First Impressions: Thinking Aloud About Film

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/10/23/interview-with-curator-kuan-ping-liu-on-taiwan-film-festival-edinburgh-2021/

The Taiwan Film Festival Edinburgh 2021 runs from 25-31st October. It has live screenings in theatres but it also has a digital component which is free and accessible to all. We interview curator Kuan-ping Liu to discuss the highlights of this year's programme: Archival Films, 8mm home movies, characteristic examples of New Taiwanese Cinema, classic Hokkien-language cinema from the 1960s and a strand of films directed by women.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/11/02/peony-birds-huang-yu-shan-1990/

A discussion of Peony Birds, part of a strand of films by women directors or films focussing on women that is a most welcome additions to the Taiwan Film Festival in Edinburgh. It is also a slight historical corrective to what may be seen as the 'all-boys' account of New Taiwanese Cinema from the 1980s and 1990s. In the podcast we discuss, how Peony Birds an inter-generational film focussing on mother-daughter relationships that deal with themes of love, money, class as well as differing perspectives on similar actions. Richard and José are divided on the film itself, with Richard perhaps more persuasive on the film's virtues.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/10/21/the-best-secret-agent-chang-ying-1964/

Definitely not a masterpiece of cinematic art but Best Secret Agent is a sexy melodrama, drawing on the Bond craze then current but putting it in the context of Taiwanese history and culture. Sometimes popular cinema can teach us at least as much as art. Charismatic stars, action, superb costuming and a director and cinematographer who can do wonders with lighting and composition, this is a wonderful-looking film that never ceases being fun to watch. Highly recommended.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/10/18/the-youssef-chahine-podcast-no-42-omar-gatlato-aka-omar-it-kills-him-merzak-allouache-algeria-1976/

A greatly beloved work, a landmark film in Algeria. Filmed in 1976, in that period between the end of the Algerian War in 1962 and the start of what would become known as the black decade of the 90s, Omar Gatlato is a study of machismo, a document of Algiers in that period, an experiment in film and one of the films Chahine recommended we see. I was very glad we did. The podcast touches on all of these topics and more.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/10/09/the-youssef-chahine-podcast-no-41-a-nightingales-prayer-henry-barakat-1959/

The Nightingale’s Prayer, based on a 1934 novel by renowned Egyptian author Taha Hussein, is an extraordinary melodrama, a critique of patriarchy anyone interested in cinema’s treatment of these issues should see. A philandering husband is killed for his actions. His shame extends to his family and his wife (Amina Rizk) and his daughter – Amna (Fatim Hamama, the great star of Egyptian Cinema) and Hanadi (Zahrat El Ola, who faithful listeners might recognise from Jamila, the Algerian ) -- are forced to leave the village and face all the travails of being three vulnerable women on the road. They eventually settle in a small village and get what they think are respectable jobs as maids. They don’t yet know that ‘putting out’ is an expected part of the job description when working for single men. One of the sisters is seduced and made pregnant. She tells her mother, who tells her brother, who comes find her and kills his niece. He tells them to say it’s the plague; she tells him it was his duty to protect them and runs away on her own, to find that bachelor, kill him and avenge her sister. A film that is beautiful to look at, poetically structured through internal monologues, and successful at conveying and inciting feeling. We talk about all of this and the particulars in the podcast below

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/09/27/the-youssef-chahine-podcast-no-40-lets-talk-marianne-khoury-2019/

Let's talk about 'Let's Talk', Marianne Khoury's exploration of mother/daughter relationships across generations. The film is of interest to us because we wondered if it would enhance our understanding of Chahine's cinema; and it does! Marianne's mother was Chahine's sister, and her story was dramatised by Chahine in Dawn of a New Day (1964). Khoury also demonstrates how part of the family's narrative is the origin and source of strands of Alexandria .... Why (1979) and An Egyptian Story (1982), so the accounts on this film give us an interesting spin on how Chahine treats the same material. We discuss the relationship between Iris and Marianne and Marianne and her own daughter Sara: is it self-reflexive enough? Is the film aware of the historical context in which those lives were lived and various decisions were made? We discuss cosmopolitism and language (a gift/ a burden?); the pleasure of the old photographs and how they evoke whole ways of life; we rant about BFI Player; José purrs when he sees footage of the EICTV film school in Cuba and at the footage in Havana. We recommend as a film that enhances our understanding of Chahine's work and also a film that is a very personal reflection of mother/daughter relationships.

We return to the work of Youssef Chahine, spurred on by by MUBI's decision to screen a selection of his works, in what turns out to be marvellous copies. We focus on two of his films, Daddy Amin (1950) and The Devil of the Desert (1954), we compare the visual quality of the MUBI versions to those we saw previously, confirm our admiration for Youssef Chahine's skills as a director, José takes a dig at the arrogance of a British film culture that assumes one can just move from writing or directing for the stage to directing a movie, and not even Richard can stop José from sighing over Omar.

A conversation with Ana María Sánchez-Arce on The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar, her new book, the most recent on the subject and, in my view, one of the very best. What did she learn about Pedro Almodóvar's cinema when writing the book and what can we learn from reading it? I wish we could have talked for longer.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/08/30/hou-hsiao-hsien-25-contexts-15-growing-up-chen-kunhou-1983/

We discuss this absorbing and extremely likeable film in the context of New Taiwanese Cinema. Chen Kunhou was then Hou's regular cinematographer. This feels , to an extent,  like a transition between the style of the earlier Hou films and the later ones. Hou Hsiao-hsien collaborated on the screenplay and we compare this to Hou's earlier films (and find it lacking). There's a sense that that this is a first try for ideas that were better developed in Boys from Fengkuei & Time to Live and a Time to Die.

There are spoilers in the podcast. The film is a maternal melodrama, where the mother's point of view is sidelined in favour of the son's, the husband's, the society, a childhood schoolmate of the son. We find fault with the screenplay, the structure and the visual story-telling. What in Hou feel like ellipses that afford depth, here  come across as unbelievable plot holes or plot twists. We are nonetheless very charmed by it and highly recommend.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/08/24/hou-hsiao-hsien-24-contexts-14-that-day-on-the-beach-edward-yang-1982/

Two old friends reunite after 13 years apart. One was in love with the other's brother but the couple were forced to separate after he was forced into an arranged marriage with someone else and this ruined his life. His sister ran away to marry for love but ended up just as unhappy as her brother and her friend. One friend lost herself in her work and became a famous concert pianist; the other started a successful business. But what happened that day, on the beach? A poetic exegis on love, loss and happiness with a focus on women's perspectives and experiences; a melodrama in art cinema mode, with gorgeous images beautifully shot by Christopher Doyle. Hou hsia-hsien appears as part of a gang of boisterous Wall Street types.