First Impressions: Thinking Aloud About Film

José Arroyo in Conversation with Edmund Stenson, co-director with Daniel Rohar, of BLINK, a documentary which will be premiering at the London Film Festival with three screenings on October 13th, 14th and 19th. It will get a nationwide theatrical release across the United States with Disney/ National Geographic beginning next week on October 4th. An extraordinary achievement for a documentary. The...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/09/22/the-gus-van-sant-podcast-1-mala-noche-1985/ A new podcast to accompany a new mini-research project. Richard’s kindly humoured me and consented to help kickstart this project, but he’ll only co-host with me for the first three films so I shall be reaching out to some of you to talk to me about the rest – and certainly if you have a particular interest in any of V...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/08/16/jose-arroyo-in-converssation-with-alastair-phillips-on-tokyo-story-yasujiro-ozu-1953/ I’ve been wanting to talk to Alastair Phillips about his ‘BFI Classic’ monograph on TOKYO STORY (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953) since it was first published late last year. I found reading the book after watching the film truly illuminating, deepening and enriching the experience: a real...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/08/01/jose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-siavash-minoukadeh/ At Cinema Rediscovered I attended a panel on film programming and film curating chaired by Maddy Probst and found the collaborations between the festival and the young programmers impressive and inspiring. The strand I attended most assiduously was Siavash Minoukadeh’s Queer Cinema From the Eastern Bloc, co-cu...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/07/31/cinema-rediscovered-2024-wrap-up/ We have nothing but praise for this year's edition of Cinema Rediscovered. In the podcast, we discuss the pleasures of seeing Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946) and Le Samurai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967) in beautiful prints on the opening night; the pleasure in seeing restorations with an audience where every time someone responds dif...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/07/20/cinema-rediscovered-2024-preview/ Richard and I preview the 2024 Cinema Rediscovered Programme taking place in Bristol, July 24-28. We’ve already podcast on the Parajanov films and the Ninon Sevilla ‘cabaretera’ films so we here highlight some of the other strands such as the 70s cycle of ‘New” American films of the 70s titled OUT OF THEIR DEPTH: CORRUPTION, SCA...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/07/17/jose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-sheldon-hall-on-armchair-cinema-feature-films-on-british-television-1929-1981/ Sheldon Hall’s ARMCHAIR CINEMA: A HISTORY OF FEATURE FILMS ON BRITISH TELEVISION is a beautifully produced object, lavishly illustrated and lovely to hold. More importantly, it is a pleasure to read , full of new and fascinating information and is sure...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/07/15/jose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-daniel-bird-on-sergei-parajanov/ We ask who is Parajanov and why Parajanov? We touch in the centrality of his work to the national and cultural identities of so many countries: Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Russia; its aesthetic beauty and its continuing power. Certain filmmakers continuously crop up in relation to Parajanov's work...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/07/08/jose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-lorena-pino-on-ninon-seville-films-at-cinema-rediscovered-watershed-bristol-24-28th-of-july/ José Arroyo talks to Lorena Pino about the programme of Ninon Sevilla films playing at the Watershed in Bristol as part of the Cinema Rediscovered Programme, and which includes two UK Premieres -- Carita de Cielo (José Diáz Morales, Mexic...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/07/08/thinking-aloud-about-film-ritrovato-round-up-2024/ Richard and I return to the podcast with our Ritrovato Round-up. Last year I couldn’t go due to health reasons and I interviewed him; this year, the tables were turned and he interviews me. Ritrovato is so vast and generous in its programming that everyone who attended would have had a different experience of th...

An inspiring talk with Ross Higgins on the foundation of the Archives gaies du Québec. How did the archive came to be? Why did it come to be? What social and historical contexts shaped it? How did it develop from materials stored and used in his flat to an archive of national and international importance? Ross, who along with Jacques Prince, founded the archive, offers various histories and contex...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/04/04/in-conversation-with-richard-layne-on-yoko-ono-music-of-the-mind-tate-modern/ I talk to Richard Layne on ‘Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind’, currently on at Tate Modern. You might recognise Richard from our podcast, THINKING ALOUD ABOUT FILM. What you might not know is that he is a long-time fan of Yoko Ono and one of the most knowledgeable people on her work as an a...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/02/13/jose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-sean-burns-on-dorothy-towers-and-death/ Sean Burns is a Birmingham-born, London-based artist; the author of DEATH, part of the LOOK AGAIN series of volumes interpreting the TATE’s collection through particular themes and published to coincide with TATE BRITAIN’S recent re-hang; and the director of DOROTHY TOWERS, a film in which...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/02/12/thinking-aloud-about-film-out-of-the-blue-chen-kun-hou-taiwan-1983/ We continue our discussion of the GOLDEN DECADES: CINEMATIC MASTERS OF THE GOLDEN HORSE AWARDS with a chat on OUT OF THE BLUE (Chen Kun-Hou, Taiwan, 1983). A fascinating film to discuss in relation to all our previous podcasts on Taiwanese Cinema and Hou Hsiao-hsien; a film directed by Chen Kun-...

