First Impressions: Thinking Aloud About Film

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/07/13/thinking-aloud-about-film-on-hugo-fregonese-from-ritrovato-2022/ Thinking Aloud About Film explores the work of Hugo Fregonese, a director who worked mainly in Hollywood B-movies or international genre films, and a major re-discovery at this Cinema Ritrovato 2022. Films discussed include APENAS UN DELINCUENTE, BLOWING WILD, THE RAID, APACHE DRUMS, THE MAN IN THE...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/07/07/thinking-aloud-about-film-talks-to-pamela-hutchinson-about-ritrovato-2022/. Thinking Aloud About Film talks to Pamela Hutchinson about Ritrovato 2022

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/06/22/thinking-aloud-about-film-moneyboys-c-b-yi-taiwan-2021/ Why are we talking about Moneyboys? Well Jose’s recently read The Hustler/ Die Pupenjunge, City of Night, and Dancer from the Dance and is fascinated by gutter and underbelly, night and shadows, criminality and liminality, the ways social and psychic alienation can combine with carnal immersion though sexua...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/06/21/in-conversation-with-richard-dyer-on-judy-garland/ I wanted to talk to someone about Judy Garland as soon as I saw the BFI program celebrating the 100th anniversary of her birth, 'Judy Garland Reborn'. And who better to talk about Judy to than Richard Dyer? The conversation is an informal one, a recorded zoom call between friends, that then cuts off at the end a...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/06/19/thinking-aloud-about-film-the-child-of-another-muna-moto-jean-pierre-dilcongue-pipa-cameroon-1975/ A discussion of the first Cameroonian feature film, a story of a doomed love, marriage made impossible by patriarchal structures shored up by tradition. Ngando and Ndomé are young and crazy about each other. Ngando’s uncle has promised him the dowry for the marriag...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/06/11/thinking-aloud-about-film-pressure-horace-ove-1976/ In last week’s discussion of Med Hondo’s SOLEIL Ô (1970), we asked what was being done in Britain in this period? The answer is Horace Ové’s PRESSURE (1976), the first British film made by a black filmmaker. It’s a more inward looking film then Hondo’s film or ALI IN WONDERLAND (Djouhra Abouda, Alain Bonnamy, F...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/06/03/thinking-aloud-about-film-soleil-o-oh-sun-med-hondo-france-1970/ The Criterion Collection calls SOLEIL Ó/ OH, SUN , ‘A furious cry of resistance against racist oppression and a revolutionary landmark of political cinema’. The Celluloid Liberation Front, writing for MUBI, calls it ‘one of the most dazzling debuts in the history of cinema’; ‘A work of erudite form...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/05/28/thinking-aloud-about-film-the-law-of-the-border-hudutlarin-kanunu-lutfi-omer-akad-turkey-1966/ A gorgeous film, shot in a quasi neo-realist style that nonetheless aims squarely at poetry and critique; clearly influenced by John Ford Westerns in its use of landscape; with shoot-outs staged amidst minarets and water fountains, horses vying with jeeps. A structure...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/05/27/ose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-tom-waugh-on-hard-to-imagine/ The groundbreaking and influential 'Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism and Photography and Film from their Beginnings to Stonewall' is coming to its 25th anniversary. In this podcast we ask Tom Waugh about the intellectual and social context in which the research took place, the methods developed to...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/05/21/thinking-aloud-about-film-the-housemaid-kim-ki-young-south-korea-1960/ We continue with our discussion of the MARTIN SCORSESE’S WORLD CINEMA strand on MUBI, this time focusing on Kim Ki-young’s THE HOUSEMAID (South Korea, 1960). MUBI’s take is that it influenced Bong Joon-ho’s PARASITE – clearly evident – and that it ‘changed the course of South Korean cinema fo...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/05/16/thinking-aloud-about-film-pixote-hector-babenco-brazil-1981/ We're both glad to find that PIXOTE retains all of the power we remember it for from decades ago when we first saw it. A realist political film whose aim it is to reveal conditions of existence as a pre-condition for creating change. It's a film highly judgmental of systemic corruption, particularly as...

