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Still frame from a slow motion sequence in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde shows actress grimacing inside a vehicle.

How Slow Motion Became Cinema’s Dominant Special Effect

The turbulent late sixties saw the technique’s popularity explode—and it’s been helping moviemakers engage with the unsettling tempos of modern life ever since.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via The New Republic on June 27, 2025
Sam Peckinpah looks into a film camera.

The Noble Savagery of Sam Peckinpah

“Bloody Sam” was born one hundred years ago this month.
by Christopher Sandford via Modern Age on February 19, 2025
A man sits at a bar countertop. His face is turned away from the camera.

1973: A Golden Year for Film That Rewrote the Rules of Cinema

It was a year that showcased the audacious talent in Hollywood experimenting with darker themes and new film techniques.
by Lesley Harbidge via The Conversation on September 12, 2023
A man scuba diving.

Filming the Deep: Underwater Film Technologies

The author of a new book, The Underwater Eye, discusses how film enables audiences "to connect to the most remote environment on the planet: the ocean."
by John Plotz, Margaret Cohen via Public Books on March 23, 2023

A Skyline Is Born

A history of filmmakers retelling the story of New York’s architecture.
by Tatum Dooley via Lapham’s Quarterly on November 14, 2018
Virginia Tracy.

Is Virginia Tracy the First Great American Film Critic?

The actress, screenwriter, and novelist’s reviews and essays from 1918-19 display a comprehensive grasp of movie art and a visionary sense of its future.
by Richard Brody via The New Yorker on November 25, 2024
Scenes of Stephen Speilburg on set from the filming of Jaws

‘Jaws Became a Living Nightmare’: Steven Spielberg's Ultimate Tell-All Interview

“It was made under the worst of conditions,” the filmmaker reveals in a new book. “People versus the eternal sea. The sea won the battle.”
by Steven Spielberg, Anthony Breznican, Laurent Bouzereau via Vanity Fair on July 27, 2023
Production reference photos of "Wizard of Oz" cast members in their wigs and make-up.

What Hollywood’s Ultimate Oral History Reveals

For all the clouds of publicity, the dream machine is actually a craft business. Have we asked too much of it?
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on November 28, 2022
Eight frames (in two rows of four) from "How It Feels To Be Run Over." The top four show a carriage full of people traveling along the road approaching the camera, while the bottom four read "Mother will be pleased."

“Mother Will Be Pleased”: "How It Feels to Be Run Over" (1900)

One of the earliest uses of intertitles, in this fin-de-siècle accident picture we can observe cinema discovering new forms of communication.
by Hunter Dukes via The Public Domain Review on October 6, 2022
Noble Johnson (left rear), Jimmie Smith, and Beulah Hall in “The Trooper of Troop K”

Looking (and Looking Again) at Black Film History

Uncovering the earliest surviving fragment of Black-produced cinema.
by Cary O'Dell via Library of Congress Blog on October 4, 2022
Screen capture of a Black man standing in an urban residential neighborhood, speaking in the documentary "Who Killed the Fourth Ward?"

How “Who Killed Fourth Ward?” Challenged the Nature of Documentary Filmmaking

James Blue’s film investigated the destruction of a Black neighborhood in Houston, but it is also a powerful self-interrogation.
by Richard Brody via The New Yorker on January 21, 2022
Still from "Apocolypse Now"

How a Wagner Opera Defined the Sound of Hollywood Blockbusters

“Ride of the Valkyries” has been featured in hundreds of films, including 'The Birth of a Nation,' 'Jarhead,' and most famously, Apocalypse Now.'
by Alex Ross via The New Yorker on September 15, 2020
Broadway New York 1893

Perilous Proceedings

Documenting the New York City construction boom at the turn of the 20th century.
by David Gibson via Library of Congress on June 29, 2020

‘1917’ and the Trouble With War Movies

"Every film about war ends up being pro-war," Francois Truffaut once said.
by Adam Nayman via The Ringer on January 29, 2020

How Spaghetti Westerns Shaped Modern Cinema

In the realism, the set pieces, the operatic music, Sergio Leone was pointing the way towards modern filmmaking.
by Quentin Tarantino via The Spectator on June 1, 2019
Photograph of murder victim by Weegee.

The Lost World of Weegee

Depression-era Americans viewed urban life in America through the lens of Weegee’s camera.
by Terry Teachout via Commentary on August 1, 2018
Atticus Finch and children at the diningroom table in the film "To Kill a Mockingbird."

Prop and Property

The house in American cinema, from the plantation to Chavez Ravine.
by John David Rhodes via Places Journal on December 1, 2017

Explore the Early Years of Technicolor Film in 40,000 Documents

The Technicolor Online Research Archive has newly digitized documents from 1914 to 1955, chronicling the development of Technicolor film.
by Allison C. Meier via Hyperallergic on August 29, 2017

The History of American Fear

An interview with horror historian David J. Skal.
by Cori Brosnahan, David J. Skal via PBS on October 28, 2016
Orson Welles

A Hundred Years of Orson Welles

He was said to have gone into decline, but his story is one of endurance—even of unlikely triumph.
by Alex Ross via The New Yorker on November 30, 2015
Movie poster for Warfare, 2025.
partner

War Stories Without the History

Films about the Iraq War prize “truth-telling,” but don’t offer many insights about the war itself.
by Jake Pitre via HNN on July 1, 2025
Collage of gay film covers

Good Queers and Bad Queers

Myths are fed back as stereotypes and strawmen to divine some boundary for acceptability.
by KJ Shepherd via Contingent on June 27, 2025
A contact sheet of portraits of James Baldwin, 1972.

For Those Who Would Be Real

James Baldwin’s testimony in images.
by Harmony Holiday via Harper’s on April 29, 2025
Henry Fonda in The Best Man (1984).

President of the Nameless: Alexander Horwath on Henry Fonda for President

A documentary dissects Henry Fonda's character and his role in American cinema.
by A. S. Hamrah, Alexander Horwath via Screen Slate on April 7, 2025
Illustration of man throwing football to sports broadcaster.

Before and After the Contest: Wraparound Sportscasting Through the Ages

National Football League pre- and postgame shows have become a testing ground for novel technology in the waning days of linear television.
by Chloe Lizotte via Mubi on August 1, 2024
Three men fight on a rooftop, above a large city on a river.

The Golden Age of the Paranoid Political Thriller

On the grand tradition of movies reflecting a deep distrust of those in charge.
by Keith Roysdon via CrimeReads on March 25, 2024
James Baldwin.

What James Baldwin Saw

A documentary that follows the writer’s late-in-life journey to the South chronicles his vision for Black politics in a post–Civil Rights era world.
by Kelli Weston via The Nation on March 5, 2024
Ink drawing of Buster Keaton's face against pale pink background

Keep Your Eye on the Kid

Buster Keaton made his own kind of sense out of the perplexities of existence in ways baffling to those among whom he found himself.
by Geoffrey O'Brien via New York Review of Books on September 29, 2022
A chipping mural depicting Fred Hampton, subject of the film Judas and the Black Messiah.

History Lessons on Film: Reconsidering Judas and the Black Messiah

Historians should watch films like Judas and the Black Messiah as much for their filmmaking as their history making.
by Nathalie Barton via Perspectives on History on June 3, 2021
Still from Saving Private Ryan, depicting soldiers in a landing craft.

How Saving Private Ryan's Best Picture Loss Changed the Oscars Forever

More than just an upset, "Saving Private Ryan" losing the Best Picture Oscar to "Shakespeare in Love" changed how Academy Awards are won.
by David Crow via Den Of Geek on April 13, 2021
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