Menu
Idea

filmmakers

92
Filter by:

Filter by published date

Irving Thalberg and his wife, with Louis Mayer.

The Wizard Behind Hollywood’s Golden Age

How Irving Thalberg helped turn M-G-M into the world’s most famous movie studio—and gave the film business a new sense of artistry and scale.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on June 9, 2025
Protestors hold anti-communist picket signs outside of a theatre

The Grim Timeliness of “Noir and the Blacklist”

A new Criterion series of McCarthy-era noir films is a timely collection for an era of rising government repression.
by Eileen Jones via Jacobin on May 4, 2025
Four men posing with a monument with the Ten Commandments engraved on it.

Thou Shalt Not

How a Hollywood marketing campaign was responsible for the Ten Commandments being displayed in public all across the country.
by Kevin M. Kruse via Campaign Trails on June 19, 2024
Spielberg and Henry Thomas in a scene on the set of E.T.

The Auteur of Fatherhood: How Steven Spielberg Recast American Masculinity

Steven Spielberg’s early films conjure all of his moviemaking magic to repair a world of lost dads.
by Phillip Maciak via The Yale Review on March 4, 2024
Maria P. Williams, 1916.

The First Black Woman to Write, Produce, and Act in Her Own Film

Maria P. Williams pioneered filmmaking for African American women, but her life is even more thrilling than her sole film.
by Jennie Knuppel via The Saturday Evening Post on February 29, 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
Jewish actress and filmmaker Ellen Richter, striking a pose on screen while two men give her suspicious looks.

The Silences of the Silent Era

We can’t allow the impression of a historical lack of diversity in the art form to limit access to the industry today.
by Pamela Hutchinson via Current [The Criterion Collection] on November 30, 2021
Alfred Hitchcock directing

The Haunted Imagination of Alfred Hitchcock

How the master of suspense got his sadistic streak.
by John Banville via The New Republic on April 1, 2021

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
Charlayne Hunter-Gault, far left, interviewing Black filmmakers Mario Van Peebles, Neema Barnette, John Singleton, Reginald Hudlin, and Warrington Hudlin (left to right).
partner

Soul of Black Identity: New Jack Cinema

A conversation with some of the hottest filmmakers on the scene: They're young, they're Black, but they're making green.
by MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour via American Archive of Public Broadcasting on August 16, 1991
Filmmaker William Greaves at a desk with turntables, film reels, and screens.
partner

The Black Filmmaker

A look at racism in movie-making.
by Black Journal via American Archive of Public Broadcasting on September 28, 1970
Film still from "Three Seasons" of a flower seller in Vietnam.

Tony Bui on the Vietnam War’s Cinematic Legacy

Films from Vietnam and Hollywood testify to the range of stories told about the war on-screen and the different memories they embody.
by Will Noah, Tony Bui via Current [The Criterion Collection] on April 29, 2025
The title card of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead.

George Romero’s Pittsburgh

City of the living dead.
by Victoria Timpanaro via The Metropole on February 20, 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
Elaine May and Walter Matthau sitting on a bench in May’s film A New Leaf.

May Days

A new biography of an elusive comic talent.
by Lizzy Harding via Bookforum on February 11, 2025
A painting of a large camera on a film set, surrounded by green screens.

Casual Viewing

Why Netflix looks like that.
by Will Tavlin via n+1 on December 16, 2024
A drawing of a skeletal hand erupting from the ground and separating a house with a Harris/Walz sign and a house with a Trump/Vance sign. Face masks float in the wind.

There’s a Very Specific Issue Haunting This Election. No One Is Talking About It.

You can bury it. But you can’t escape it.
by Grady Hendrix via Slate on October 31, 2024
Still from the film Medium Cool, 1969.

That Ain't Cool

Capturing the 1968 DNC.
by Sammy Feldblum via The Baffler on August 20, 2024
Black women gathered in discussion for an episode of "Black Journal."

“The Black Woman”

Black women activism within documentary films in the 1960s United States.
by Manar Ellethy via Journal of the History of Ideas Blog on April 10, 2024
Cesar Chavez standing next to Luis Valdez.

Cesar Chavez, Family and Filmmaking with Luis Valdez

Luis Valdez on his friendship with Cesar Chavez, his works in the National Film Registry, and a lifetime of activism.
by Luis Valdez, Stacie Seifrit-Griffin via Library of Congress Blog on March 27, 2024
A collage of suggestive images of women, a woman holding a camera, and a red letter X.

How Candida Royalle Set Out to Reinvent Porn

As a feminist in the adult-film industry, she believed the answer wasn’t banning porn; it was better porn.
by Margaret Talbot via The New Yorker on March 18, 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
Mario Van Peebles in Outlaw Posse.

How a Century of Black Westerns Shaped Movie History

Mario Van Peebles' "Outlaw Posse" is the latest attempt to correct the erasure of people of color from the classic cinema genre.
by Chris Klimek via Smithsonian on March 1, 2024
Charlie Chaplin in a still from “The Great Dictator.”

The War on Charlie Chaplin

He was one of the world’s most celebrated and beloved stars. Then his adopted country turned against him.
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on November 13, 2023
Still from the film "Killers of the Flower Moon."

The Real History Behind 'Killers of the Flower Moon'

Martin Scorsese's new film revisits the murders of wealthy Osages in Oklahoma in the 1920s
by Meilan Solly via Smithsonian on October 18, 2023
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
Cillian Murphy in the movie "Oppenheimer."

‘Oppenheimer’ Doesn’t Show us Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That's an Act of Rigor, Not Erasure

The movie has no interest in reducing the atomic bombings to a trivializing, exploitative spectacle, despite what some would want.
by Justin Chang via Los Angeles Times on August 11, 2023
Max Fleischer’s Superman

On the Men Who Lent Their Bodies (and Voices) to the Earliest Iterations of Superman

A wrestler, a Sunday school teacher, and a mystery man walk into a studio.
by Paul Morton via Literary Hub on August 10, 2023
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
Movie poster for "Bad Day at Black Rock."

Buried in the Sand

On John Sturges’s “Bad Day at Black Rock” and Japanese America.
by Jonathan van Harmelen via Los Angeles Review of Books on July 27, 2023
View More
30 of
92

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History