First Impressions: Thinking Aloud About Film

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/03/07/el-santo-oficio-the-holy-office-the-holy-inquisitionarturo-ripstein-mexico-1974/

EL SANTO OFICIO/ THE HOLY OFFICE / THE HOLY INQUISITION (Arturo Ripstein, Mexico, 1974) is a more serious and austere film than we’re used to seeing from Arturo Ripstein, but at least as great as anything we’ve seen by him so far. A Jewish family fleeing persecution in Spain make a life in Mexico and prosper. That is, until the father dies. The family had sacrificed one of their male children to the Church as a cover-up for their own religious practices. Now a grown monk, that son returns to his father’s burial only to detect that they’re observing Hebraic practices. He denounces his own family to the Church, and the persecution begins. A great film about religious intolerance, patriarchal control, and colonial enslavement through the brutal enforcement of a particular ideology. Based on actual court transcripts, an austerely spectacular period film, with much greater production values than we’re used to seeing from Ripstein. We discuss all of this and more in the podcast below.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/02/26/the-place-without-limits-el-lugar-sin-limites-arturo-ripstein-mexico-1978/

A film that shocked and delighted with the unexpected. A film that makes one re-think a history of queer representation and 70s cinema. A transnational project in the sense that it's based on a Chilean novel by José Donoso, with a script in which Manuel Puig (Argentina) collaborated and of course made in Mexico. It brings to mind Tennessee Williams and Puig's own Kiss of the Spider-woman. It's a funny tragedy, a critique of machismo featuring one of the most fearless queens in the history of cinema. Every Arturo Ripstein film we've seen so far seems the best one yet. We discuss this and much more in the accompanying podcast.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/02/21/thinking-aloud-about-cinema-la-viuda-negra-the-black-widow-arturo-ripstein-mexico-1977/

We continue our exploration of the Arturo Ripstein films currently available on MUBI with a discussion of The Black Widow/ La viuda negra. The film is based on Debiera haber obispas/ There Should Be Female Bishops, a novel by Rafael Solanas. It’s a film we urge all of our friends interested in exploitation cinema to see. From a producer/audience point of view, the film is all about showing as much of the female star’s body in as many sexual poses as possible. Arturo Ripstein has bypassed and exceeded the expectations of both producers and audiences by providing a film that is a corrosive critique of the pieties of bourgeois life, of the malignant influence of class and of the hypocrisies of the Church. There’s a very powerful moment where the protagonist, punitively shunned by the whole village, dons a priestly cassock to reveal all their secrets and condemn them all to hell. It was made in 1977 and perceived as so blasphemous that it was originally prohibited release. It was released five years later to much acclaim and many Ariel nominations, the Mexican equivalent of the Academy Awards, with Isela Vega winning for best actress. We loved Castle of Purity and think La viuda negra even better. Why this is so is the subject of the podcast.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/02/11/thinking-aloud-about-film-el-castillo-de-la-pureza-castle-of-purity-arturo-ripstein-mexico-1972/

I’ve been wanting to see Arturo Ripstein films for decades and never had the opportunity. Now MUBI is showing five of his films and, on the basis of El Castillo de la pureza/ The Castle of Purity, I plan to see them all. The film is based on a real story – not unlike that of the Wests or Joseph Fritzl – of a man who keeps his family locked in the house to protect them from the perversions of the world even as he – the only one allowed outside – indulges in every perversion the outside world allows him. When he comes home – the family, who’ve been working all day manufacturing the poison that is their living – gets all his self-hatred projected onto them, keeping them off-balance and under his thumb. The shadow of Buñuel overhangs this film – Ripstein had been his assistant on The Exterminating Angel, which bears some resemblance to this film, and Claudio Brook (Simon of the Desert) and Rita Macedo (The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz) – the stars – also performed for Buñuel. A beautifully designed film, with a textured creepiness that envelops the family, one that is not just due to rain and shadows that seep right into the home (the outside world is always sunny and bright) but a moral murkiness, a perversion that is the result of that imperious patriarchal insistence on ‘purity’. A marvellous film. We discussed all the above and more in the podcast.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/02/05/three-shorts-by-charlotte-wells/

