Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic reports a meeting with Fidel Castro in which Fidel made some extraordinary statements about the failure of Cuba’s economic model and his own past mistakes, including his position at the time of the missile crisis … Continue reading
or, Advice for Writers in the Age of Digital Orthography In his book of aphorisms, One Way Street, published in 1928, Walter Benjamin has a remarkable premonition. ‘The typewriter’ he says, ‘will alienate the hand of the man of letters … Continue reading
Screening at the Barbican on September 25, 2010 For his new film on the Cuban national hero Martí, Fernando Pérez has returned to classical narrative after a run of offbeat movies, both fiction and documentary. In Martí, el ojo del … Continue reading
I’ve started a new blog for snippets of news and items which interest me for one reason or another. You can find it here: Michael’s Digest.
There is continuing confusion about the use of frame grabs for illustrating books and articles about film. It’s a question I get asked regularly, and yesterday there was a query about it on a discussion list I subscribe to, which … Continue reading
There is something very seriously rotten in the State when the Government can decide to abolish the Film Council to save £15m a year at the same time that the head of BP is said to be about to take … Continue reading
Glauber Rocha’s Antônio das Mortes is surely one of the most astonishing films to come out of Brazil in the 1960s… See my review of the new DVD release in Sight & Sound here
Anyone who still thinks the privatisation of utilities was a good thing needs their head examined. When I moved back to London some three years ago, I elected to take both gas and electricity from British Gas. Sometime later, must … Continue reading
A current affairs programme on Israeli television is planning a report on reactions towards Israel’s policy in Gaza ‘taking place outside Israel, mainly in the UK’, and in particular, the call for an academic boycott. How I know is that … Continue reading
Back from ‘Sights and Sounds’, a small but stimulating and enjoyable conference on music documentary in Salford. Films about music and musicians have been a major strand of documentary since the 1960s, so it’s odd, especially given the huge predominance … Continue reading