We’ve reached the point where movies are less popular than other forms of pop culture yet remain compelling—as much for what they recall about the humanities as the inhumanity they routinely deliver. Thus 2011′s year-end mania for the specious cultural tributes of The Artist and Hugo, even though both films, while apparently reverential, were actually false to how cinema is made and enjoyed. more

While there is debate about when, exactly, the first film screening occurred, there is no arguing its genre. Whether the Lumiere brothers’ 1895 “Exiting the Factory” or Louis Le Prince’s 1888 “Roundhay Garden Scene” or the Edison workers’ undated camera test “Monkeyshines No. 1,” the earliest films were all documentaries. Simply by pointing a camera at it, these moving pictures made everyday life seem incredible. more

Before she was an artist, author and filmmaker, Miranda July was a locksmith. Seriously. more

On the surface, the story of Project Nim, the new film from director James Marsh (Man on Wire), resembles fiction rather than non-fiction. It’s late 1973, and a chimpanzee born in a prison-like research facility is shipped to New York to live with a family as part of a controversial and bizarre behavioral experiment. Herbert Terrace, a psychologist at Columbia University and mastermind of the proceedings, enlists one of his former students—now married with children—to be the surrogate mother to the chimp. more

As someone born in 1980, I admit that I have never had anyone tell me that my work is worthless because I am a woman. No one ever told me that women cannot become journalists, or artists, or any other profession for that matter. But that’s what they told Lynn Hershman Leeson when she began working as an artist in the 1960s. more

The itchy, rhythmic funk of the incomparable '80s post-punk band The Au Pairs underscores the British docudrama The Arbor. Deliberately chosen for leader Lesley Woods' feminist-lyrical analysis of sex and politics, the music is part of director Clio Barnard's strategy to revive the sociological scrutiny of '80s pop culture that forms the basis of her film. But then Barnard strips Woods' insinuating vocals (critic Greil Marcus had praised her sound as "acrid," although "tart" better describes Woods' ironicerotic tease). more

Famished filmgoers, take note: Director James Rasin hopes his new documentary Beautiful Darling— opening April 22 at the IFC Center—is "an exciting dinner conversation." Darling is the latest in a string of docs about a top cog of the Factory, Andy Warhol's departed avant-garde headquarters at 33 Union Square West. This time it's Candy Darling, Warhol's transgendered starlet—born Jimmy Slattery of Massapequa, Long Island—taking center stage. more

Stake Land, a new independent film about feral vampires, is the latest collaboration between director Jim Mickle and writer-actor Nick Damici. The story takes place along the East Coast, as the narrator, played by Gossip Girl’s Connor Paolo, and his mentor-slash-guide—a renegade vamp slayer, played by Damici—trek north in an effort to survive the apocalypse in the “Land of Eden,” aka Canada. Stake Land opens at the IFC Center April 22 and goes to video on demand soon after. We sat down with Damici to talk about his favorite horror movies, the state of kickboxing and the allure of baby’s blood. more

Within the history of Hollywood, it’s fair to say, exists a not-so-secret history of novelists being chewed up and spat out. Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Huxley, West: none achieved the same success at the movies, and rarely did they have nice things to say as the door swiftly hit them on the way out. In the shadows, less notable writers got tangled in the bureaucratic rigmarole, never to be heard from again. Presumably, they’re stuck in that never-ending development meeting from hell. Others have heeded the warning and stayed far away from its seductive pull. more

“As the mother of a child with disabilities, I was immediately thrust into the challenge every parent must face at some point: meeting the needs of your child when it is at great cost to yourself,” Janet Grillo explained about Fly Away. “Perhaps the very measure of love is what and how much we are willing to sacrifice. Although parenting someone with autism is particular, the primal drive to do the best for one’s child is universal. Fly Away tells this story.” more