Tag Archives: José Arroyo

Jose Arroyo in Conversation with James Taylor on ….THE SUPERHERO BLOCKBUSTER: ADAPTATION, STYLE AND MEANING

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Just as the Superhero film loses centrality in the culture there comes a book that is not only a brilliant accounting of the various strategies of adaptations the mode engages with but also offers a methodology that will be of interest and use to anyone engaged with the analysis of visual media:  not only a brilliant book, but an important one. In this podcast we talk about what it is that is being adapted when discussing comic book characters that have so many iterations across different media. We talk about modes of seriality; the translation of the illusion of movement across media; the significance of bodies in spaces and movement in the mode; intertextuality, kaleidoscopic irruptions; how the move to digital affected issues of realism and reflexivity; restorative and reflective nostalgia; how the works compress, hierarchize and create continuities; the dramatization of alternate timelines….and we return over and over again to the hierarchization of gendered, racialised and sexualised bodies in dialogue with past iterations, current politics, contemporary formal strategies and more. I can’t imagine future explorations of audiovisual work engaged with adapting any form of Intellectual Property, characters or worlds uninformed by THE SUPERHERO BLOCKBUSTER: ADAPTATION, STYLE AND MEANING.

 

The podcast may be listened to here:

The podcast may also be listened to on: Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

José Arroyo

Eavesdropping at the Movies: In Conversation at the University of Warwick

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We were delighted to be invited to the School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Culture at the  University of Warwick  for a conversation with James MacDowell about Eavesdropping at the Movies: how it began, why we do it, what we get out of it, how we make it. We hope you enjoy what was an enormously satisfying hour and a bit in which we had the privilege to discuss our practice of film criticism with an audience keen to ask questions. Thank you to James for chairing, to Julie Lobalzo Wright for inviting us and to all those who attended and asked such interesting questions.

 

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

José Arroyo In Conversation With Fiona Cox On Wicked (Jon M. Chu, 2024)

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Fiona Cox, PhD in Film Studies by day, and, under the name of Kitty Mazinksy, chanteuse extraordinaire by night, is the ideal person to talk to about WICKED (Jon M. Chu, 2024). She’s read the book, seen the musical four times and has even performed in it. She now talks to me about musicals, the politics of the film, the dancing, the singing, the numbers, the length. Are critics right about tonal problems in the film? About finding fault with the way it looks? What about the casting and the songs? What does the film convey about race, queerness, female solidarity? How does it speak to the current moment? We compare it to the stage version, find it an improvement, and look forward to part II. Like Fiona herself, this is an ebullient, enthusiastic conversation, full of smarts and laughter.

 

The podcast may be listened to here:

 

The duet with Miley Cyrus can be seen here:

 

Fiona performs as Kitty Mazinksy

Cinema Rediscovered 2024 Wrap-Up

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We have nothing but praise for this year’s edition of Cinema Rediscovered. In the podcast, we discuss the pleasures of seeing Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946) and Le Samourai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967) in beautiful prints on the opening night; the pleasure in seeing restorations with an audience where every time someone responds differently it raises a question one might not have thought of before; thus, a pleasure that begins in the realm of the aesthetic and moves on and combines with the the real of dreams and thoughts.

We talk about the two Edward Yang films screened,  A Confucian Confusion (1994) and Mahjong (1996) and praise Ian Wang for doing such a terrific job of introducing the films: interesting, entertaining, succinct and opening up ways of entering the film, a challenge in the age of Wikipedia.

We discuss the Ninon Sevilla cabaretera films, possibly the hit of the festival. There was a fantastic programme of ‘New’ Hollywood films — Out of Their Depth: Corruption Scandal and Lies in the New Hollywood — and we discuss the only two films in the programme that we did manage to see:  Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975) and The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973). We hope to catch up with the rest when it tours. The festival offers a great balance tween the more esoteric strands and those appealing to a larger audience. It was wonderful to see The Wizard of Oz (1939) with an audience full of children, some of them dressed up as Dorothy. We also touch on the Jeff Barnaby and  Bill Douglas cycles as well as  the Sergei Parajanov restorations and other strands of the festival such as the J. Lee Thompson restorations. We will be doing a separate podcast on the Queer Cinema from the Eastern Bloc programme.

There were several revelations in this festival that we discuss in the podcast: The Student Nurses (Stephanie Rothman, 1970) the only woman to direct a film in Hollywood between Ida Lupino and Elaine May; Charles Burnett’s The Annihilation of Fish (1999); Ehsahn Khoshbakht’s beautiful and very personal Cellulloid Underground; and Giuseppe Patroni Griffi’s Il Mare (1962), which David Melville Wingrove in his introduction argued had been a formative influence on Jarman as well as Bill Douglas and, we later learned on Tony Richardson as well as Pedro Almodóvar. Quite a queer package.

