News

The New York Times put prestigious specialty home-video distributor The Criterion Collection under a microscope late last week, and the headline said it all: “How the Criterion Collection Crops Out African-American Directors.” The report looked at all 22 years and more than 1,000 titles in the Criterion’s revered selection of Blu-rays and DVDs of films, finding that only four African Americans are represented: Oscar Micheaux (“Body and Soul”); William Greaves; Charles Burnett (“To Sleep With Anger”); and Spike Lee (“Do the Right Thing” and “Bamboozled”).

It’s a glaring omission for a company that prides itself on licensing and releasing what it describes as “important classic and contemporary films,” but also reflective of an industry-wide practice of shutting out Black filmmakers.

Despite America’s changing demographics, the industry’s most powerful leaders have been slow to respond to a demand for films that reflect cultural and racial shifts that have long been underway.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSNext year's Sundance Film Festival has received permission from the Park City Council to be seven days rather than 11. The festival will also have limited capacity in theatres to address public health concerns. Recommended VIEWINGEvery Thursday in August, MoMa is streaming selections of historic films from its collection in a series titled Film Vault Summer Camp. In episode 1, collection specialist Ashley Swinnerton introduces The Flying Train and Great Actresses of the Past.In a new video essay for Little White Lies, Luís Azevedo explores the role of kitchens in the films of Pedro Almodóvar.From Netflix, the official trailer for Charlie Kaufman's psychological thriller I'm Thinking of Ending Things, adapted from the bestselling novel by Iain Reid. Recommended READINGAbove: Ja'Tovia Gary by JerSean Golatt for the New York Times. For the New York Times,...

Mubi's series Double Bill: Bill Gunn is showing July - December, 2020 in the United States.How daring to make a Black picture without a race problem. So daring that the critics stateside assailed Ganja & Hess (1973), so befuddled were they by the vision of director Bill Gunn. He took them famously to task in a New York Times op-ed, which pointedly condemned the whiteness of film criticism. Gunn died in 1989, but his gripe remains unfortunately pertinent today, and at this moment, when much of mainstream media attention afforded to Black films has taken the shape of anti-racist watch lists. These are useful as educational fodder, but less so on the front of appreciating and valuing films from Black directors absent from conversations about art and cinema today—including Gunn’s.Gunn acted in Kathleen Collins’s Losing Ground (1982) and rubbed elbows with James Dean and Marlon Brando. He wrote the...

For our most comprehensive year-end feature, we’re providing a cumulative look at The Film Stage’s favorite films of 2018. We’ve asked our contributors to compile ten-best lists with five honorable mentions–those personal lists will be shared in the coming days–and, after tallying the votes, a top 50 has been assembled.

It should be noted that, unlike our previous year-end features, we placed no requirement on a selection being a U.S theatrical release, so you may see some repeats from last year and a few we’ll certainly be discussing more during the next twelve months. So, without further ado, check out our rundown of 2018 below, our ongoing year-end coverage here (including where to stream many of the below picks), and return in the coming weeks as we look towards 2019.

50. Ash is Purest White (Jia Zhangke)

For over two decades the filmmaker Jia Zhangke has, through his movies,...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday.

Now that 2018 is coming to an end and most critics have already filed their “best of the year” lists, we’ve decided to step away from new releases for a moment, and shift focus to older movies that members of our survey fell in love with for the first time this year.

This week’s question: What was the best “older” film — anything from the early silents to recent under-the-radar gems — that you discovered for the first time this year?

Carlos Aguilar (@Carlos_Film), The Wrap, MovieMaker Magazine, Remezcla

Late last year, I went to see Samuel Maoz’s “Foxtrot” and walked out a different person. The Israeli drama about a couple waiting on news of their soldier son had simultaneously devastated my psyche and shown me a refined and measured film...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Film Society of Lincoln Center

Films by Bonello, Rivette, Akerman, Carax, and more screen in “The Female Gaze,” a retrospective of female cinematographers. Read our piece on it here.

Metrograph

The rarely screened work of Yoshishige Yoshida gets a three-title outing, while a look at the films of actor and director Gérard Blain is underway.

In today’s film news roundup, Jane Fonda and Elizabeth Olsen are set to be honored by the Environmental Media Association, David Ninh gets a new gig, and elephant documentary “Love & Bananas” gets a release.

Honors

The Environmental Media Association will honor Jane Fonda, Ray Halbritter, Mike Sullivan, and Elizabeth Olsen on June 9 at its Honors Benefit Gala in Los Angeles.

Fonda will receive the Female Ema Lifetime Achievement Award and Halbritter, CEO of Oneida Nation Enterprises, will be given the Male Ema Lifetime Achievement Award. Olsen will receive the Ema Futures Award. Sullivan, owner of LAcarGuy, has been selected for the Ema Corporate Responsibility Award.

Past Ema Honors recipients include Michael Bloomberg, Sir Richard Branson, Matt Damon, Elon Musk, Natalie Portman, Jaden Smith, Justin Timberlake, and Shailene Woodley.

Fonda and Halbritter are both longtime champions of the Environmental Media Association and Halbritter is a member of its board of directors.

“I’ve liked every script I’ve ever written,” Bill Gunn told an interviewer in 1971, “I’ve hated every movie made from them.” It’s a prickly statement for a screenwriter, especially one with such a precarious reputation: fresh off two box-office failures, Gunn had already scandalized Warner Brothers with the wildly pan-sexual “Stop,” which the studio funded but then refused to release. Two years later Gunn would write and direct the gonzo vampire freak-out “Ganja and Hess,” making his greatest cinematic contribution while functionally ending his film career.

The quotation feels especially prescient now, more than 20 years after Gunn’s death, from encephalitis at age 54. His résumé is dismally short, filled with broken projects that range from the entirely ruined (prior to release, “Ganja and Hess” was carved up by the studio, reduced to a cheesy Blaxpoitation flick called “Blood Couple”) to the slightly mussed (Hal Ashby’s “The Landlord”). “Ganja,...