In the fall of 1958, fifty years ago, the inaugural issue of Film Quarterly was published, and it is fascinating to revisit those first years, when the European New Wave cinemas generated a scintillating critical energy in a pioneer magazine.

When the editor told me that this was em>Film Quarterly’s fiftieth anniversary issue I was surprised — surprised not that the magazine had been going so long, but that it was not in fact even older

With the British empire at its turn-of-the-century zenith, a curious shift occurred in the sociology of the English-speaking ghost. Once a haunting had simply marked the site of a traumatic injustice. Now the ghouls of popular fiction were expanding their portfolio; on behalf of the powerful and the ugly of long ago, specters became pitiless watchdogs visiting mayhem on blameless passersby

Founding editor Ernest Callenbach looks back on the first 50 years of Film Quarterly.

Dexter, Showtime’s serial killer soap opera, follows a sociopath who works for the forensics lab of the Miami Police Department. Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) is a blood-spatter analyst who solves crimes by charting red spray patterns and trajectories, taking a ghoulish delight in tracing the abstract art of violence.

Anniversary Essays; Grindhouse, Paranoid Park, Redacted, Southern Indian Cinema, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Activist Documentaries, Adam Curtis, and a look back on 50 years of Film Quarterly

READ: On Looking Back, The Rise and Fall of Film Criticism, Ghost Law, Spatter Pattern, and founding editor Ernest Callenbach looks back on 50 years