Activist & Political · Actors & Personalities · Communism and Socialism · Race · Women in Film
At every turn, Muir was disobedient, unconventional, and disruptive; she simply didn’t care what people thought. At no point did it occur to her that she should curb her activism,[…]
Animals · Documentaries · German Cinema · Nature
I will be writing about just what his meticulous and brilliant use of archival footage in these films does to the stories, and how there is a thread connecting them[…]
Activist & Political · Comedy · Drama
It’s easy to mistake The Sweet East for a progressive indictment of modern America, with its gun-wielding conspiracy theorists and predatory authority figures – but they belie a blasé politics[…]
Documentaries · India · Labor · Uncategorized
While complaints about the industry’s orchestration of emotions and personality were commonplace, some workers also celebrated the prerogative of assembling new identities (58). Moreover, their exposure to Western cultural habits[…]
Books · Drama · German Cinema · LGBT & Queer · Melodrama
Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors by Ian Penman (Semiotext(e), May 2023, pp. 200, $11.99. * * * In William Motley’s best-selling 1947 novel Knock on Any Door, the author cites an adage that[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Comics · Eastern European · Hollywood
S. Z. Sakall’s ultra-rare 1954 memoir, The Story of Cuddles, attests that there was more to the comic actor than adorable fretfulness and jiggly jowls * * * He was[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · French Cinema · New Genres · New Media
This impression of the look being “renewed” through the radical potential of video to sharpen one’s perception is vital to the core philosophy at the centre of Here and Elsewhere,[…]
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[…]
André De Toth knew from the very beginning that he had to create a larger-than-life persona for him to be trusted with directing a picture. So he played the European[…]
African · African American · Drama · Essays · Exile and Displacement · Family · Historical & Epic · Race · SF & Fantasy
A think piece discussing the movies Antebellum, Black Panther, Django Unchained, Get Out, and Us. It compares their reception and portrayal of anti-black racism and black suffering, via the lens[…]
Absurdism · Experimental & Underground · Indies
The Forbidden Zone was made simultaneously to David Lynch’s Eraserhead, and they indicate, even from the fringes of California filmmaking, a coming zeitgeist, soundings of something that wed the violence[…]
Books · Directors · Writers & Critics
It would be easy – and fun – to focus entirely on the good and to co-sign his [Tarantino’s] praise for films that are also favorites of mine such as[…]
African American · Animals · Drama · Hollywood · Surrealism
In this instance, the look is also a threat to those doing the looking. The act of seeing can be damaging not only to the target but also to the[…]
Absurdism · DIY · Experimental & Underground · Horror
“I felt there was a dead end to the kind of films I was making. . . . I was losing sight of reason in favor of result and so[…]
Counterculture · Dialogue · Drama · Romance
The subsequent dialogue between the two films developed after much negotiation and cajoling. They were inclined to be hostile to the other. I tried to inform them about their common[…]
If Curtis Harrington had not had the ruined mall of hell unveiled to the world in 1905 as Venice of America as a setting for his occult fable, he might[…]
Drama · Dreams · Essays · French Cinema
to Lyssa You either go mad, or you learn about metaphors. – Allie Light * * * fou (masculine): crazy, mad, madman; see l’amour fou folle (feminine): crazy, mad, madwoman;[…]
Billy Wilder (1906-2002) died on March 27, age 95. We honor him by reposting Jason Carpenter’s fine analysis of the master’s work, first published in Bright Lights in 2016. *[…]
Animation · Animators · Designers · Experimental & Underground
John Whitney himself envisioned nothing more and nothing less for the future of CGI than a union of space and time: “Time has become visual.” But all film deals in[…]
DIY · Experimental & Underground · Exploitation & Erotica · Film Culture · Impresarios · Outsiders · Programmers
He told me about when his piano player canceled out of a silent movie performance. “I walked outside during the kiddie matinee and saw some young people loading musical instruments[…]
