Professor Katherine Reed

It’s 1984, and investigative reporter Arthur Stuart is trying to locate Brian Slade, the glam-rock superstar who staged his own death and vanished from the spotlight ten years earlier. Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine (1998) transforms that mystery into a vivid collage of memory, fantasy, and desire, creating an alternative history of rock and a landmark of queer cinema. Velvet Goldmine...

The central image of David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?” could have been ripped from his own experience: a child sits “hooked to the silver screen,” reliving fantastical scenes played out on film. Throughout his life, Bowie was similarly transfixed by the power of film. From his first film role in The Image to his final music video before his death,...