Lastly, we praise how the festival makes use of the city, the different venues, It’s part of a concerted effort to bring the city into the festival and the festival into the city. The festival seems an incubator for curators, some programming a single film, some a strand. The community feel, the social engagement, the educational component of talks and workshops, a teaching people how to do things, all meshed together to form a very impressive and entertaining festival. Many congratulations to all. Some of the strands will be touring. Oh, and no one used their phones during the screenings. Big Gold Star.

The podcast may  also be listened to below:

The podcast may also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

Our Preview of the  Festival may be heard here:

Strands of the programme we have previously podcast on written on include:

Le Samourai

The Long Goodbye

Bill Douglas Films: The Bill Douglas Trilogy, Comrades

Edward Yang Films: The Terrorizers, Taipei Story, That Day on the Beach,   Desire/ Expectations in IN OUR TIME,

Listeners may also be interested in Hal Young’s video essay on Yi Yi: ‘Yi Yi and the Power of long Fixed Shots’. 

A short note on THE PARALLAX VIEW

A conversation with Ehsan Khoshbakht

 

Cinema Rediscovered 2024 – Preview

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Richard and I preview the 2024 Cinema Rediscovered Programme taking place in Bristol, July 24-28. We’ve already podcast on the Parajanov films and the Ninon Sevilla ‘cabaretera’ films so we here highlight some of the other strands such as the 70s cycle of ‘New” American films of the 70s titled OUT OF THEIR DEPTH: CORRUPTION, SCANDAL AND LIES IN THE NEW HOLLYWOOD and QUEER CINEMA FROM THE EASTERN BLOC. We also highlight restorations of films from Charles Burnett, Bela Tarr, Edward Yang and many others, as well as the rare opportunity to see films by the likes of Lynda Miles, Stephanie Rothman, not to mention beautiful restorations of classics such as GILDA and THE LONG

GOODBYE. Cinema Rediscovered offers not only a superb programme but a model of engagement, community based, inclusive, social, cinephile, generative. It includes films but also history walks, workshops on criticism and projection and much else. At the centre of it all are films, usually in beautiful prints with great attention to projection, all instigating a conversation on cinema.

The full programme may be seen  here.

The podcast may be listened to below:

The podcast may  also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

 

Strands of the programme we have previously podcast on written on include:

Le Samourai

The Long Goodbye

Bill Douglas Films: The Bill Douglas Trilogy, Comrades

Edward Yang Films: The Terrorizers, Taipei Story, That Day on the Beach,   Desire/ Expectations in IN OUR TIME,

Listeners may also be interested in Hal Young’s video essay on Yi Yi: ‘Yi Yi and the Power of long Fixed Shots’. 

A short note on THE PARALLAX VIEW

A conversation with Ehsan Khoshbakht

José Arroyo

José Arroyo in Conversation with Ross Higgins on the Archives Gaies du Québec

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An inspiring talk with Ross Higgins on the foundation of the Archives Gaies du Québec.

Police Raid Truxx in 1977

The podcast may be listened to here:

The podcast may  also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

 

How did the Archives come into being? Why did it come to be? What social and historical contexts shaped it? What particular problems did an archive from a marginalised community face on its inception? How did the Archives develop from materials stored and used in his flat to an archive of national and international importance soon to start its fifth decade? Ross, who along with Jacques Prince, founded the archive, offers various histories and contexts, from changes in the law to changing concepts of sexual and social identities that informed how the archive developed and how it came to be what it now is, taking into account particularities of place but always conscious of larger forces and the interplay between them.

with Ross (l), and Jacques Bourque (c) protesting the police raid on Chez Bud’s the night before, in 1984. 188 people were arrested.

Ross calls up dimly remembered political groups (Groupe Homosexuelle d’Action Politique, Comité Homosexuelle Anti-repression, Front de Libération Homosexuelle), early community magazines (Le Tier, L’Arcadie), the various police raids (Sauna Aquarius, Neptune Sauna, Truxx, Sex Garage, KOX) that along with the AIDS crisis shaped community organising in Montreal. We talk of the importance of community involvement (illustrated talks by Ross and Tom Waugh were an early and significant source of funding),  important donations (from Ken Morrison and many others), significant holdings (the work of Alan B. Stone and Peter Flinsch, the original logbook of the Front de Libération Homosexuelle). Ross reminds us that it took five attempts to start a gay community centre in Montreal before the current one succeeded in the 1980s, and that such institutions are still fragile and shouldn’t be taken for granted. He also reminds us that there is a very helpful pamphlet titled How to Start an Archive, now in the archive, and available to anyone keen on getting started on one. A talk anyone interested in histories of sexualities, communities and the place of the archive in all of that will find fascinating.