In the podcast we try to mix very personal responses to ALL OF US STRANGERS with various historical contexts and speak of the film’s setting in relation to queer childhoods in that period, section 28, trauma, erasure; the film’s formal and stylistic achievements; Andrew Haigh’s career; how the film speaks to psychoanalytic pain, a generational pain, grief, AIDS. The personal grounded in historical...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/02/01/thinking-aloud-about-film-he-never-gives-up-li-hsing-taiwan-1978/ We continue our discussion of the GOLDEN DECADES: CINEMATIC MASTERS OF THE GOLDEN HORSE AWARDS with a chat on He Never Gives Up (LI Hsing, Taiwan, 1979). Li won the Golden Horse Award for Best Director for his films Beautiful Duckling (1965), Execution in Autumn (1972), and He Never Gives Up (1978...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/01/28/thinking-aloud-about-film-four-moods-taiwan-1970/ We continue our discussion of the GOLDEN DECADES: CINEMATIC MASTERS OF THE GOLDEN HORSE AWARDS, with a chat on Four Moods, a portmanteau film, originally conceived as a project to raise funds for Li Han-hsiang’s ailing film company, Grand Motion Picture Company in Taiwan, The four short films that together compos...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/01/23/storm-over-the-yangtze-river-li-han-hsiang-taiwan-1969/ We continue our discussion of the GOLDEN DECADES: CINEMATIC MASTERS OF THE GOLDEN HORSE AWARDS, with a response to Storm Over the Yantze River (Li Han-hsiang, Taiwan, 1969).

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/01/17/thinking-aloud-about-film-good-morning-taipei-li-hsing-taiwan-1979/ We return to Hou Hsiao Hsien and to Taiwanese Cinema. Hou is the screenwriter for this transitional melodramatic musical: a hit and winner of the Golden Horse Award. Part of a series of films, some in new restorations, that are being screened under the title of GOLDEN DECADES: CINEMATIC MASTERS...

We chat to Prof. Dolores Tierney on MUBI's Sectacle Every Day: The Many Seasons of Mexican Cinema, debating the various films in the series, and topics that arise from them individually and collectively: Mexican National Cinema, Transnational Cinema, The Star System, genre and cult cinema.

Based on the 1970 novella by Muriel Spark, with Elizabeth Taylor playing a woman in the middle of a nervous breakdown, constantly deflecting the attention of brutish men who mistake her for a prostitute whilst cruising for a man to kill her; a fragmentary film, a big-budget experiment in narration, with a now middle-aged but still astonishingly beautiful Elizabeth Taylor giving one of her greatest...

The kind of film where the lead character attempts an autopsy wearing a bikini: glamorous, camp, a bit low rent. In the podcast we discuss how the film is influenced by the James Bond craze, the Batman TV series, the wrestling phenomenon then at its height in Mexico, and a history of horror cinema. There’s a mad scientist who laughs an evil laugh, his assistant is called Igor, there’s a Promethean...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/11/01/thinking-aloud-about-film-the-witchs-mirror-chano-urueta-mexico1962/ The Witch’s Mirror/ El Espejo de la bruja (Chano Urueta, Mexico, 1962) is an immensely entertaining film that is being screened on MUBI as part of their ‘Spectacle Every Day: The Many Seasons of Mexican Cinema’ series. There are claims that it is a ‘uniquely Mexican Gothic’ but we don’t quite a...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/10/31/in-conversation-with-pamela-hutchinson-on-the-red-shoes/ There is a major retrospective of the films of Powell & Pressburger currently underway in London at the BFI Southbank – the most extensive celebration of their work ever undertaken -- selections of which will tour the country. As part of the celebrations, the BFI has published a short monograph by Pamela H...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/10/26/jose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-jan-jilek/ I participated in the Film Festival/ Summer Film School at Uherské Hradiště and was bowled over by the experience. Thousands of people streaming the streets of an extraordinarily pretty town in the Czech Republic – many of them very young – arriving from all parts of the country and abroad to see films, listen to lectu...