Five Video Essays to Ring in Autumn

This month: sneaky video games, fast fashion, a suspicious new trend in homeschooling, and more. | Dan Schindel

DOCUMENTARY, REFRAMED

The Indie Roots of Confessional Film

In the late 1980s and ’90s, a wave of independent directors turned cameras on themselves, utilizing documentary as a mode of confession and self-reflection. | Dan Schindel

The Slipperiness of COVID-Era Cultural Memory

Director Lou Ye follows a film crew in Wuhan who decides to revive a project abandoned 10 years prior, only to be placed under lockdown during shooting. | Saffron Maeve

A CLOSER LOOK AT COMEDY

It’s Time for a Queer Comedy Revolution

Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution drives home who is worth paying attention to if you want comedy to lighten your load, and your fellow humans’. | Alexis Clementss

The Boys’ Club of Comedy and Its Machinations of Abuse

Implicit throughout Sorry/Not Sorry is the question of what it means for a White cis-het man to be “canceled,” and how claiming cancellation is often a route to reclaiming power. | Natalie Haddad

AT FILM FESTIVALS

Clarion Calls to Civic Justice at the Venice International Film Festival

Directors Andres Veiel, Petra Costa, and Errol Morris to engage with the contemporary politics of Germany, the United States, and Brazil. | Ela Bittencourt

Activists Interrupt Israeli Film Screening at Toronto Festival

Anti-Zionist protesters called out the film Bliss (Hemda), one of the centerpieces of TIFF this year, for its ties to the Israeli government. | Maya Pontone