Author Spotlight

Rebecca Bengal

Rebecca Bengal is a writer born in western North Carolina and the author of the collection Strange Hours. Her stories, essays, and interviews have been published by the Paris Review, Aperture, the Guardian, the New Yorker, and Oxford American.

6 Results
Out of the Blue’s Teenage Wasteland

Dennis Hopper’s bleakly nihilistic drama struggled to find an audience after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1980, but time has revealed it to be one of the most hardcore films about disaffected youth ever made.

By Rebecca Bengal

Where the Magic Happens: On Set with Mary Ellen Mark

The celebrated photographer captured some of the most legendary American and European auteurs during the golden age of art-house cinema, including Federico Fellini and Luis Buñuel.

By Rebecca Bengal

Subvert Normality: The Streetwise Voice of Linda Manz

The beloved actor, who passed away earlier this month, brought a live-wire sensibility and a genius for improvisation to a small but potent filmography.

By Rebecca Bengal

Songbook

Bobby Womack Turns Up the Heat and the Soul in Fish Tank

Heard three times in Andrea Arnold’s coming-of-age drama, the R&B legend’s cover of “California Dreamin’ ” highlights the teenage heroine’s yearning for connection and escape.

By Rebecca Bengal

True Stories: Everybody Has Tones

David Byrne cracked open the profound strangeness of small-town Texas in this wonderfully symphonic film, his sole foray into narrative-feature directing.

By Rebecca Bengal

Smithereens: Breakfast at the Peppermint Lounge

A haven for punks and drifters, 1980s downtown New York is captured in all its grit and romance in Susan Seidelman’s Palme d’Or–nominated debut feature.

By Rebecca Bengal