What does a Film Programmer do? I talk to James McEvoy to find out what programming the Warwick Arts Centre cinema, a three screens-cinema, based on a university campus but also serving a local and regional audience, involves. Who is the audience and how to build new ones is part of the conversation. We touch on Flatpack, the MAC, the Mockingbird, Square-Eye TV, Lock Studios, Steven Knight, the Forward Film Festival. James tells me about licenses and knowing who holds the rights to a film, which is sometimes confusing while underlining he is uninterested in gate-keeping, actively seeking collaborations and stressing the importance of getting the word out We spend a considerable time discussing the exciting new programme: there will be live opera and theatre projections; BFI funded seasons; the opportunity of seeing films financed by Netflix on a big screen. Programmes to look out for are the Silent Cinema screenings with live accompaniment, the melodrama season, Richard Dyer speaking on Brief Encounter, and more. Each year there’s an over-arching theme across the whole of the Arts Centre. This year the focus is on care. The film programme component is called is ‘Handle with Car,’ with a substrand on Cozy Classics, which will involve screening a classic film once a month. There will be tea and biscuits – feel free to BYOB (Blanket not Booze) -- an opportunity for people to get together and see things on a big screen. The Arts Centre will also be bringing its 35mm projector back into action for November screening of Cinema Paradiso. Part of another strand of the Care programme is ‘Care Behind the Scenes,’ co-programmed with Dr. Alice Pember and Dr. Julie Lobalzo-Wright, which will also have workshops as well as screenings (e.g. intimacy co-ordination’). The Programme will include Accessible and Inclusive screenings as well as Audio-Description (for first time at the Art Centre) and there will be some workshops attached to this strand as well. James stresses that the programming also takes on board an exploration of the local and the national with focus on independent and locally made cinema and with filmmakers holding Q&A’s when possible. It all looks very exciting. Check out the programme here: https://www.warwickartscentre.co.uk/whats-on/cinema/ José Arroyo

The MASKS AND MUSIC: THE FILMS OF WILLI FORST strand of last year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato, curated by Lukas Foerster, was so popular that I was unable to see any of them. Richard is more organised and came out raving about two: MASQUERADE/ MASKERADE (1934) and TOMFOOLERY/ ALLOTRIA, (1936). Luckily for us The Internet Archive has a very good copy of Maskerade which enabled us to see it (or in Richard’s case, to see it again). In the podcast below we talk about the film in relation to the Wiener Genre, Authorship, Anton Walbrook’s career (he is here billed as Adolf Walbrook), the difficulties of dealing with works from authoritarian regimes, how it was the most popular film of its year in the German-speaking world. More specifically we discuss the rhythms of the opening scene, Anton Walbrook’s introduction, the narrative invention of the narration of the publication of the muff drawiing, the mise-en-scéne, the influence of vaudeville and the film’s intent on pleasing. We relate the film to Lubitsch’s work and comment on how a particular shot of a camera seeming to float through a window might have influenced Minnelli (in Meet Me in St. Louis) and, according to Mark Fuller, Powell & Pressburger (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp). All this and much more may be listened to in the podcast below:

I was lucky enough to see Maria Luisa Bemberg's SEÑORA DE NADIE (NOBODY'S WIFE, 1982)and YO, LA PEOR DE TODAS (I, THE WORST OF ALL, 1990) at this year's CINEMA REDISCOVERED in Bristol, in gorgeous prints, with an  appreciative and enthusiastic audience. I'm a long-time fan of Bemberg's but I'd never had the opportunity to see  SEÑORA DE NADIE and I'd never seen YO LA PEOR DE TODAS in such a beautiful version. The films surprised and delighted. But what I was most taken with was the effervescence, energy and brilliance of Amina Farley Yael and Natalia Christofoletti Barrenha who introduced the two films. They along with Marta Calderon Quiñones are Cinema Mentiré. This podcast is the result of my wanting to know more about Cinema Mentiré, who they are, what they do; and also, of my wanting to publicise the re-circulation of such marvellous films by a legendary female filmmaker in new restorations (which films? What are they about? What are they like? Why are they worth seeing now?), and with new subtitles undertaken by Cinema Mentiré themselves.