Patricio Guzmán’s latest film finally reaches London at a DocHouse screening on 2nd February. The Atacama desert in the north of Chile—the location for Patricio Guzmán’s Nostalgia de la luz (Nostalgia for the Light)—is one the driest places on earth, … Continue reading
The recent BBC documentary ‘The Camera That Changed the World’, directed by Mandy Chang, about the birth of direct cinema at the start of the 1960s, was a solidly crafted and conventionally narrated television documentary containing a good deal of … Continue reading
There’s an interesting new piece of research about the perceptual process of watching films which I can’t get out of my head without writing a blog about it. This research is not just of theoretical interest, but touches on pedagogic … Continue reading
Three Forgotten Early Soviet Sound Films on the Electrification of the USSR (This is a revised version of the talk I gave at the BFI Southbank on 1st June 2011 as part of the Soviet season, to introduce Macheret’s Men … Continue reading
Following the KCL Postgrad Film Studies Conference that I wrote about last week, I’ve been up to Glasgow for a similar event. In fact, two. The first was a workshop on documentary as research, with a focus on human rights … Continue reading
Will postgrad film studies continue to thrive under the new dispensation being engineered for universities by the Tories (with Lib-Dem connivance)? What will have been destroyed if it doesn’t is in evidence at this time of year in postgrad events … Continue reading
An Iranian Director’s Impassioned Defense thelede.blogs.nytimes.com Jafar Panahi, an internationally celebrated Iranian filmmaker who supported opposition protesters after last year’s disputed presidential election, delivered an impassioned defense of his work at his trial in Tehran last week. http://www.facebook.com Recommend on … Continue reading
Details of BFI plans for library and archive, including job cuts from bfiwatch by pamcook BFI management draft proposals: Restructure of Collections & Information Rationale There are five key drivers in our proposal for the future structure of the Archive: … Continue reading
Film, as the first industrial art, has always been a complex mix of business and culture, and its status within public policy has reflected this. Successive governments have employed different strategies to stimulate commercial production on the one hand, and … Continue reading
With Memories of Overdevelopment the young Cuba film-maker Miguel Coyula has made a remarkable sequel to one of the classic films of the Cuban Revolution, Memories of Underdevelopment by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. Intriguingly, the new film, like the old, is based … Continue reading