Activist & Political · Drama · Essays · War · Writers & Critics
The response to The Deer Hunter amounted to a serious public debate over the Vietnam War that extended beyond film critics to engage a wide range of viewers. It wasn’t[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Documentaries · Interviews
Editor’s note: This is the first of two interviews (next up: Nanni Moretti) our correspondent Amir Ganjavie conducted with directors at the 2016 Berlin Film Festival (Feb. 11-21). Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire[…]
Activist & Political · Crime · Historical & Epic · War
The killers were more than willing to help and, when we filmed them boastfully describing their crimes against humanity, we met no resistance whatsoever. All doors were open. Local police[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Animation
Is it inconceivable that instead of taking on the forces of the underworld, the title character, Princess Tiana, do battle with the very real racist prejudice and legal injustice that[…]
One member of the meeting, Bohdan Poremba, called Interrogation a “premeditated lie” and, in perhaps the strangest criticism of the film, expressed his disappointment that it only showed a few[…]
Activist & Political · Counterculture · Essays
The challenge is to convince the suits who kept recycling dramas about state-legitimized violence to get on board with the notion that counterculture or revolutionary violence can also sell. When[…]
Activist & Political · Essays · War
American Sniper becomes neither a post-ideological assertion of the nobility of the soldier forced to reflect on his own beliefs, nor a latter-day western investigating the presence of violence at[…]
From the margins, both a “crazy man” and visionary artists can ask: How can leaders govern when language has been debased and words no longer have true meaning? * *[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Interviews
Hope is the title, half ironic, half resolutely sincere, of a stunning film about African migrants trekking across a continent’s most forbidding landscapes to reach the promised land of Europe.[…]
Activist & Political · Actors & Personalities · War
Angelina Jolie may be among our best hopes to end the cruel and vile practice of mass rape in conflict. She has a bully pulpit as a rich and famous[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Directors · Reviews
“Do the Right Thing ends the morning after Radio Raheem’s death, but we have enough details to know how the rest of the narrative will play out. Radio Raheem was[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Festivals & Awards
The Fifth Odessa International Film Festival was destined to be unlike its previous editions. Only two months previously, Odessa suffered an unprecedented peak in civil violence with the death of[…]
Activist & Political · Asian · Reviews
“Something is rotten in the state of Kashmir” – Improvising Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It has taken rather long for a feature film set in Kashmir to get critical acclaim for its[…]
Activist & Political · Essays · Horror · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part,[…]
Activist & Political · Reviews
“As the divide between rich and poor became more extreme, late 20th-century cinema required a new approach to achieve the same end: portraying the existence of the wealthy elite as[…]
“According to documents provided by the US Department of Justice, in the year he received almost $1 million for the rights to his memoir, Belfort made restitution payments totaling just[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Discussed in this essay: The Battle of AmFar (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, 2013); Dallas Buyers Club (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2013); How to Survive a Plague (David France, 2012); The Normal[…]
Activist & Political · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
“It’s not blood, it’s red” – Jean-Luc Godard A few weeks ago Abdelaziz Bouteflika was re-elected for a fourth time as president of Algeria with 81.5% of the vote. Most[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries
“The problem with the media is that they oppose change, and turn people against the revolution,” Khalid tells his dad. His Quixotic character is evident: “I am going to keep[…]
Activist & Political · Actors & Personalities · Asian
This article originally appeared in slightly different form in the March 1997 issue of Bright Lights. While limited to the history up to that time, it remains sadly relevant. *[…]