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/08/21/jose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-ryan-gilbey-on-it-used-to-be-witches-under-the-spell-of-queer-cinema/ Sometimes you read a new book and love it so much you want to speak to its author and find out more. This is what happened to me in relation to Ryan Gilbey’s IT USED TO BE WITCHES: UNDER THE SPELL OF QUEER CINEMA. What I liked most is that I learned a lot from it – all these new films and filmmakers I’d never heard of – and that it was great fun to read: Ryan’s got an enviable turn of phrase. If the narrative is posited as a process of discovery, the book also has an interesting mode of narration: it’s partly personal, sometimes he writes of himself in the third person in a way that reminds me of Èdouard Louis’ novels . This has the effect of delineating events whilst also questioning them and his own perspective on them. It’s a book that interrogates its own delineations with a loose structure that seems to flow from one filmmaker to another, very inclusive, sensitive to the nuances of race and gender and with a spotlight on trans cinema -- with a British perspective but on world –rather than Anglo-American – cinema; and with the big names (Almodóvar, Haynes, Van Sant), not quite absent but playing a supporting role to filmmakers like: Jenni Olson, Jessica Dunn Rovinelli, Elizabeth Purchell, Campbell X, Isabel Sandoval and others. I think it a landmark book, one of interest not only to those wanting to know more about, cinema and/or queer but also by anyone interested in the current cultural landscape. It seems to succeed in doing what I previously thought undoable, which is to get enough of a grip on the increasing and seemingly ceaseless stream of new queer works in order to lay out a landscape whilst offering multiple, tentative, questioning perspectives on it. A landmark book by a wonderful writer. We discuss all of this and more in the podcast below:

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/08/06/thinking-aloud-about-cinema-absolute-beginners-julien-temple-1986/ A rediscovery at Cinema Rediscovered: Julien Temple's marvellous Abolute Beginners.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/07/30/thinking-aloud-about-cinema-cinema-rediscovered-2025-wrap-up/ If a week ago we podcast on what we were looking forward to at the CINEMA REDISCOVERED festival, this is the bookend reflecting on what we actually saw. We are once again full of praise for the organisers, the friendliness of the staff at the Watershed, the originality and diversity of the programme, the community aspect, the educational component and the way that it trains young people up to programme and curate and then gives them an opportunity to exercise those skills. Emotional highlights included a reunion of Stephen Frears, Hanif Kureishi and Gordon Warnecke at the MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE screening and Stephen Wooley and Julian Temple getting back together to reminisce about Palace Pictures and ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS, which we liked so much we plan a separate podcast on it. We appreciated the mini programs scheduled on single days (Carlos Saura, Maria Luisa Bemberg, Anna Mae Wong) and the longer ones (the AGAINST THE GRAIN: 1980s BRITISH CINEMA, MASUMURA x WAKAO). It was fantastic to be able to see some films at the BRISTOL MEGASCREEN (THE FALL OF OTRAR, DIVA, THE BEAST TO DIE, MANJI). We talk at some length on individual films as well (ROSA LA ROSE, FILLE PUBLIQUE; THEMROC, DESERT HEARTS, ONE POTATO TWO POTATO and others. We praise the way Sheldon Hall designed his talk on films on Channel 4 for this particular audience, including broadcast dates on every film at the festival and under which strand; for Stephen Horne’s fantastic, multi-instrument accompaniment to the Anna Mae Wong programme; and the care in curating the introductions to the films, with most speakers understanding that the intro is not about them or their interests but about enhancing the audience’s experience and appreciation. The festival left us wishing for a fuller programme the last evening but being left wishing for more is not a bad thing. José Arroyo