A discussion of the three shorts Charlotte Wells made before Aftersun: Laps (2016), Tuesday (2016) and Blue Christmas (2017). All were made while she was studying for an MA in film in New York, two of them sharing some themes with Aftersun. We discuss the way she sets up tension and meaning without dialogue and how this in turn helps create an air of mystery or uncertainty. She has an intuitive feel for the medium; the compositions, the lighting, the rhythms of a scene, and the editing all help create a textured world, full of understanding and feeling. In Laps she conveys a claustrophobic sense of sexual harassment that’s gendered, perceptive, critical. Through editing we see bare skin touching bare skin, without permission and without anyone else noticing We feel the horror of being in such a situation. Tuesday could almost be set after the holiday in Aftersun. In Blue Christmas, after the Elvis Presley song, we see her skill with actors, especially children. We discuss whether the film is more conventional or merely with a greater focus on narrative? All the interrelationships crackle. I love films by young people in love with cinema and the potentialities of the medium, and Charlotte Wells is clearly one of them, already mining a personal vein in a distinctive style and with a particular point of view. They’re marvellous and highly recommended.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/01/30/thinking-aloud-about-film-aftersun-charlotte-wells-2022/

Are the most interesting British film directors currently working women? Charlotte Wells’ textured, precise and poetic Aftersun begs the question. Clearly influenced by Lynne Ramsey (and Chantal Ackerman), and working in the same indie vein as Andrea Arnold, Wells has an eye for the original expressive image that can externalise interior states. She’s got a feel for rhythm too and alternations between movement and stillness, through editing and simple diegetic movement, is what help the film evoke mood and feeling as powerfully as it does. Aftersun is a beautiful and touching film about memory and relationships between fathers and daughters, overhung with depression but laced through with a love that keeps trying to break through the sadness. We discuss all of this and more in the podcast.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/01/24/jose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-matthew-hays-on-queer-film-classics/

José Arroyo talks to Matthew Hays about Queer Film Classics. Matt is, along with Thomas Waugh, the co-editor of the series, first for Arsenal Press and currently for McGill-Queen's University Press. The conversation touches on the concept behind the series, the rationale for selection of individual titles, and what he's learned from the close to two decades he's been co-editing the series, eventually to comprise approximately 40 titles, and including books on films as diverse as Scorpio Rising and I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, Boys in the Sand and Death in Venice, Orlando and Zeo Patience .... and many, many others.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/01/21/thinking-aloud-about-film-black-girl-ousmane-sembene-france-senegal-1966/

A discussion of Ousmane Sembène’s BLACK GIRL (France/ Senegal, 1966), a rich and poetic evocation of post-colonial subjectivity. A young girl (M’Bissine Thérèse Diop) goes to work as a nanny for a French family in Dakar and then joins them in France later to continue working for them. But the job has changed: instead of being a nanny, she ends up cooking, cleaning, washing. She feels herself imprisoned in the room, turned into a thing, fetishised as a display: a slave. Outside of her country and away from her family, community and lover, she’s constantly reminded of her outsiderness, subjectivised into subalternity. In French the film’s title has connotations lost in English: the black girl of, the black girl from; connotations of outsiderness, exclusion and possession, whose black girl is she that is not from here? The white family is confounded by her unhappiness and has no idea what is wrong with her. For Sembène, she’s a symbol for the country and for post-colnialism in general. But is this enough? Sight & Sound pollsters thought so and ranked it one of the best 100 films of all time. The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project thought it important enough to fund a restoration with the Cineteca di Bologna. The film is available through Criterion, the BFI, and there is a very good version on You Tube. We found it fascinating but preferred Sembène’s later Mandabi.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/11/21/thinking-aloud-about-film-a-time-to-love-sevmek-zamani-metin-erksan-turkey-1965/

We were so impressed by Metin Ersksan’s Dry Summer (Susuz Yaz, 1964), that we decided to continue exploring his work. We’ve just seen A Time to Love/ Sevmek Zamani (1965), and remain impressed. This is the first in-house restoration by MUBI and fully understand why they chose this particular filmmaker and this particular film as a calling card for this new venture. Indeed we are grateful that they did so. A Time to Love is an easy film to parody: an artsy, philosophical film about love and art, distinctions between being and appearances, class and alienation, traditional and modernity; greatly influenced by the art cinema of its day, particularly the work of Antonioni. But, if one gives oneself over to the style and sensibility of the work, one finds it’s a work of depth, texture and beauty as great as any produced in Western Europe in the same period. We talk about all of this and more in the accompanying podcast.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/11/18/in-conversation-with-josh-bullen-on-untamed-the-resilience-of-queer-cinema/

I was very excited to discover Josh BullIn's new programme of queer films scheduled to be presented at the Rio Cinema in London from November 24th to the 5th of December . In this podcast we talk about the individual films --WET SAND, LEITIS IN WAITING, GRACEFULLY & MEMORIES OF MY BODY but also about the rationale for the programme as a whole. What goes into curating such a programme? Why are some films chosen and not others. What does a curator do? And what are the hopes for the resulting event? An illuminating discussion of what promises to be a fascinating event.