First Impressions: Thinking Aloud About Film

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 sexual connection, the tension in sex work between certain types of freedom and certain types of bondage. Moneyboys is too high class to touch on many of those things. But Richard is interested in Taiwanese Cinema, in Hou Hsiao-hsien and Haneke, interests which do intersect with Money Boys so humours him. In the podcast we talk of the significance of a Taiwanese film on this subject being set in Mainland China; the tensions between the rural and the city; the biological family which accepts money earned from sex work but casts out the worker; the value of constructed families; the various kinds of love valued (and de-valued) by the film; the possible conflation of sex work and homosexuality; the fluid long takes and the emotional distance evoked. It’s an accomplished first film, interestingly made under a pseudonym, and in the podcast we talk through our responses to the various strands it raises.

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 as soon as the 45 minute zoom time-limit ends. But it does cover a lot of ground: her artistry, her persona, her significance to gay men, her performances in various films, her duet with Barbra Streisand...and much more.

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 marriage, which he has a moral obligation to provide, as he inherited everything Ngando’s father owned upon his death, including Ngando’s mother. But the uncle takes one look at Ndomé and wants her for himself. Ndomé thinks the way forward is for her to have a child with Ndomé, which would shame her and her family but might get the uncle out of the way – he already has four other wives -- and allow her to marry Ngando. Instead, the uncle forces Ndomé into marriage and claims the child as his own. The film begins as Ngando kidnaps the child, setting up an inventive flashback structure that allows the film to unfurl as if that moment is the film’s continued present, a present where tradition enables injustice after injustice and in varied dimensions: social, sexual, economic, affective. The film is currently on MUBI and the podcast an array of reasons to view this wonderful film.

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, France/Algeria, 1975) or MANDABI (Ousmane Sembène, 1968), in that it focuses on racism and familial, social, and inter-generational relations in Ladbrook Grove, rather than making explicit links to colonial relations or international revolutionary movements. It’s also less formally experimental than the other films and, perhaps because of that, more accessible. We discuss this film in relation to the above and also Sidney Poitier’s work in the US (BUCK AND THE PREACHER, 1972) plus trace links through this work to the Sankofa film collective, the films of Isaac Julian and those of Steve McQueen, particularly the latter’s SMALL AXE (2020), which seems to be having an ongoing cultural conversation with PRESSURE, our favourite of this grouping of films. It can be seen on BFI Player and is also available on DVD.

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 formalism and incendiary refinement’; ‘never didactic’. We dispute all of this. The film is definitely, flamboyant, anti-clerical, modernist, anti-colonial, deploying folklore and experimenting with style. An important film then, very much of its time, but which can now seem to lack complexity and subtlety, though perhaps subtlety was never its aim; and perhaps we should also acknowledge that our perspective is that of two white men. Richard appreciated it more than I. We both urge everyone to see it. We discuss all of this in the accompanying podcast. Part of the series of important restorations being screened on MUBI

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 reminiscent of Angels With Dirty Faces in that two childhood friends end up on different sides of the law. With the great Yilmaz Güney as a father caught between a rock and a hard place -- does he continue smuggling sheep across the border; the only option to feed his people; or does he allow the school to come in that might offer a better life for his son? It's a film where one feels the heat, the thirst, the despair; an existential noir amidst the barren landscape with a great feel for places and the people who inhabit them. Güney as the father has something of Clint Eastwood's granite iconicity about him but with life and feeling behind the eyes. Restored in 2013 by Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, Dadaş Films, and the Turkish Ministry of Culture. Restoration funded by Doha Film Institute

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 produce it, the way materials were gathered, who was interviewed, the many barriers to its publication, how the book was received then and why it continues to be so influential now.

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 forever. An immense success when released in 1960, this striking masterpiece is a blend of sexual obsession and class struggle, horror and social critique’. In the podcast, we agree with most of what MUBI says about it but question the claim that it’s a masterpiece,’ finding the film deeply misogynistic in ways that go even beyond the patriarchal norms of its time and culture. The very handsome version being screened by MUBI is the 2008 restoration by the Korean Film Archive and is a real pleasure to see, making visible the film’s very real inventiveness with light, composition and movement.

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 it effects children, but very open and accepting about different ways of being, with one of the earliest, most rounded and complex characterisations of a teen trans character either of us remember seeing. In this podcast we discuss the achievements of the film; it's realist 'documentary' style, the extraordinary performances from the children and from Marilia Pera as the ageing prostitute, the power of its imagery; how we suspect it would be even harder to make and show today then it was then; we discuss the context in which the film was shown on British Television, we compare it to Buñuel's LOS OLVIDADOS/ THE YOUNG AND THE DAMNED, Fernano Meirelles and Kátia Lund's CITY OF GOD, and Alar Clarke's SCUM; and we discuss the racial mix of the group of children and its significance.