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/07/23/jose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-sam-shahid-director-of-hidden-masters-the-legacy-of-george-platt-lynes/ George Platt Lynes is arguably the most significant artist in a long and distinguished line of great 20th Century queer photographers of the male nude which includes George Hoyningen-Huene, Horst P. Horst, Clifford Coffin, Robert Mapplethorpe and Bruce Weber. All in some sense worked in the interstices of fashion, portraiture, art photography and the nude. Yet though Platt Lynes is at least their equal, he is arguably the least well known, a situation Sam Shahid aims to rectify in his gorgeous new film, HIDDEN MASTERS: THE LEGACY OF GEORGE PLATT LYNES. Sam Shahid is Creator Director, Principal and president of Shaid/Kraus & Company, a full branding, advertising and design agency founded inn 1993. Before that he was Creative Director of in-house advertising for Calvin Klein in the 1980s, did work for Abercrombie and Fitch in the 90s that still inspires today (some of the catalogues have become much sought-after collectors’ items). In the aughts he worked as Creative Director of INTERVIEW magazine and he’s since edited dozens of books of photographs by Bruce Weber and Herb Ritts. He knows about images, and he puts that knowledge to use in his first film, HIDDEN MASTERS: THE LEGACY OF GEORGE PLATT LYNES. In the accompanying podcast, we talk about how Platt Lynes was at the centre of practically every current of modernism in America and how Sam found the only existent film footage of the photographer. We ask why Platt Lynes is relatively so little-known today. Is it because his greatest work is of the male nude? Is there homophobia involved? Sam talks about how difficult it was to get a hold of the photographs, tensions between controllers of major holdings and the family; the reticence of institutions and individuals to make public such an incredible body of work that feels so contemporary. Isn’t it time that a major museum undertake a retrospective of George Platt Lynes’ work? What Sam doesn’t say is what a ravishing film he’s made, full of some of the most beautiful black and white images of men ever made. A film to see. It’s currently on release from Picadillo Pics and available on demand from Amazon and other major digital outlets. José Arroyo

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/07/21/jose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-daniel-bird-on-the-fall-of-otrar-ardak-amirkulov-1991/ My choice for must-see film of this year’s Cinema Rediscovered is Ardak Amirkulov’s THE FALL OF OTRAR (USSR, 1991), which will have its UK Premiere in Bristol’s old IMAX cinema, now called the Bristol Megascreen, on Sat 26th of July. As Daniel Bird says in the podcast, ‘it’s a once in a lifetime occasion’. I wanted to talk to Daniel about the film because he knows more about it than anyone I know, because he speaks so articulately and with such an expansive frame of reference and because he’s the one who proposed the restoration to Cecilia Cenciarelli, one of the four artistic directors of Bologna’s Il Cinema Ritrovato and part of The World Cinema Project, whose goal is to restore great film from around the world. Such as this one. THE FALL OF OTRAR is an epic set in the 13th Century where an obedient servant of the state Undzhu (Dokhdurbek Kydyraliyev) is persecuted for telling Kaiyrkahn (Tungyshpai Zhamankulov), his ruler, what he doesn’t want to hear, which is that Otrar is soon to be invaded by Genghis Kahn. The film is an extraordinary aesthetic experience, a film of great style, structured in two halves, with the last part depicting the siege of Otrar and battles sequences that clearly use Kurosawa’s KAGEMUSHA (1980) as a reference point whilst transforming before our eyes into something else altogether. The film has crane shots that rival Leone’s, poetic compositions that recall John Ford’s, and a selective use of sepia and colour that recall some of the masters of the late Soviet era. A beautiful film that feels epic and yet very intimate as well. In the accompanying podcast Daniel tells me of THE FALL OF OTRAR’s fascinating production history (it was part of a national search for ‘new blood’ from the ‘regions’; it began filming just as the Soviet Union was unravelling, it started off as Amirkulov’s graduation project, it is now one of the key works of Kazahkstan cinema); his own involvement with the project; how the film can be seen as the result of a Russian influence in the dramaturgy and an East Asian, particularly Japanese, influence in the visual aesthetic. We talk too of the film’s initial distribution at home and in New York, Martin Scorsese’s involvement, and how this new release is demonstrating how the film is also one that speaks to our times, and the various ways it does so. There are digressions (Russian Formalism, Deleuze and Guattari’s A THOUSAND PLATEAUS: CAPITALISM AND SCHIZOPHRENIA, showing vs telling in cinema….and much more. It can be listened to below:

