History

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Reel-to-reel: A long-lost Malcolm X speech recovered

History Dept.
I was born just two years before Spike Lee's 1992 biopic about Malcolm X and starting in kindergarten, I have faced the question in an almost endless loop: are you named after him?
By MALCOLM BURNLEY | February 15, 2012

End Black History Month

Diverse-city
It's that time again! Let's roll out the black history materials and talk about African-Americans as if most people really care about them, during the shortest month of the year.
By SHAY STEWART-BOULEY | February 01, 2012

Interview: Wim Wenders takes 3D one step further

Pina envy
Some are surprised that Wim Wenders, like fellow veteran of the '70s New German Cinema Werner Herzog, has embraced something as newfangled as 3D.
By PETER KEOUGH | January 18, 2012

Review: The Flowers of War

Unimpressive outing from Zhang Yimou
In 1937 the invading Imperial Japanese Army killed and raped thousands of people in the Chinese city of Nanjing. The atrocity has recently inspired two Chinese films, including Lu Chuan's City of Life and Death and this unimpressive outing from Zhang Yimou.
By PETER KEOUGH | January 17, 2012

The Making of Paul LePage, Part 2

Rise to Power
Governor Paul LePage has made plenty of waves in his first year in office, and has many wondering where his sometimes provocative political attitudes come from. In this two part series we ask: who is Paul LePage?
By COLIN WOODARD | January 18, 2012

Review: Young Goethe in Love

Philipp Stölzl's portrait of the artist as a young scamp
In Philipp Stölzl's fanciful portrait of the artist as a young scamp, the future genius (Alexander Fehling) introduces himself as "Goethe with an 'oe'," earning a reputation as a pratfalling screw-up.
By PETER KEOUGH | January 19, 2012

Review: The Artist

Michel Hazanavicius's flashback to '20s-era Hollywood
The advent of talking pictures sends a screen idol into both a career nosedive and an identity crisis in Michel Hazanavicius's flashback to Hollywood's transitional period of the late '20s.
By BETSY SHERMAN | December 20, 2011

Review: From the Back of the Room

Amy Oden's documentary about sexism in the punk rock community
Chronicling the past 30 years of women in DIY punk, Amy Oden's documentary deconstructs the myth that punk is an ideal world free of gender prejudices.
By LIZ PELLY | December 06, 2011

Review: J. Edgar

DiCaprio as right-wing hero J. Edgar Hoover
Filmmaker Clint Eastwood, famously Republican, portrays right-wing hero J. Edgar Hoover, the late FBI head, as a self-aggrandizing, conniving bully and mama's boy who broke the law whenever he wanted to bring anyone down.
By GERALD PEARY | November 08, 2011

The ugly side of Providence’s 375th birthday

Histories
I do not envy the person assigned with reducing 375 years of Providence history to four words.
By PHILIP EIL | October 12, 2011

Prohibition drinking game!

Play along with the upcoming Ken Burns documentary
Leave it to Ken Burns and PBS to crash our romantic Boardwalk Empire fantasies with a scholarly five-and-a-half-hour, sepia-tinted tome about the rip-roaring Twenties.
By CHRIS FARAONE | September 28, 2011

Our quirky, compelling senator

Profiles
Any faithful reader of the Providence Journal is familiar with the talents of G. Wayne Miller — a reporter with a remarkable knack for storytelling.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | September 28, 2011

Review: Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

Exhilarating action
The latest action epic from Hong Kong new wave director Tsui Hark ( Once Upon a Time in China ) is a fact-based historical drama set in 689 AD, a period when "all hell was about to break loose," according to the dense narration that opens the film.
By BRETT MICHEL | September 20, 2011

Teaching 9/11

Textbook Tragedy
"What do you know about 9/11?"
By THOMAS PAGE MCBEE | September 12, 2011

Before Irene, the Hurricane of ’38

Calamities
The winds kicked up near the West African coast and shot across the Atlantic Ocean. Two weeks later, they barreled past Puerto Rico and turned north.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | August 31, 2011

