There was something magical about the first time I met Fernando Birri, who celebrated his 90th birthday a few days ago. I had just arrived in Cuba for the first Havana Film Festival in 1979. Checking in to the Hotel … Continue reading
Ishtar Yasin’s film about the work of the Chilean painter Julio Escámez. Film de Ishtar Yasin sobre la obra del pinto chileno Julio Escámez. [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/98076754[/vimeo]
When Sight & Sound sent out their invitation to contribute to their best documentaries poll, I’m afraid I bottled out, and sent this response. Dear Nick, Thanks for inviting me to contribute to Sight & Sound’s best documentaries poll. I’m … Continue reading
This video presents an overview of the work of the Brazilian filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho (1933-2014), one of the most original documentarists of recent decades, whose films remain shamefully little known in the English-speaking world. [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/99022268#[/vimeo] Read an accompanying discussion of … Continue reading
The symposium on audiovisual creative practice held at Roehampton University on June 14th, ‘Image Movement Story’, threw up an issue that reflects the incoherence of the research policies that fund our activities. On the one hand, judging from the wide … Continue reading
Here’s a piece I’ve written on the Israeli documentarist for Sight & Sound: Variety calls him a “gadfly documaker” and Cineaste quotes his own self-evaluation: “If some [filmmakers] see themselves as a fly on the wall, I see myself as a fly … Continue reading
Here’s my obituary for Eduardo Coutinho, (from the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies) Chanan on Countinho
A forgotten documentary about Lockerbie On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing, Channel 4 News has broadcast a very interesting report claiming that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi wasn’t the Lockerbie bomber, and Libya wasn’t the country responsible, but … Continue reading
Saturday 23rd November, Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge (advance registration required). http://www.latin-american.cam.ac.uk/events/chile-on-film Includes the first screening of my new video, ‘Chile: Divided Generations’ – a study of the politics of memory in Chile, extracted from a longer … Continue reading
Here’s a teaser for Interrupted Memory : [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/74300839#[/vimeo]