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Latest Highlights

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  Music

  How James Gunn Changed Music In Cinema

  By Kaden Geier

  James Gunn has one of the most prolific careers in the modern cinematic landscape. After getting his start as a punk-indie darling, he has become one of Hollywood’s most consistently successful directors. 

  Since the beginning of his career, Gunn’s directorial style has been consistently characterised by the use of copywritten music. On its own, this is not unique; other directors, such as Quentin Tarantino, used radio music in films like “Pulp Fiction.” However, those songs were less centered in the story, simply enhancing what was already there.

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  Features | Film Festival

  Everything Before Was Prologue: The Radical Cinema of Barbara Hammer

  By Courtney Gardner

  Barbara Hammer spent decades filming lesbian bodies and desire, insisting audiences feel what they’d largely never seen. A pioneering experimental filmmaker, she created over 80 films that made queer life visible when very few others would. This year, “Barbara Forever,” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, telling Hammer’s life story through her own voice and archive.

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  Music | TV

  A comprehensive guide to the music of “Yellowjackets.”

  By Brooke Lelia

  Part of what makes “Yellowjackets” so unforgettable is the way its soundtrack is used as a narrative anchor. The series follows a group of women, both as teenage soccer players enduring a devastating plane crash in the late ‘90s that leaves them stranded in the Canadian wilderness for 19 months, and, 25 years later, as middle-aged women, who are still coping with the effects of what happened when they were younger. Instead of relying on mainstream nostalgia, “Yellowjackets” leans into the grit and vulnerability of ‘90s alt-rock and the reflective nature of indie. To understand “Yellowjackets” in all its depth, one must pay attention to the show’s rich musical world.

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  Editors’ Picks | Staff Picks

  Staff Picks: The Stories of Immigrants

  By The Independent Staff

  Following recent disturbing events in which American Immigration and Customs Enforcement continue to violently target peaceful immigrants and U.S. citizens…

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  Film Festival | Uncategorized

  The New York Jewish Film Festival Jan. 14-28

  By Kurt Brokaw

  An uptown museum and Lincoln Center fest offer unbending Jewish support in a time fraught with peril in the worldwide…

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  Zine Article

  Directing Under Dictators: Shin Sang-ok, the Prince of Korean Cinema

  By Olivia Smith

  In 1978, the South Korean Park Chung-hee regime shut down a film studio that defined the country’s postwar film industry after the release of a forbidden kiss scene. Six months later, the studio’s head was abducted by the North Korean Kim Jong Il regime. The head was a South-Korean director and producer, Shin Sang-ok, who directed the film that caused the controversy: “Rose and Wild Dog.” Shin’s career survived two authoritarian governments, as well as an abduction and imprisonment. Through these constricting experiences, he continued to make films — whether under surveillance, direct orders or freely, proving that systems of censorship and political warfare will fail in their efforts to squash creativity and passion.