through Tomu’s 1955 masterpiece
Dusan Makavejev — Free-associating with a master of free cinema
in issue 32
George Cukor: The Valor of Discretion — An affectionate look at one of cinema’s still undervalued masters
Private Eye: Abigail Child in Brief — Child’s compulsive visual collages are visual and aural legerdemain
in issue 31
Interview with John Woo — Hong Kong's master of balletic blood 'n bulletplay speaks! A 1994 interview from the Bright Lights archives.
in issue 30
Jean Cocteau — Cocteau was a brilliant, witty, self-invented personality whose talents put him at the forefront of practically every "ism" of the century, from surrealism to modernism to dada.
Akira Kurosawa — A look at the rare Kurosawa films Drunken Angel, Scandal, and I Live in Fear
Béla Tarr — The director discusses Werckmeister Harmonies in this interview conducted at the Cannes Film Festival
Lawrence Jordan — Jordan’s collage films are "moving" in two senses
Warren Sonbert — The work of an avant-garde master now restored
in issue 29
Carl Dreyer — The films of this Danish cineaste now appear among the most daring in cinema, with a visionary power that makes them unique
Russ Meyer — Russ Meyer talks about The Supervixens in this 1974 interview from the Bright Lights archives
Ian Kerkhof — Underground cinema's baddest bad boy
Jack Smith — New York’s pioneering campmeister
Luther Price — The master of Super-8 cinema takes us into the cave of the unknown, with extraordinary results
in issue 28
Ed Wood — The two-dollar auteur who never made a dime from his films is now one of cinema's most treasured outlaws, and rightly so.
Edgar G. Ulmer — In spite of lavish praise by French critic Luc Moullet (he found in Ulmer's films "the great solitude of man without God") or American critic John Belton's (he called Ulmer "one of his era's bleakest artists and one of film noir's blackest visionaries"), Ulmer has remained little known.
Richard Dindo — The eminent Swiss documentarian looks at saints and sinners of history — without telling you which are which.
in issue 27
Roger Corman — In a 1974 interview, the godfather of "New Hollywood" discusses his beloved low-budget exploitation company, New World Pictures.
James Broughton
Ecstasy for all! says the pied piper
of queer experimental film.
in issue 26
Federico Fellini — In an interview conducted after his last film, the Master speaks on life, art, and his strange dealings with the mysterious Carlos Castaneda.
The Kuchar Brothers — Major figures in the American Underground film movement of the 'sixties, George and Mike Kuchar are the acknowledged pioneers of the camp/pop aesthetic that would influence practically all who came after them, from Warhol and Waters to Vadim and Lynch.
Leni Riefenstahl — Riefenstahl, born in 1902, presents an extremely problematic case — an artist of unparalleled gifts, a woman in an industry dominated by men, one of the great formalists of the cinema on a par with Eisenstein or Welles whose two major works were funded by, and intended to glorify, the Nazis.
Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin — Between neorealism and the nouvelle vague stand Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin, whose independent feature Little Fugitive (1953) has been credited — by Francois Truffaut, who ought to know — with providing both spiritual imprimatur and nuts-and-bolts strategies for the French New Wave.
in issue 25
Martin Arnold — Martin Arnold's short black-and-white experimental films restore much of the novelty, terror, and humor of early cinema. Using elaborate optical and aural manipulations, he turns scenes from old Hollywood movies into hilariously weird, black-comic nightmares.
David DeCoteau — The auteur of Petticoat Planet and Retro-Puppetmaster discusses his kinky leatherboy arthouse epic, Leather Jacket Love Story.
in issue 24
Robert Bresson — Small gestures bring large questions from the seminal French filmmaker.
Andy Warhol — Warhol's high standing as a visual artist and cultural icon has overshadowed his radical work in the cinema, but the recent emergence of many of his early films may change some of that.
William Friedkin — Friedkin's insistence on telling his dark truths — "there is no subject that is off limits to a filmmaker," he once said — has resulted in a career studded with controversy and breakthroughs.
