Deborah Girdwood

Inspired by this month’s Julia Reichert: 50 Years in Film Dialogue and Retrospective, five voices, all working at the intersection of documentary, politics, and activism, offer perspectives on the documentary form. Together, they describe how storytelling has the power to redefine history, inviting us to consider a walk in different shoes—a proven strategy to influence powerful decisions, impact laws, and save and change lives.

A weekend screening in the Walker Cinema of the new 4K restoration of The Juniper Tree by Nietzchka Keene (1952–2004) prompts an insightful conversation with Jack Zipes, a critical theorist, storyteller, and one of the most prolific authors on fairy tales.

What is the connection between desire and horror? Throughout his loveliest and his most horrific films—including his 2018 homage to Dario Argento’s 1977 cult class, Suspiria—director Luca Guadagnino explores the creative and destructive forces of beauty, desire, motherhood, and sexual power dynamics, highly influenced by his longtime collaboration with artist-muse, Tilda Swinton.

In the second of a two-part look into the curatorial thinking behind the Walker’s programmatic focus on the fiftieth anniversary of 1968, the Walker’s Moving Image staff describes how films selected for the Summer Heat ’68 film series capture the atmosphere and mood of a time when filmmakers and revolutionaries were in constant conversation and asks: is it truly possible to join the revolution and profit as an artist?

Walker Moving Image Program Manager Deb Girdwood traces thematic threads within the last year of cinema programming that looks through the lens of the filmmakers who documented political and cultural revolutions during the late ’60s.