SUSANNAH GRUDER
Journalist + Copywriter
December 9, 2022
Le Cinéma Club: Write-up of Le Kiosque (Alexandra Pianelli, 2020)
In her debut feature, Alexandra Pianelli lovingly documents the daily rhythms of the bustling newsstand that her family has run for four generations in the heart of Paris.
September 9, 2022
Le Cinéma Club: Write-up of Civic (Dwayne LeBlanc, 2022)
The first of a trilogy of migration stories, this evocative short from emerging Caribbean-American filmmaker Dwayne LeBlanc centers on a young man’s return home to South Central Los Angeles after a lengthy absence.
September 2, 2022
Le Cinéma Club: Write-up of Ida Western Exile (Courtney Stephens, 2014)
Reinterpreting Georgia O’Keeffe’s time living and working at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, this 8-minute short from nonfiction filmmaker Courtney Stephens takes a distinctly feminine view of solitude and escape into the American West.
August 29, 2022
Reverse Shot: On The Woman Next Door (François Truffaut, 1981) for RS’s 1981 Symposium
When his suburban melodrama The Woman Next Door was released in 1981, Truffaut was, in many respects, getting back into his stride.
August 15, 2022
IndieWire: The 100 Best Films of the ‘90s
I wrote blurbs on Silvia Prieto, Jungle Fever, The Match Factory Girl, Rosetta, Thelma and Louise, and Beau Travail for IndieWire’s list.
August 5, 2022
Le Cinema Club: Write-up of Annea Lockwood / A Film About Listening (Sam Green, 2022)
A guided meditation through Lockwood's boundless soundscapes.
July 22, 2022
Le Cinema Club: Write-up of The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins (Les Blank, 1968)
The folk auteur tags along with the seminal bluesman, reveling in the riffs & rhythms of daily life.
June 17, 2022
Downtime Magazine: All Hands On Deck Celebrates The Pleasures (And Pitfalls) Of Summer Risk-Taking
As part of their Letters of Rec column, I wrote about Guillaume Brac’s charming Rohmerian comedy from 2020 that follows three buddies looking for love in the south of France
January 4, 2022
Reverse Shot: On High Hopes (Mike Leigh, 1988) for Reverse Shot’s Object Lesson Symposium
Valerie’s brass banana is an attempt to accumulate objects she hopes will add something, a bit of her own personality, to her tacky abode. Instead, its shiny surface only reflects her image back at her, an endless loop of bourgeois emptiness.
July 25, 2021
Reverse Shot: Interview with Intimate Distances director Philip Warnell
I spoke with Warnell about his experimental documentary screening at the Museum of Moving Image’s First Look Festival 20/21.
March 1, 2021
Magazine of Woch der Kritik (Critics Week) of the Berlin International Film Festival: Film Text: Sunrise in My Mind (Danech San, 2020, Cambodia)
Wrote about Danech San’s spine-tingling short for this new publication.
September 23, 2020
Bright Wall/Dark Room: Unhappy Accidents: Insurance and the Business of Living in Double Indemnity and The Apartment
Wilder makes a huge jump in genre between these films—from an existential noir to an off-beat romantic comedy—but the two share a kinship; both can be read as cautionary tales for what happens when you mix business with pleasure.
May 29, 2020
Reverse Shot: Our House: Intermission
Wrote a dispatch for Reverse Shot’s “Our House” Column, which asks contributors to reflect on their relationship to movie-going. Here, I wrote about my very personal connection to BAM, and the power of watching movies in a theater alone.
May 11, 2020
Screen Slate: Paris qui dort (René Clair, 1925)
René Clair's 1925 film depicts a surreal adventure through a Paris whose inhabitants have been frozen in time. I wrote about it after a newly restored version was made available to stream via the Cinémathèque Française.
May 4, 2020
Reverse Shot: Connected: Gilda/Pakeezah
Reverse Shot’s Connected column has one writer send another a new piece of writing about a film they have been watching and pondering over, in the hopes that this will prompt a connection—emotional, thematic, historical, or analytical—to a different film the other has been watching or is inspired to rewatch. I wrote a dispatch to the critic Devika Girish about Rita Hayworth’s performance in Gilda, to which she responded with a piece about Meena Kumari in Pakeezah.
April 20, 2020
Reverse Shot: Interview and Essay on Transnistra (Anna Eborn, 2019)
As a Reverse Shot Creative Correspondent for the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look Festival, I spoke with Swedish filmmaker Anna Eborn about her hybrid doc.
February 15, 2020
Screen Slate: The Big Blue (Andrew Horn, 1988)
The Big Blue re-ups tried-and-true noir storylines populated by double-crossings and double-entendres, adding a healthy dose of Horn’s sensibility, at once stark and surreal.
February 4, 2020
Reverse Shot: Best of the Decade Symposium: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)
The revolt that Alma initiates can be read as Anderson’s response to cinematic texts like Rebecca and Vertigo—what might have transpired if Madeleine hadn’t let Scottie use clothing as a weapon to exert control. Phantom Thread is what happens when the mannequin comes to life.
July 22, 2019
Reverse Shot: On Let the Sunshine In, for the Reverse Shot Symposium Binoche Auteur
In this, their first collaboration, Denis and Binoche explore the reality of what it means for an older woman, and an older actress, to be so consistently, unapologetically open.
March 29, 2019
MUBI Notebook: Do You Speak Kaurismäki?
The Finnish director has made his own world over his long career, complete with a universal language of beer, cigarettes, and rock n’ roll.
December 23, 2018
MUBI Notebook: Doomed Love: The Coen Brothers’ “Blood Simple” and Zhang Yimou’s Remake
In the Coen brothers’ debut and a Chinese remake two decades later, two films show the convoluted aftermath of relationships gone south.
November 21, 2018
Bright Wall/Dark Room: Three’s a Crowd: On the twisted war of influence in Yorgos Lanthimos' The Favourite
October 28, 2018
IndieWire: How ‘Happy as Lazzaro’ and ‘In My Room’ Breathe New Life Into the Time Travel Trope
A pair of inventive films twist the time travel trope into compelling new shapes that turn a classic storyline into something revelatory.
June 8, 2018
Bright Wall/Dark Room: Someone Else’s Shoes: Collaboration and Control in The Red Shoes
Throughout their body of work, Powell and Pressburger return to the question of whether life and art can co-exist, and if the urge to live or the urge to create will win out in the end.