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/07/18/thinking-aloud-about-film-cinema-rediscovered-2025-preview/ Richard and I are once more excited about the prospect of Cinema Rediscovered, which begins next week on the 23rd and runs right to the 27th at the Watershed in Bristol. This year's is a beautifully balanced programme with directors (Carlos Saura, Maria Luisa Bemberg, Stephanie Rothman, Yasuzō Masumura) and stars (Anna Me Wong) ripe for rediscovery; but also featuring key exemplars of queer cinema (MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDERETTE, DESERT HEARTS, THE ANGELIC CONVERSATION; ostensibly the first film to feature queer representation in India, BADNAM BASTI (NEIGHBOURHOOD OF ILL REPUTE); black cinema (HANDSWORTH SONGS, THE KILLER OF SHEEP), feminist exploitation cinema (THE WORKING GIRLS, THE VELVET VAMPIRE); key work's from classic directors (Sam Fuller's THE HOUSE OF BAMBOO, John Ford's YOUNG MR. LINCOLN; a whole strand of 1980s British Cinema (from ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS to A ZED AND TWO NOUGHTS),  newly restored masterpieces (THE FALL OF OTRAR, YEELEN); and a smattering of films from practically every hemisphere. A great program, which includes not only films but workshops, talks, introductions; for Cinema Rediscovered is not only about seeing films in the best possible conditions but also about learning on cinema from filmmakers, curators, programmers, critics, academics and other practitioners.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/07/16/thinking-aloud-about-film-delitto-damore-luigi-comencini-1974/ DELITTO D’AMORE (Luigi Comencini, 1974), also known as CRIME OF LOVE or SOMEWHERE BEYOND LOVE in English, is along with VOLTATI EUGENIO (1980), my favourite of the Comencini films shown at this year’s Ritrovato in Bologna. Two factory workers fall in love. He’s from a family of Anarchists from the North. She’s an immigrant from South. They both live with their families but she’s a woman so all her movements are monitored. They split up because she needs to be married in a Church whilst he can only consider City Hall. Factories spewing smoke is a constant background to the development of their romance. In the accompanying podcast Richard and I discuss: how it is a MARXIST romance in which two factory workers fall in love even as the factory spews poison all over them (one of the titles considered for the film was LOVE AND POISON); how rare it is for a political film to deploy such a delicate tone, a mixture of humour/romance/enchantment; the relative rarity of having working class workers depicted so lovingly and glamorously (by Guliano Gemma and Stefania Sandrelli). The film’s been compared to LOVE STORY (Arthur Hiller, 1970) and also ALI, FEAR EATS THE SOUL (Fassbinder, 1974). We bring up Visconti’s ROCCO E I SUOI FRATELLI (1960). None of the comparisons convey the humour, the romance, the enchantment that this very political film evokes. We hope we do in the podcast that follows:

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/07/02/thinking-aloud-about-film-ritrovato-round-up-2025-with-pamela-hutchinson/ For this year’s Ritrovato Round-Up we are joined by the witty, incisive and all-around fabulous Pamela Hutchinson, editor of the Silent London website, author of two marvellous BFI Classic monographs (The Red Shoes, Pandora's Box), producer of the Weekly Film Bulletin for Sight and Sound and one of the jurors for Ritrovato's DVD Awards since 2018. In the discussion that follows we touch on all the strands of the festival, praise Cecilia Cenciarelli for her programming, Mariann Lewinsky for her illuminating introductions and Ehsan Khoshbakht for his superb programme notes on Lewis Milestone. We touch on the Willi Forst and Nordic Noir programmes, so popular José couldn't get into any of them. We have a lively debate on Molly Haskell's Hepburn programme, agree on our love of Naruse, discuss how Comencini's Delitto de amore  highlights issues of class and made us want to see more Comencini films and delight in the early cinema and silent cinema strands. Sumitra Peries' Gehenu Lamai (The Girls) is a film we all adored. We touch on memorable experiences, such as watching Coline Serrault introduce Trois hommes et un couffin at the Piazza Maggiore, or the incredible response to Chaplin's The Gold Rush, the impact of Silvana Mangano in Bitter Rice, the intensity of the colour in Duel in the Sun, or the spontaneous applause for Shirley MacLaine in Artists and Models.