Dear Readers,

We are excited to introduce to you something we’ve been working on for a long time: a new, refreshed Film Comment. First up, we have a brand-new website with a beautiful new logo, inspired by FC logos past. On the home page, you’ll see the bright-yellow image for the cover story by Blair McClendon on Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters; and under that, a Table of Contents with features like “Lucrecia Martel’s Ghosts” by Erika Balsom, an interview with Martel by Devika, a profile of Michaela Coel by Amy Taubin, and Jonathan Rosenbaum’s reflections on his 1970s columns for Film Comment.

This is the first issue of our new quarterly digital magazine. Every week, the Table of Contents will expand a little: we will add more features, reviews, columns, interviews, festival coverage, and podcasts. (Keep your eye on the “Still to Come” section at the bottom of the home page for a hint of what’s in store.) And if you click on the menu at the top right of the page and navigate to “Archive,” you’ll find a treasure trove: all the issues Film Comment has published since its founding in 1962 are now digitized, indexed, and searchable. Want to read Andrew Sarris on auteur theory? Manny Farber and Patricia Patterson on Chantal Akerman? Molly Haskell on Howard Hawks?

All you have to do is subscribe today for $40 per year or $12 per quarter. (We will be sending an exclusive discount code to the free Film Comment Letter mailing list, so if you aren’t signed up already, do so now!)

This new chapter of Film Comment is oriented toward both the past and the future. It foregrounds the curation, editorial rigor, and excellent prose the magazine has always been known for, via a sleek, accessible, and dynamic digital interface designed by the award-winning firm CHIPS that you’ll actually (no, actually) enjoy reading on your computer and phone. Paid subscriptions will allow us to build a sustainable, reader-supported model that ensures our independence and reinforces our firm belief that good film writing is worth paying for—and that good film writers, of which Film Comment has many, deserve fair pay.

We at Film Comment have long been inspired by Serge Daney’s assertion that cinephilia “is not only a particular relationship to cinema, it is a relationship to the world through cinema.” We believe that film criticism is valuable beyond the hot takes on the latest releases that churn through today’s profit-oriented, rankings-obsessed media landscape. It is also a means of recording and writing history in an increasingly amnesiac world; of making meaning in a fragmented, image-saturated cultural present; and of connecting people with beauty, art, and human ingenuity at a time when all of those are under attack.

Film Comment has always been a home for that kind of essential film criticism, and this new era is yet another step on our journey. Thank you for joining us for the ride!

Yours sincerely,

Devika Girish & Clinton Krute, Editors
Michael Blair, Assistant Editor
Film Comment