Film Archives - Public Seminar

Sex & Gender

Erotic Pleasure and Technological Mastery

An excerpt from The Comedy of Computation: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Obsolescence

December 17, 2025 • by Benjamin Mangrum

Slavoj Žižek argues that gaming and virtual reality programs figure the computer as “a consistent other, stepping into the structural position of an intersubjective partner.” This claim follows on the heels of a reference to Jacques Lacan’s diagnosis in an infamous koan about the impossibility of sexual relations. For Lacan, ...

Erotic Pleasure and Technological Mastery

Film

Paolo Sorrentino on his new movie, La Grazia

An interview with the Italian film director on ordinariness, doubt, and jealousy at the heart of his new film

December 8, 2025 • by Mitchell Abidor and Paolo Sorrentino

Editorial note: This interview contains spoilers. Paolo Sorrentino’s films are grand affairs, with elaborate camerawork and stunning settings underscored by memorable music. The plots match the grandeur of the mise-en-scène. In his new film, La Grazia, the purely cinematic elements of the film remain grand—and at times knowingly bizarre, like the ...

Paolo Sorrentino on his new movie, <em>La Grazia</em>

Film & Performing Arts

The Fate of the Artist Under Totalitarianism

A conversation with German novelist Daniel Kehlmann

June 17, 2025 • by Mitchell Abidor and Daniel Kehlmann

Mitchell Abidor interviews Daniel Kehlmann about examining the curious saga of Austrian filmmaker G. W. Pabst in his new novel, THE DIRECTOR....

The Fate of the Artist Under Totalitarianism

Philosophy

Martha Stewart’s Tripartite Soul

The ambitious Martha Stewart would never want to go to prison. The spirited Martha Stewart is willing to negotiate.

April 14, 2025 • by Anabelle Helsell

Anabelle Helsell on how the collapse of the personal and public in Martha Stewart's career echoes the warnings of Plato’s Republic....

Film & Performing Arts

In I’m Still Here, a Mother Refuses to Let a Dictatorship Rewrite Reality

Political engagement must not preclude the fullness of life

April 9, 2025 • by Sonali Chakravarti

Put on earrings. Go out for ice cream. Swim. Expose the conditions of torture. For Eunice Paiva, the protagonist of 2024 Brazilian film I’m Still Here, the fight against dictatorship has a rhythm. After being interrogated about her association with communists and terrorists, she must now try to find out where ...

In <em>I’m Still Here</em>, a Mother Refuses to Let a Dictatorship Rewrite Reality

Film

A Monk Without a Monastery

The paradigm shift of a single shot in Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days

December 2, 2024 • by Daniel Kopp and Nicholas Johnston

In the last shot of Perfect Days, this year’s Oscar-nominated masterpiece by Wim Wenders, a middle-aged Tokyoite named Hirayama drives through his city under a honey-colored sunrise. By this point in the film, we know it’s a habit for him to play a cassette in his ancient van’s tape deck ...

Film

Notes on Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest

Mass dehumanization on the other side of the garden wall

September 25, 2024 • by Anonymous

When viewed against the backdrop of what Palestine’s Permanent Observer to the UN has called “the most thoroughly documented genocide in history,” Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s recent film about the genocide of the Jews, takes on a deeper meaning: “The reason I made this film,” Glazer said shortly after ...

Notes on Jonathan Glazer’s <em>Zone of Interest </em>

Film & Performing Arts

American Fiction Offers a New Spin on the Challenges Facing Black Artists

Director Cord Jefferson tackles Percival Everett’s 2001, novel Erasure

February 12, 2024 • by Zenzelé Soa-Clarke

Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction is garnering praise this awards season for its satirical approach to Black representation...

<em>American Fiction</em> Offers a New Spin on the Challenges Facing Black Artists

Activism

Cinelogue Is Decolonizing the Film Canon

A conversation with the director of a new streaming platform dedicated to global majority filmmakers

December 19, 2023 • by Rehana Esmail and Kate Millar

Cinelogue hosts a library of films that have been carefully selected by international filmmakers and curators from diverse regional foci....

Cinelogue Is Decolonizing the Film Canon

Film & Performing Arts

What Are We to Make of Lars von Trier?

The Idiots, the controversial Danish director’s most controversial film, reconsidered

December 19, 2023 • by Emma Slack-Jørgensen

In Denmark, von Trier is both ridiculed and cherished—at best he is terminally misunderstood and at worst a national laughing stock. Yet the Danish director meets his most critical audience within the very film festivals that have showcased his work. ...

Film & Performing Arts

On “Slow Cinema”

Does this contemporary movement represent a gentle resistance to the values of contemporary society—or a surrender to elitist aesthetics?

December 18, 2023 • by Bella Okuya

A thoughtful reflection on the unique allure of "slow cinema", its impact on audiences, and the intriguing debate it sparks about cultural representation and elitism. ...

Activism

A Pioneering Palestinian Film Offers a Quantum of Solace

For those who question the capacity of rap to deliver powerful positive messages of social change, Slingshot Hip Hop supplies an answer

November 29, 2023 • by Zenzelé Soa-Clarke

Slingshot Hip Hop ends with a pan-Palestinian concert in the West Bank—minus the one rap group Israeli officers wouldn’t let exit Gaza. Even in their absence, the other groups maintain optimism: a belief that things can change, including people's minds. ...

Film

Erotic Pleasure and Technological Mastery

An excerpt from The Comedy of Computation: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Obsolescence

Paolo Sorrentino on his new movie, La Grazia

An interview with the Italian film director on ordinariness, doubt, and jealousy at the heart of his new film

The Fate of the Artist Under Totalitarianism

A conversation with German novelist Daniel Kehlmann

Martha Stewart’s Tripartite Soul

The ambitious Martha Stewart would never want to go to prison. The spirited Martha Stewart is willing to negotiate.

In I’m Still Here, a Mother Refuses to Let a Dictatorship Rewrite Reality

Political engagement must not preclude the fullness of life

A Monk Without a Monastery

The paradigm shift of a single shot in Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days

Notes on Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest

Mass dehumanization on the other side of the garden wall

American Fiction Offers a New Spin on the Challenges Facing Black Artists

Director Cord Jefferson tackles Percival Everett’s 2001, novel Erasure

Cinelogue Is Decolonizing the Film Canon

A conversation with the director of a new streaming platform dedicated to global majority filmmakers

What Are We to Make of Lars von Trier?

The Idiots, the controversial Danish director’s most controversial film, reconsidered

On “Slow Cinema”

Does this contemporary movement represent a gentle resistance to the values of contemporary society—or a surrender to elitist aesthetics?

A Pioneering Palestinian Film Offers a Quantum of Solace

For those who question the capacity of rap to deliver powerful positive messages of social change, Slingshot Hip Hop supplies an answer

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