The dashing pirate of Providence

Urban swashbuckler
Casey Dorman of Providence was walking to work on the stone wharfs of Rockport, Massachusetts one day this summer when he crossed paths with Johnny Depp, fresh off another box-office conquest as Captain Jack Sparrow in the latest of the Pirates of the Caribbean series.
By MALCOLM BURNLEY | August 31, 2011

On carpentry and college

Finding reward - and real learning - in the ivory tower
Age 30, I quit the Phoenix and ended up with a job as an apprentice to a carpenter. Sawing, chiseling, hammering, nail-gunning, tiling, sanding, slotting, framing, hauling, measuring, and sweeping are less obvious outcomes of an undergraduate career in the liberal arts. College, in strange and unexpected ways, prepared me for this sort of work. And in others, did not prepare me at all.
By NINA MACLAUGHLIN | October 20, 2011

Review: The Disappearance of McKinley Nolan

Rich in mysteries
An investigative doc brimming with cultural resonance and historical savvy, Henry Corra's film has ahold of a pungent story — that of the titular black Texan fella who vanished in Vietnam 40 years ago.
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | August 30, 2011

Review: Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness

Joseph Dorman's portrait of Aleichem
Not many these days are familiar with Aleichem's own story, or his other work, or his impact on Jewish culture and literature in general.
By PETER KEOUGH | August 31, 2011

Why there won't ever be another 'Big Four' - and why that's a good thing

The state of metal
In April, thrash metal's self-billed "Big Four" — Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax — played a one-off American show in the middle of the desert in Indio, California.
By DANIEL BROCKMAN | August 24, 2011

Fantasy camp

Where Lord of the Rings meets Lord of the Flies
Wizards & Warriors Camp is a living video game, putting kids in control of everything from plotline to character personality.
By ARIEL SHEARER | August 10, 2011

The Oracle Engine

Excerpted from the short story by M.T. Anderson
The lizard of the wasteland, so dazzling to the eye, so rapid to flee or to strike, may grow to its full maturity only in the most brutal of deserts, where no dew falls to drink and where the sun is unrelenting. So, some say, was Marcus Furius Medullinus Machinator, he who first invented the oracle engines...
By M.T. ANDERSON | July 20, 2011

Tales of the Providence Ghost Tour

Hauntings
You know what you get when you're a 375-year-old New England city where many homes are known more for their past occupants than their current ones? Ghosts. Lots of ghosts.
By DANIEL MCGOWAN | July 13, 2011

John Sayles Back Talks about novels, movies, and US history

John Sayles on novels, movies and US history

A good Amigo
It is high noon and writer and director John Sayles is doing what he does best: telling stories and giving directions.
By JOHN J. KELLY | June 24, 2011

RISD's 'Cocktail Culture' offers an intoxicating history of 20th-century fashion

The high life
Across the country, on January 16, 1920, citizens drank up at liquor "wakes" before the 18th Amendment, ratified a year before, went into effect at midnight, banning the manufacture, sale, and transportation of "intoxicating liquors."
By GREG COOK | May 12, 2011

Rewriting the history of capitalism

Revisions
Brown University president Ruth Simmons has made it hard to ignore the school's ties to slavery — and by extension, the ties of well-known Providence families.
By MARION DAVIS | March 30, 2011

Cambridge author Caleb Neelon traces graffiti's hidden history

It was written
'TAKI 183' SPAWNS PEN PALS, announced the headline in the July 21, 1971, New York Times .
By GREG COOK | April 04, 2011

A look at Portland's graffiti history

City walls
Back in the early '90s, Eli Cayer had just finished art school in Boston and headed to Maine, where he continued creating street art.
By JEFF INGLIS | April 05, 2011

Review: 'European Drawings' at the Portland Museum of Art

Historic drawings sketch the way to greater art
"European Drawings" is the Portland Museum of Art's contribution to "Where to Draw the Line: the Maine Drawing Project," a year-long series of historical and contemporary drawing exhibitions at 16 Maine galleries and art institutions.
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | March 30, 2011