The cinematic experience is in turmoil, caught between the push to the future—an industry-wide switch to all-digital projection—and the pull of the past. The Walker Cinema’s renovation allows us to play it both ways: advancing the art of film, while also showcasing its rich history.

Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr has a reputation for terse gruffness, and some may conclude, misguidedly, that his films merely exhibit misanthropy and hopelessness. Yet what becomes apparent very quickly in speaking with the director is his humanism, his deep respect for individuals both in reality and as characters in his movies.

“3-D is the greatest revolution ever since the talkies, only most people [don’t] realize it because we [think it is] just a gimmick for national blockbusters,” says Wim Wenders, whose new film, Pina, reflects the technology’s newest wave. “Now some movies come out that show the true potential of 3-D, which is really a whole different way of seeing the world.”

Primal and chaotic, Nathalie Djurberg’s art “doesn’t look like anything else out there,” says Eric Crosby, co-curator of the artist’s first major US museum show. In an interview, he and the Walker’s Dean Otto discuss how Djurberg’s claymation and sculptures fall outside conventions of both the film and contemporary art worlds, while channeling a “universality of experience that speaks to us all.”

Jumping from the ’80s activism of ACT UP to the oil fields of Iraq, the death camps of World War II to 9/11, The Smiths to The Golden Girls, Jim Hodges’ World AIDS Day film offers striking context for both Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ art and the continuing struggles for social change today.

The films in the Walker’s new series on forgotten aspects of the feminist movement present many views, but underscore one point, says co-curator Paula Rabinowitz: “Feminism was much more diverse and international than people tend to think, and it was concerned with racism and class.”

Much parsed and puzzled over, Shohei Imamura’s famous pronouncement, “I’m a country farmer; Nagisa Oshima is a samurai” may be ambiguous in tone and intent – is it ironic, invidious, deferential? – but it emphasizes the directors’ differences: class, stylistic, and otherwise. Often paired as twin avatars of the Japanese New Wave, a term Oshima (born in Kyoto, 1932) took every opportunity to spurn and disparage, the…

Public engagement, access, and community storytelling are the major reasons I found myself attracted to documentary filmmaking. With my first documentary, Witness, I saw the need for exhibition venues that are open to young people and that could host community conversations. This is when, in 1999, I first experienced the Walker and the Girls in the Director’s Chair program. In March 2007, I premiered my…