May 28 Conversation: Debra Granik, Director of Sundance Favorite 'Winter's Bone' By Molly Finnegan In "Winter's Bone" -- originally a novel by Daniel Woodrell and now a film by director Debra Granik -- 17-year-old Ree Dolly must find her troubled father who has disappeared just as he put up the family's house as bail. Continue reading
May 14 Conversation: Director Alex Gibney on 'Casino Jack and the United States of Money' By Molly Finnegan It involves casinos, the murder of a Greek tycoon, intrigue in Washington and much more. But the film, "Casino Jack and the United States of Money" is a documentary unwinding the trail of super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- once a powerful… Continue reading
Mar 25 'Sweetgrass' Documents a Dying Tradition Through Quiet Observation Sweetgrass, a film by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash (a husband-wife team of visual anthropologists currently working at Harvard), documents one of the last of these journeys with lush, yet unsentimental intimacy. Continue reading
Mar 17 An Unseen Modern China, Now On-Screen at the MoMA Inside China, the country at the heart of our new, global economy, one director is projecting a very different view of what modernization looks like in real human terms. Continue reading