Catherine Gund’s Paint Me a Road Out of Here uses the artwork to tell truths about the US carceral system.
Eileen G’Sell
Eileen G’Sell is a poet and critic with recent contributions to Jacobin, Poetry, The Baffler, and The Hopkins Review. Her second volume of poetry, Francofilaments, was recently published by Broken Sleep Books. In 2023, she received the Rabkin Prize for arts journalism. She teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.
Posted inFilm
At Sundance, Films Tackled Sex, Love, Gender, and the Law
Whether it’s catfishing clueless rich guys, catching sex predators on YouTube, or assisting a woman in conceiving a child, questions of legality often have little to do with morality.
Posted inArt
The Haunted Women of Else Hagen
In the mid-20th century, the Norwegian painter plumbed the tensions, envies, frustrations, and tender bonds among feminine subjects.
Posted inFilm
60 Years Before Wicked, a Movie Musical That Made Your Eyes Sing
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is one of the most brain-quiveringly beautiful films ever to flood a screen.
Posted inFilm
The 25 Best Films of 2024
An eclectic round-up spanning feature-length investigative documentaries, avant-garde short films, YouTube essays, and even talk shows.
Posted inFilm
A Dazzling Light in Dance History
When dancer Loïe Fuller’s spinning garment reflected the stage lights, it took on a life of its own, beguiling those in New York, Berlin, and Paris.
Posted inFilm
The Secret Life of Suzanne Césaire
Merging the filmmaking process with snippets of the protagonist’s life and words,The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire blurs distinctions between past and present.
Posted inFilm
The Dizzying Contradictions in Contemporary Classical Ballet
The dancers we grow to know (and love) in Swan Song are sweating, swearing, soaring women, at odds with conceptions of purity and frailness.
Posted inFilm
Look Into My Eyes Is an Intimate Portrait of Psychic Healing
Uninterested in proving anything definitively, this film instead asserts the complicated humanity of psychic healers, their clients, and the practice itself.
Posted inFilm
In Hummingbirds, Joy Is an Act of Resistance
The coming-of-age documentary is as full of whimsy and joy as it is packed with clear-eyed resilience.
Posted inFilm
The Women and Children of the Second Artsakh War
Two films make US viewers reckon with the extent to which American ignorance — and indifference — to the conflict is a side effect of “winning” the Cold War.
Posted inFilm
Man Ray’s Beguiling and Bemusing Filmscapes
Man Ray’s Return to Reason film series anticipated the extent to which the motion picture would inform how we curate and call up memory.