Conceptual, Contemplative, Depressive, Documentary photography, Dramatic, Enigmatic, Monochromatic, Perceptual, Queer, Representational, Silent film, Sincere, Social realism

Lynne Ramsay has the qualities of a good ghost: she swings open doors and pulls back curtains, not to nag or threaten but just to remind the present of the values of the past. In her short career as a director and writer, Ramsay has brought a beautiful, slowed-down sensibility back into contemporary

Depressive, Gritty, Moody, Psychological, Urban, Young british/kitchen sink/free cinema

Tarkovsky's poetic films, interwoven with loose narrative threads and strikingly sublime images, demand a lot from the viewer, but return much more. In his signature piece "Andrei Rublev" (1969), a three-hour exposition on the fifteenth-century painter, Tarkovsky takes the viewer through series of sc

Depressive, Implosive, Moodscape, Pathos, Political

A motorcycle-jacketed, leather-bar Lothario by night, a critically lauded, freakishly prolific cinematic wunderkind by day, Rainer Werner Fassbinder lived in the eye of the hurricane and died of "an overdose on life." His fame rests on his expository manipulations, his classical narrative, and his us

Depressive, Domestic, New german cinema, Perverse