Film
bell hooks’s Heartbreak Church
By Ayanna DozierAcross her 40 years as an author, hooks prioritized film as the leading site of insurrectional possibility that could radicalize the body to practice love. Across criticism, theory, and interviews with filmmakers, hooks wrestled with the liberatory possibilities that Black feminism specifically brings to image-making.
Sean Baker’s Red Rocket
By Mark LabowskieSean Baker’s new film about a washed-up porn star provokes questions regarding moral knots that movies and audiences continue to struggle with, since movies so easily make terrible behavior seem incredibly appealing. The problem of fun and the problem of pleasure are perhaps best attended through a critical queer cinema lens.
Aaron Baker’s The Baseball Film
By Laura ValenzaThe Baseball Film is as much about the history of film as it is about the history of Major League Baseball. Baker weaves together conversations in sports and film to create a critical guidebook that surveys the work done on baseball in both film studies and historical studies of the sport.
In Conversation
Anti-Banality Union with Andreas Petrossiants
This anonymous group of filmmakers has just released their film Earth II, which premiered at Spectacle in January. Earth II takes an innovative approach to the "end of the world" genre, and is a significant exercise in appropriation.