José Arroyo

In Conversation with Richard Layne on YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND (Tate Modern)

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I talk to Richard Layne on ‘Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind’, currently on at Tate Modern. You might recognise Richard from our podcast, THINKING ALOUD ABOUT FILM. What you might not know is that he is a long-time fan of Yoko Ono and one of the most knowledgeable people on her work as an artist and performer. In this podcast, Richard, compares this exhibition, billed as ‘the largest ever undertaken in the UK’ on the work of Yoko Ono, and compares it to the many others he’s attended. We talk of how he became a fan, her various types of work, the performance art, the conceptual art, her books of instructions, the connection to Fluxus. We also touch on her collaborations with some of the key figures of mid-twentieth century art (John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, John Lennon) and  how her work prefigures that of contemporary artists such as Marina Abramovíc. Our conversation broadly follows the flow of the exhibition itself, so I’ve included photographs from the exhibition in the blog so the listener might more clearly follow the points of conversation. Richard is very illuminating on why Yoko Ono is one of those figures that keep getting re-discovered periodically, on her extensive influence in various domains of art, from the gallery to punk, and on how she is a wonderful conduit to chance meetings with The Pet Shop Boys.

The podcast may be listened to here:

The podcast may  also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

 

José Arroyo

 

 

Thinking Aloud About Film: Cinema Rediscovered 2023

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Cinema Rediscovered, which takes place annually in Bristol, is one of the most exciting events in the cinema calendar year. In the accompanying podcast, Richard discusses the various strands of the program (Reframing Film; Restored and Re-discovered; Look Who’s Back — The Hollywood Renaissance and the Blacklist; Dowb abd Dirty: American D.IY, Restored) and José offers tips on many of the various films that make up the program. There are many reasons to visit Bristol, and attending this festival is tops of the list.

The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

The program may be seen below and also accessed here: wat_cr2023_a4_schedule_online_web (1)

José Arroyo

José Arroyo In Conversation with Matthew Hays on ‘Queer Film Classics”

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I talk to Matthew Hays about Queer Film Classics, a series of books modelled on the BFI series, where a writer gets to discuss a single film at book length, the difference being that these are ‘queer’ as well as ‘classic’. Matt is, along with Thomas Waugh, the co-editor of the series, first for Arsenal Press and currently for McGill-Queen’s University Press. The conversation touches on the concept behind the series — what is queer? What is classic?; the rationale for selection of individual titles, and what he’s learned from the close to two decades he’s been co-editing the series, eventually to comprise approximately 40 titles, and including books on films as diverse as Scorpio Rising and I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, Boys in the Sand and Death in Venice, Orlando and Zero Patience …. and many, many others.

The conversation may be listened to as a podcast here:

The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

It may also be seen on YouTube here:

José Arroyo

 

Thinking Aloud About Film: The Housemaid (Kim Ki-young, South Korea, 1960)

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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.

The podcast may be listened to below:

The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

José Arroyo and Richard Layne

José Arroyo in Conversation with Andrew Moor on Derek Jarman ‘Protest!’ at Manchester Art Gallery

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A conversation with Dr. Andrew Moor on Derek Jarman, arising from the Derek Jarman Protest! exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery, on Jarman’s significance in British Culture, his legacy as a multimedia artist and his contributions to art, protest cultures, queer cultures and tourism.

In the podcast we discuss his films throughout — the exhibition has been accompanied by a full retrospective at HOME in Manchester — and make reference to the following aspects of his art work that the exhibition touches on:

Juvenalia:

Jouissance:

Black Paintings: Before and During Caravaggio

Drag:

 

Scrapbooks:

 

Protest Art:

Protest Practice

Pedagogy:

José Arroyo

 

 

 

Peau d’Âne/Donkey Skin (Jacques Demy, 1970)

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In this podcast Leann Rivera and I discussJacques Demy’s 1970 fairytale classic ‘Peau d’Âne’ / Donkey Skin by delving closely into the genre of the fairytale and its shift from its traditional and subjective roots due to the standardising of Walt Disney. We investigate how the French filmmaker illustrates (through style and narrative) an innovative approach which contemporary live-action fairytales should appreciate to observe. Furthermore highlighting how Demy, and his childhood reverence for these fantastical tales and keen eye to convey visual pleasure for all ages, sexualities and backgrounds, manages to encapsulate both the genre’s beauty and ugliness all in one to appreciate but to also analyse, uncovering its secrets and layers to be learnt from and understood.