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/06/12/thinking-aloud-about-film-arrebato-ivan-zulueta-1979/ A cult film; a queer film; a vampire film; a film maudit; a film about film; a film about drugs; a film about film as a drug; a film that deserves to be better known. Audiences will recognise many of Almodóvar’s collaborators from his earliest works (Cecilia Roth, Eusebio Poncela, Luis Ciges, Will More; Ángel Luis Fernádez is the dop) and the voice of Almódovar himself. A genre film that transforms into an auteur film. A film of the Movida and a film of the transition. A film that embodies and evokes one era but that gained traction in another. A cinephile’s film about addiction where one delights in being bitten by drugs and cinema even as that bite becomes transformative and potentially deadly. An avant-garde experiment encased in a genre film. A trawl through the underground that aimed at the mainstream. A film to see and discuss.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/06/06/jose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-james-taylor-on-the-superhero-blockbuster-adaptation-style-and-meaning/ Just as the Superhero film loses centrality in the culture there comes a book that is not only a brilliant accounting of the various strategies of adaptations the mode engages with but also offers a methodology that will be of interest and use to anyone engaged with the analysis of visual media:  not only a brilliant book, but an important one. In this podcast we talk about what it is that is being adapted when discussing comic book characters that have so many iterations across different media. We talk about modes of seriality; the translation of the illusion of movement across media; the significance of bodies in spaces and movement in the mode; intertextuality, kaleidoscopic irruptions; how the move to digital affected issues of realism and reflexivity; restorative and reflective nostalgia; how the works compress, hierarchize and create continuities; the dramatization of alternate timelines….and we return over and over again to the hierarchization of gendered, racialised and sexualised bodies in dialogue with past iterations, current politics, contemporary formal strategies and more. I can't imagine future explorations of audiovisual work engaged with adapting any form of Intellectual Property, characters or worlds uninformed by THE SUPERHERO BLOCKBUSTER: ADAPTATION, STYLE AND MEANING.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/05/30/thinking-aloud-about-film-le-jour-se-leve-marcel-carne-1939/ We discuss Marcel Carné's superb Daybreak/ Le Jour se lève, which we saw at the Garden Cinema as part of their wonderful Film Noir International programme. In the podcast we discuss the film as an example of ‘Poetic Realism’; as one of the first films to be described as a ‘film noir’; as an expression of the Popular Front sentiment and how the film’s reception aligned with reviewers’ political views. In relation to the film, we discuss the significance of its structure, the precision of the decor and mise-se-en-scène where it seems every object in François room subsequently comes into play to describe loss, longing, love, innocence since tarnished. I have made a compilation of all the times Gabin looks out the bullet-riddled window and outside. As the day rises and the night ends so does François’ life. We discuss Gabin, Arletty, Jules Berry…all at their best. Gabin is the representative everyman with nothing to live for but more sand in his lungs. It’s not only that as Georges Altman writes, ‘the whole of the working class is etched in Gabin’s face’ it’s that Gabin’s IS the face of the whole of the French working classes. He is François,. She is Françoise. Together they represent the oppression of the French working class. They are everyman and everywoman, orphaned by capitalism. This is a film not only about doomed love but a protest against class-as-destiny, one of the film’s most worked-through themes.