If you had to sum up what it’s like to talk with Elliot Lavine, cinema programmer extraordinaire, scholar of film history and engaging raconteur, it might be the moment when an emergency vehicle went by the room where I was interviewing him on February 17, 2106. While ruminating on studio policies about film restoration, he… Read More »
THE GIRL KING — Mika Kaurismaki Interview
A film about a Swedish queen, directed by a Finnish filmmaker, and performed in English. That’s Mika Kaurismaki’s THE GIRL KING, the story of Queen Christina, an 18th-century monarch, raised as a boy, who fell in love with her lady-in-waiting, and abdicated her throne in order to convert to Catholicism and live a more satisfying… Read More »
20 Years of Glorious Silence — Anita Monga on the 2015 San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Anita Monga, Artistic Director of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, is a treasure trove of all things to do with silent cinema. Every time I talk with her, I learn something new, and every year at the festival that she oversees so lovingly, I see a selection of films that are the perfect distillation… Read More »