Nel Dahl

Gakuryu Ishii’s mercurial sci-fi feature film August in the Water (1995) is screening for the first time since its North American premiere over 20 years ago. The rare 35mm print of the film is playing at Japan Society's 2024 JAPAN CUTS festival. To mark this occasion, I spoke with Ishii on the film’s inspirations, its eerie electronic score, the difficult shoot, and the film’s burgeoning cult status.

A rare 16mm print of Elizabeth Lennard’s Tokyo Melody: A Film About Ryuichi Sakamoto (1984) has been unearthed from the filmmaker’s basement for a sold-out screening at Japan Society’s Japan Cuts and is in the process of restoration. As we learn from Lennard herself, the film’s genesis, production, and resulting resonances were full of surprises for both the filmmaker and subject.

My selections are films I find incredibly distinctive, yet mostly underrated or worse upon initial release.

Music was the initial art form Cree artist Buffy Sainte-Marie chose to reach the most people on issues of Indigenous rights, war, gender and more. But only time has revealed the challenges she faced in delivering those messages. A long overdue book prioritizes Sainte-Marie’s voice foremost, allowing her to set the record straight.

In ‘Gone’, her new video with Charli XCX, the French pop star explores themes and ideas she’s been navigating her whole career

Behind the lens that shot Chantal Akerman’s iconic Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) is camerawoman and filmmaker Babette Mangolte.

Two new books celebrate the challenging, unapologetically bizarre work of the writer and painter Leonora Carrington.

It's not merely the nature of the actress's characters that sets her apart, it's the thought-provoking ambiguities she riddles them with.

As she releases her long-awaited Before The Dawn live album, we explore the musician’s longstanding desire to tie together the worlds of music and film.

The Handmaiden is a unique, complex new entry in gothic storytelling that recalls the dense subtext and filmic innovations of its predecessors like Gaslight, a film that seventy years later still confounds viewers.