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/05/25/one-second-zhang-yimou-2020/ Zhang Yimou’s very beautiful film has things to say about the cultural revolution and Chinese History and other things we’re not best placed to discuss. However, it is also about cinema: it’s lure, it’s power, its enchantments and its fragility; and Zhang Yimou’s magisterial mise-en-scène embodies its themes through its medium as if in the process of unfurling from an editing sweet, to a projector and onto a screen.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/04/18/jose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-diego-cepeda-on-outskirts/ I recently discovered the existence of a new and exciting film magazine: OUTSKIRTS. It’s in English, though mostly written by people for whom English is a second language or who don’t speak English at all: translation, in multiple senses, is an integral part of the magazine. It’s a handsome physical object, originating in the Locarno Critics Academy but speaking a different film culture, off-centre, from the margins or the periphery. In this podcast I talk to one of the editors, Diego Cepeda (the others are Nathan Latoré, Sofie Cato Maas and Christopher small), with filmmaker/critic Felix Corderobello contributing illuminating contexts and asides. Near the beginning of the podcast Diego cites a poem by Farid Ud-din Attar, ‘The birds had departed towards a distant luminosity that attracted them. Those who did not perish on the way would understand upon arrival that they had been transformed into that light that now attracted others’. OUTSKIRTS is a magazine that is itself, embodies, a romance of movies, film culture, film history, woven through with friendship. It aims to put at the centre marginalised filmmakers and film cultures; and asks its readers to slow down, look back, look deeply, and think. The launch of each issue is accompanied by live events, often including readings and screenings. Diego cites Abraham Polonsky at the end, ‘The only fights worth fighting are for lost causes’. Speaking to Diego and Felix a whole cinema culture comes alive. They cite LA VIDA UTIL and Lucía Salas as an inspiration: a spirit of sharing knowledge, friendship and dialogue, enthusiasm for cinema, a similar way of thinking about film history. Diego and Felix both also write for Simulacro magazine edited by Julia Scrive-Loyer (https://www.simulacromag.com/) participate in its weekly cine-club and are connected to the Chavón School of Film and Design, itself associated with Parsons, with Diego as one of its key lecturers. ‘How can we approach the history of images and sounds from a place that maybe didn’t have (a film industry) but we have to create tools for understanding those elements that did exist (newsreels, home movies, a rich culture of filmgoing)’, says Diego. The conversation ranges from the origins of the magazine, it’s aims (to defend cinema from this place, that is on the margins), it’s focus (to shine a light on the overlooked), how each issues tries to create a thread of thought. We detour through a brief account of a history of cinema in the Dominican Republic, where the conversation took place. All this and much more can be listened to in the podcast below: The new issue comes out in June and can be purchased at: https://outskirtsmag.com/

Such a pleasure to talk to Paul Cuff on Robert Egger’s version of NOSFERATU. He knos so much that the discussion of the film unfurls into a discussion of the various other versions, Murnau’s original (1922), Herzog’s version (1979), David Lee Fisher’s version (2023), and onto the films of Guy Maddin, Pablo Berger’s BLANCA NIEVES (2012), various versions of THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE and even THE ARTIST (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011), which Paul loathes. We were entertained by, enjoyed -- with reservations -- the rich visual world of Egger’s version, the thick and dense sound, and we praise Nicholas Hoult as the emotional anchor of the film. But Paul articulates his uncertainty about whether the film was a parody of itself or the genre or Nosferatu in its various incarnations. The film seems to be drawing on Murnau, Herzog, Caspar Friedrich’s paintings. But it seems to create a world in which God ostensibly exists but no one seems to believe in the ideology that would sustain this. Paul notes with interest on how Eggers credits the screenplay of the original Nosferatu but not Murnau, the director. Paul