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'Reality Bites' Captured Gen X With Perfect Irony

The 1994 studio film was written by a 20-something who mined her own life to tell the story of a generation that disdained 'selling out.'

Colorizing and Fictionalizing the Past

The technical wizardry of Peter Jackson's "They Shall Not Grow Old" should not obscure its narrow, outdated storyline.
Still from early film of an African American man.

Solomon Sir Jones Films, 1924-1928

The Solomon Sir Jones films consist of 29 silent black and white films documenting African-American communities in Oklahoma from 1924 to 1928.

A Skyline Is Born

A history of filmmakers retelling the story of New York’s architecture.

Mayberry Machiavelli

The self-congratulatory legacies of ‘A Face in the Crowd.’

How Does a Film Become Lost?

What happens when “lost” films and television shows become found once again—and what that does to the work’s cultural legacy.

Two Ways of Looking at the Bisbee Deportation

A century-old image and the film it inspired.

How John Wayne Became a Hollow Masculine Icon

The actor’s persona was inextricable from the toxic culture of Cold War machismo.

Sexism and Male Voyeurism Have Been Intertwined Throughout Movie History

Harvey Weinstein and the history of the male cinematic gaze.

Who Was the Most Prolific Black Filmmaker of the Silent Film Era?

Who was the most prolific African American filmmaker of the silent film era? That’s a question that has us asking, “were there any?”
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.
Robed Ku Klux Klan members on horseback, in a scene from "Birth of a Nation."

First Movie in the White House: ‘Birth of a Nation’

A book traces how the 1915 film reshaped cinema, fueled white supremacy, and sparked protests, censorship battles, and lasting cultural debate.
Director Edwin Carewe and studio owner Louis B. Mayer on a film set.

Moguls: Did the Jews Invent Hollywood?

Anti-Hollywood rhetoric often echoed anti-Jewish stereotypes. Carr shows how fears of Jewish “control” shaped debates over movies, culture, and politics.
Oscar Micheaux on set in 1923

Building an Empire

On the pioneering and problematic career of Oscar Micheaux.
Directors Sarah Botstein and Ken Burns look at a bust of George Washington

Ken Burns’s Wake-Up Call

Ken Burns’s newest docuseries may have its shortcomings, but others looking to tell the story of the Founding could learn from his attention to detail.

How the Story of the American Revolution Is Misunderstood

Ken Burns’s new documentary unpacks the Revolutionary War—and explains why history doesn’t repeat, even if human nature never changes.
Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein

“A Story We Think We Know”: Ken Burns on The American Revolution

Burns and co-director Sarah Botstein discuss their six-part, 10-year labor of love, which finally makes it to PBS on November 16.
Screen capture of Robert Redford in the film "Sneakers"

Robert Redford, Environmentalism, and the Most Prescient Movie Ever Made

Redford’s legacy as an environmental activist and his 1992 film "Sneakers" reveal his foresight on climate, politics, and surveillance.
Painting of Ancient Rome, by Giovanni Paolo Panini, 1757.
partner

All the World’s America’s Stage — Even Ancient Rome

Gladiator and Gladiator II have little to do with the Roman past. But they have a great deal to do with the American present.
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.
Screen shot from Carrie in which a bloody hand grabs a girl.

The Startling History of the Jump Scare

From 1942's "Cat People" to cerebral jolts in "Hereditary" and "Get Out," this cinematic scare tactic still shocks.
Characters in the 1934 film "The Thin Man."

Fools in Love

Screwball comedies are beloved films, but for decades historians and critics have disagreed over what the genre is and which movies belong to it.
From left, Sam Warner, Harry M. Warner, Jack L. Warner, and Albert Warner.

Are Hollywood’s Jewish Founders Worth Defending?

Jews in the industry called for the Academy Museum to highlight the men who created the movie business. A voice in my head went, Uh-oh.
Richard Dreyfuss plays shark expert Hooper in Steven Spielberg’s classic 1975 film, “Jaws.”

The Stories Hollywood Tells About America

How three movies set on the Fourth of July reproduce popular myth, but reveal even more through what they leave unsaid.
Four Black Marvel villains.

Marvel's Black Villain Era

The question of villainy has always been a complicated issue for African Americans in film.
Person in a red veil.

Connecting with Trans History, Rebellion, and Joy, in “Compton’s 22”

Transgender people's reactions to watching oral histories of the legacy of a 1966 riot in the Tenderloin that was nearly lost to history.
Still from Pretty Poison (1968).

The All-American Crack-Up in 1960s Hollywood Cinema

Starting in the 1960s, more and more Hollywood films depicted an increasingly violent and alienated American society quickly losing its mind.
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.
Harry Smith pointing finger upward

Outsider’s Outsider

At once famous and obscure, marginal and central, Harry Smith anticipated and even invented several important elements of Sixties counterculture.
Silhouette of Oppenheimer wearing a fedora.

How Do We Know the Motorman Is Not Insane?

Oppenheimer and the demon heart of power.

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