Sadie Benning — Sadie Benning has been a cause celebre in the queer community for almost a decade. Born in 1973 to a filmmaker father and an artist mother, she began making short films at age 15 and two years later came out as a lesbian. An iconoclast even as a teen, she employed the infamous "Pixelvision" camera in most of her early work and continues to use it.
Kurt Kren — Called the "father of postwar European avant-garde cinema" and regarded in some circles as the continental equivalent of America's Stan Brakhage, Kurt Kren (1929–1998) was an unlikely pioneer. A bank cashier by trade and by all accounts rather elfin, charming, and unassuming in manner, his films predate and predict many of the strategies of present-day radical art.
in issue 23
Frank Capra — This beloved film artist was driven as much by self-doubt as by his belief in the power of the "little man."
in issue 22
Kenji Mizoguchi — Mizoguchi, with Ozu and Kurosawa one of the three undisputed masters from the golden age of Japanese cinema, was born in 1898 in the middle class district of Hongo, in Tokyo. Two events occurred when the future director was seven that may have played a pivotal role in the kinds of films he would make.
in issue 21
Rainer Werner Fassbinder — Few filmmakers lived their private lives more publicly than Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-1982), and few have had those lives so relentlessly linked to their artistic output.
Akira Kurosawa — Akira Kurosawa has been seen as one of the three components of a kind of Holy Trinity of golden-age Japanese auteurs, with Ozu reckoned as the contemplative Father; Mizoguchi as transcendent Holy Spirit; and Kurosawa; nicknamed "the Emperor," in the role of Son.
Radley Metzger — A few of porn's pioneering directors took the sexual revolution seriously and brought more authentic gay and bi imagery into their "straight" films. Radley Metzger, whose work spans the early 'sixties through the mid-'eighties, is by far the best of this meager lot.
in issue 20
Gregory Markopoulos — How does it happen that a filmmaker once lauded as "the American avant-garde cinema's supreme erotic poet" vanishes entirely from the cultural landscape? Gregory Markopoulous was complicit in his own disappearance from the histories of modern art and cinema, where by any reasonable standard he belongs in the very forefront.
in issue 17
Paul Morrissey — Much of the myth, if we can call it that, surrounding Paul Morrissey comes out of his early relationship with Andy Warhol's Factory and its glittering, damaged denizens. In a world of stylized weirdos, Morrissey was the straight businessman, always looking for the commercial possibilities inherent in a scene where few believed any existed.
Barbara Hammer — Barbara Hammer is best known for her groundbreaking experimental film Nitrate Kisses (1992), which fearlessly broke two taboos by showing older lesbians in extended erotic embrace, all in richly detailed black and white. Hammer has been making films since the 1970s (she was one of the inspirations for Word Is Out), and wanted to create her autobiography "before someone else does it." Tender Fictions (1995) is the result — a playful, imaginative, penetrating description of an artist's life.
Allan Dwan — A 1980 interview with silent movie pioneer Allan Dwan. His thoughts on Fairbanks, Shirley Temple, Ronald Reagan, and all the "pansies and poseurs of Hollywood." No one was safe from the cruel barbs of the Great Auteur!
in issue 16
Russ Meyer — Behind that mountain of oversized tits-and-ass that make up Russ Meyer's 'body' of work is an extremely intelligent, charming, and funny man, well-versed in cinema history and pop culture.
Ed Wood — The "world's worst director" never apologized for wearing women's clothes, though many have questioned his taste in sweaters.
in issue 15
Gregg Araki — In an interview, Araki talks about his film-school influences — Godard, Bresson — and the violent "nightmares" he thoughtfully brings to audiences.
in issue 14
Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles — A case can be made that much of Hitchcock's Psycho, including some of its most memorable and disturbing elements, is taken from Orson Welles' Touch of Evil.
Allie Light — Our conversation with the director of Dialogues with Madwomen. Using a mixture of home movies, archival footage of psycho wards, re-enactments, and interviews with her subjects, Light has created a complex, moving portrait of women in whom depression, schizophrenia, and multiple personalities coexist with powerful, sometimes inspired levels of creativity.