highlights how Nosferatu was itself a rip-off of Bram Stoker’s work and the significance of the titles of the most prominent version (Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (Murnau) and the German title of Herzog’s version, Nosferatu, Phantom of the Night.) What all versions have in common is that they’re all about sex and death, all about sex and the maiden; all versions have Nosferatu as a sexual figure as well as a figure of death and pestilence, How does Egger’s version sit on the shoulder of previous versions and what does it add to them? We discuss our love of the performances of Max Schrek and Klaus Kinski and much more in the podcast below:

We discuss Visconti’s final film, currently available to see through the BFI streaming service, in conjunction with the Visconti season recently held at the Southbank, and in a lush and lovely print. Richard had to convince me to podcast on this and I’m glad we did. We both think it a great film, without being anywhere near Visconti’s greatest, a measure of the director’s extraordinary achievements. Here we discuss it in relation to D’Annunzzio’s original novel (The Intruder is the literal translation of the novel’s Italian title); the lushness of décor and costuming, which sometimes seem a John Singer Sargent painting come to life; how the mise-en-scène vividly and complexly conveys character feeling, often without dialogue, and with such skill it can make a viewer swoony with admiration; we talk of how Alain Delon and Romy Schneider were originally cast and admire the performances of Giancarlo Giannini, Jennifer O’Neill, Laura Antonelli and Rina Morelli. It was also lovely to (barely) recognise Massimo Girotti, so beautiful in OSSESSIONE, as one of Giannini’s rivals for Jennifer O’Neill’s favours. We discuss the auction scene,and the fencing scene between husband lover in some detail; how the film reminds us of the 19th century novel in its narrative sweep, melodramatic accents and its dramatization of complex ideas (faith vs science, moral actions in a world without God, marriage vs free love, equality between the sexes, etc.). A world of feeling and desire, fuelled by melodrama; a beautiful film slightly marred by its ending. We discuss all of this and more here:

The BFI’s screenings of JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 COMMERCE QUAY, 1080 BRUXELLES were all sold out. Luckily, we were both able to see it on a big screen elsewhere. In this podcast we discuss why this is a film to see on a big screen, how it remains a radical film, how the first scene sets a context, how Jeanne Dielman lives in a pimped world where the very same money she gets from men she gives to men. We discuss how the bare bones of the story could have been done as melodrama or noir and the significance of rendering it as ‘slow cinema’, including all that’s been left out of cinema previously (the various kinds of women’s work). We admire the three-day structure as well as the formal rigour and precision which creates Dielman’s world and Ackerman’s point-of-view on it; how the film puts into play elements that are never rendered explicit (is the son gay?). We also discuss Delphine Seyrig, the muse insoumise, in the light of her art-house and activist careers (the program for the Queen Sofia exhibition on her work and career is in the blogpost); the film itself in the context of Second Wave Feminism; how the film remains radical in that it is simultaneously a depiction of what Tate brothers bros think women should be, a refutation of those ideas, and women’s frustration/ explosion/ revenge in response. A film that is almost half a century old and feels continuously relevant

Tsui Hark’s SHANGHAI BLUES (1984), starring Kenny Bee, Sylvia Chang and Sally Yeh, is currently playing on MUBI. A commercial romantic comedy with musical numbers galore and lots of screwball and slapstick, the film is easy to like. We discuss the pleasures in the performers, the interwar Shanghai setting, the beauty of its look and design, the inventiveness of its shot design and composition. We note how rare it is to see a look designed purely to please instead of to evoke, convey and signify in contemporary cinema. Might this also be a limitation? The film feels like a quickly executed trifle. It’s very broad and the execution feels a bit clunky. We were nonetheless both charmed by it though Richard rated it a bit higher than I did. Where we intersect and where we diverge is the subject of the podcast.