Robert Keser is Senior Lecturer in Cinema Studies at the Red Sea Institute of Cinematic Arts in Aqaba, Jordan. He has written for the Pesaro Film Festival (Italy), the Jeonju Film Festival (South Korea), the Las Palmas International Film Festival (Spain), and the Melbourne Cinémathèque (Australia). He wrote thirty-two entries in Defining Moments in Movies, edited by Chris Fujiwara, and more of his film writing can be found at Senses of Cinema, Slant, and other publications. 
African American · Historical & Epic · Reviews
Editor’s note: Bob Keser passed away on Oct. 5, 2015, from cardiac arrest, age 72. Although we never met, he was an important member of the Bright Lights team and a[…]
Books · LGBT & Queer · Producers & Studios
“He won’t be gay when I get through with him!” Revisiting legendary gay agent Henry Willson via Robert Hafler’s biography Henry Willson, The Man Who Invented Hollywood * * *[…]
“Probably the only film that dwarfs the spectacle of David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Chronicle also challenges that British hero’s often chilly pathology with its own surge of powerfully accruing life-and-death incidents in the survival struggles of farmer Ahmed.”
“The cinema exists to record the moment when souls become visible.” –Jean-Michel Frodon
Activist & Political · Festivals & Awards
“For a brief week or two, adventurous filmgoers can capture elusive truths found in works of complexity, moral ambiguity, and seriousness of purpose, all uncensored.”
“We will see whose heart is sharpest!”
“It’s not enough to like this movie” He has been called the Kissinger of Cinema and the King of Cannes. Quentin Tarantino describes him as “a samurai warrior for films[…]
“Go sit on a flagpole!” Film is inherently fragile, so no success story feels more impressive or heartening than the sudden reappearance of an artwork thought irretrievably lost in the[…]
They saw what you did! Could anyone foresee, when six nations signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957, that this economic agreement would evolve into the unprecedented political experiment called[…]
“There are things you shouldn’t sell” For the festival’s 42nd annual opening night, the 3,000-seat Chicago Theatre threw open its doors and watched the convergence on the red carpet as[…]
Not since Amélie stuck raspberries on all ten fingers has such whimsy wafted off the screen, though Michel Gondry’s hero in the wistful yet delightfully goofy The Science of[…]
Hollywoodland is hardly the first film to feature a brace of matinee idols who smirk with all the confidence of the well-paid (consult most buddy movies starting with Butch Cassidy[…]
In the great generic title tradition of Woman In the Window, Girl On the Bridge and Female On the Beach comes M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady In the Water, though she’s[…]
A Baltic-to-Balkan road trip No passports or visas were needed to check in at the 9th Annual European Union Film Festival, nor did one have to be an actual European[…]
“Godard 24 times per second” “I need a day to tell the history of a second, a year to tell the history of a minute, a lifetime to tell the[…]
What the devil did they show? As soon as the black-and-white festival banners went up along Michigan Avenue, Chicago’s moviegoing public braced for the coming onslaught of 101 features (and[…]
Animation · LGBT & Queer · Reviews · TV & Streaming
He’s fun-damental, not fundamentalist! He’s a Candide for the 21st century, facing the everyday predicaments of the human condition with a sunny optimism and unreasonable zest that seem borderline manic,[…]
Suzuki blows morning glories “No man should love a raccoon.” Wise words indeed, even if they address a problem few will encounter, but that’s one lesson taught in Seijun Suzuki’s[…]
Documentaries · Music & Musicals · Reviews
“You start having to wash two times a day and grow hair in weird places.” “I like moving my hips, a lot!” That’s one preteen girl enthusing about the pleasures[…]
Doing the Continental