In this podcast Alex Santos-Edgar and I discuss La Haine (Matthieu Kassovitz, 1995): it's style, its influence, how Paris figures, where masculinity and race figure in it...and more:

A conversation with Dr. Andrew Moor on Derek Jarman, arising from the Derek Jarman Protest exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery, on Jarman's significance in British Culture, his legacy as a multimedia artist and his contributions to art, protest cultures and queer cultures.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/03/29/thing-aloud-about-film-with-pamela-hutchinson-on-hippfest/ Hippfest is how fans and admirers endearingly refer to the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival that takes place annually at Scotland’s oldest cinema – The Hippodrome, built in 1912, in Bo’ness. Under Alison Strauss’ guidance, the festival has become a force internationally, bringing to the UK newly discovere...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/02/26/thinking-aloud-about-film-four-pere-portabella-shorts-on-mubi/ We discuss four Pere Portabella Shorts on MUBI: Don’t Count Your Fingers (1968); Play Back (1970); Acció Santos (1973); Premios Nacionales (1969) focussing on their play with form, the conceptual cleverness, the surrealist aspects; the sensuousness of the imagery; the potency of their critiques. Port...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/02/20/thinking-aloud-about-film-umbracle-pere-portabella-spain-1972/ We continue our exploration of Pere Portabella films, this one his third feature, an experimental off-shoot of Cuadecuc Vampir. Umbracle means shade created by twigs or pieces of wood, and we discuss the significance of the title in relation to what the film shows, is it focussing on what’s being hid...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/02/14/thinking-aloud-about-film-men-behind-the-sun-mou-tun-fei-china-1988/ A film that insists on history to dramatise the evils perpetuated on the Chinese population by Unit 732 of the Imperial Japanese Army, which dehumanised the Chinese as Murats during WWII in order to conduct biological experiments on them to weaponise biological warfare. History here is an alibi...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/02/07/thinking-aloud-about-film-a-deadly-secret-mou-tun-fei-hong-kong-1980/ We discuss our fourth Mou Tun-fei film, A Deadly Secret (1980). It was made the same year as the more sensational and political Lost Souls, and suffers in the comparison, being an entertaining but generic and unsurprising Martial Arts Romance. It also suffers in the comparison to his earlier h...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/02/05/thinking-aloud-about-film-lost-souls-mou-tun-fei-hong-kong-1980/ Mou Tun-Fei goes from the New Wave-y neo-realistic aesthetic of I Didn't Dare Tell You and the End of the Track and into exploitation territory. Lost Souls is pulpy, dynamic, exciting and exploitative. Women have their clothes taken off, the camera lingers on their bodies, on their degradation, on...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/01/28/the-end-of-the-track-mou-tun-fei-taiwan-1970/ A film that feels like an undiscovered classic of World Cinema, beautiful to look at, heartfelt and very moving. Two young boys enjoy a friendship so close they're accused of being queer. They themselves don't know what that means, and just like being with each other better than with someone else, even though they fi...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/01/24/i-didnt-dare-tell-you-tun-fei-mou-taiwan-1969/ The Harvard Film Archive and the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute are currently making available two films by Tun-Fei Mou. This is a discussion of I Didn't Dare Tell You, a modernist melodrama about a young boy seeking a way of paying for an education that his father can't quite provide. We detect influences of...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/01/23/thinking-aloud-about-film-taipei-suicide-story-keff-taiwan-2020/ A medium length fiction film with a great central concept: A suicide hotel where people can only stay one night. They are permitted to leave in the morning if they change their mind but leave they must. What happens when a young woman chooses to stay and the desk clerk begins falling for her? We ta...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/01/20/thinking-aloud-about-film-nocturne-29-pere-portabella-spain-1968/ The podcast touches on the Portabella’s bringing together some of the great artists of the 20th century to work on various levels of the film (music, script, art, cinema); whether it being the Marxist work of a bourgeois is inherently a problem, the significance of particular scenes (the poker gam...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/01/03/ali-in-wonderland-ali-aux-pays-des-merveilles-rachid-boudjedra-achmed-rachedi-france-algeria-1975/ We talk Ali in Wonderland, currently on MUBI. It's an avant-garde political documentary whose play with form is intended to punch the spectator into awareness, and thus very much part of the deconstructionist zeitgeist of its time. We discuss the use of split scree...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/12/21/the-youssef-chahine-podcast-no-44-le-chaos-2007/ We discuss Chahine's last film, Le Chaos, and are delighted by what we see; a political melodrama that offers all the pleasures of the genre -- one feels for these people who long for love and freedom but who aren't allowed to achieve their wants through repressive social and state mechanisms. The villain is a tor...