Moving Image Source: 'Mad Men,' Chantal Akerman, William Holden / New Search Function

Moving Image Source now offers a search function. Results can be sorted across the site’s three categories: Articles, Calendar, and Research Guide.

New articles on Moving Image Source:

Image Is Everything: The double lives and branded selves of AMC's Mad Men
By Jessica Winter
The climax of the first season of Mad Men, set at the dawn of the 1960s at a Madison Avenue advertising agency, is actually a brilliant anticlimax—a revelation swiftly followed by a re-veiling. Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), a clumsy striver at Sterling Cooper, attempts to topple the resident alpha dog, Don Draper (Jon Hamm), with what looks to be a career-ending disclosure: Draper, the firm's dazzling creative director, is living under an assumed name; he's a fraud, likely a Korean War deserter, and possibly worse. Read more


Bordering on Fiction: Chantal Akerman's journeys through time, space, and history
By David Schwartz
Though it is an invisible and largely unspoken presence, the weight of history is evident in every moment of Chantal Akerman's work. Ever since she made her first film, the 11-minute short Saute ma ville (Blow Up My Town), in 1968, she has been concerned with the question—and the impossibility—of situating one's self comfortably in the world. Read more


St. Bill of Illinois: The poignant case for William Holden
By Michael Atkinson
Just as Bugs Bunny was always whom we would hope to be but Daffy Duck was closer to the luckless, selfish, short-sighted people we actually are, movie stardom has always been a voyeuristic switch-off between idealized transference and the recognition of our flawed selves. The glamorous and cool former has always crowded out the gritty, painful latter, but the popular career peaks of, say, Edward G. Robinson, Dana Andrews, Judy Garland, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, and Diane Keaton attest to a spectactorship paradigm that verges on a realist empathic bond, a desire to connect, not to escape. Such is the nature of our intimate, carking, rueful relationship with William Holden. Read more

Moving Image Source is Museum of the Moving Image’s website devoted to the history of film, television, and digital media. The site features original writing by critics and scholars, an international calendar of retrospectives and gallery exhibitions, and a regularly updated guide to online research resources. For more information, please contact Tomoko Kawamoto.