The podcast may be listened to by clicking below:

 

Donkey Skin – Podcast

José Arroyo in Conversation with ….Ana María Sánchez Arce on The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar (Manchester University Press, 2020)

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Pedro Almodóvar is arguably the most written about Spanish filmmaker since Buñuel. Is there anything more to say of his work? After reading The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar, the answer is a resounding ‘Yes!’; and I wanted to talk to its author — Ana María Sánchez-Arce — to find out more: What did she seek when starting out on the project and what did she find? What has now come to light about the Movida that was missing from earlier accounts? What are the benefits of analysing the film in chronological order and what do we learn about Spain’s culture and history in doing so? Were Spanish critics really that blind to Almodóvar’s accomplishments and that mean to his person? Did Almodóvar really invest his own money into the production of Law of Desire (1987)? There was so much talk about — we could have gone on for several hours more — that we only really cover the first parts of his career, trailing off after the controversies of Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down!  (1989) and Kika (1993). Those of you who find it interesting can turn to the book for more. The podcast can be listened to below:

José Arroyo

Hou Hsiao-hsien 8: Dust in the Wind (1986)

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A beautiful film, a continuation of a cycle of autobiographical films (The Boys From Fengkuei, A Summer at Grandpa’s). We continue our discussion of framing, ellipses, cinema, letters, the country and the city, heartbreak and exploitation, and all those other formal and thematic elements that make Hou’s cinema so great. James Udden’s wonderful article (see below) has been very useful in the discussion:

Dust in the Wind: A Definite Hou/ New Cinema  Work’, The Cupola, 08-2014 (This book chapter is available at The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/idsfac/21)

 

The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

 

José made a trailer:

 

Richard tells me: found this very good article from mubi’ https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/taiwan-stories-the-new-cinema-of-the-1980s

a good article although I disagree on some things https://seattlescreenscene.com/2015/03/22/dust-in-the-wind-hou-hsiao-hsien-1986/

 

— The beginnings of Josés Scholarly Bibliography on Hou which we will add to after every episode:

 

-Andres, Nigel, ‘A Camera Trained on Eternal Truths, Financial Times,  London: 07 June 2005: 13.

-Assayas, Olivier, Modern Time, Film Comment; Jan/Feb 2008; 44, p. 48

-Combs, Geoffrey, ‘ Dust in the Wind/ Lianlian Feng Chen’, Monthly Film Bulletin, April 1, 1990;57, 675, pg.111.

-Diffrient, David Scott ,’The Sandwich Man: History, episodicity and serial conditioning in a Taiwanese omnibus film’, Asian Cinema, vol 25, no., pp. 71-92,

-Cheshire, Godgrey, ‘Time span: The cinema of Hou Hsio-hsien’, Film Comment; Nov 1993;29, 6, pg. 56.

-Ellickson , Lee and Hou Hsiao-hsien, Preparing to Live in the Present; An interview with Hou Hsiao-hsien, Cineaste, Fall 2002, vol 27, no. 4 (Fall 2002), pp. 13-19

 

-Hastie, Amelie, ‘Watching Carefully: Hou Hsiao-Hsien and His Audience’, Film Quarterly, vol. 69, no. 3 (Spring 2016), pp. 72-78

-Kenigsberg, Ben . ‘Looking for an Introduction to Taiwan’s Greatest Filmmaker? Start Here’. New York Times (Online) , New York: New York Times Company. May 28, 2020.

-Lupke, Christopher (The Sinophone Cinea of Hou Shiao-hsien: Culture, Stuyle, Voice and Motion, amherst: Cambria Press.

-Rayns, Tony, Esprit de corp, Film Comment; Nov. Dec. 2007, 43, 6, p. 14

-Rayns, Tony, ‘Tongnian Wangshi (The Time To Live and The Tine to Die), Monthly Film Bulletin; Jun 1, 1988; 55, 653

-Stanbrook, Alan, The Worlds of Hou Hsiao-hsien’, Sight and Sound, Spring 1990; 59, 2, Rayns, Tony, ‘Auteur in the Making’, Sight and Sound; July 2016;26, 9; p. 98

-Sklar, Robert, ‘Hidden History, Modern Hedeonism; The films of Hou Hsia-hsien’,  Cineaste, Fall 2002; 27, 4, pg. 11.

-Udden, James, ‘Taiwanese Popular Cinema and the Strage Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Spring, 2003, vol. 15, no. Special Issue on Taiwan Film Spring, 2003), pp. 120-145.

-Udden, James, ‘Dust in the Wind: A Definite Hou/ New Cinema  Work’, The Cupola, 08-2014 (This book chapter is available at The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/idsfac/21)

-Xia Cai, Chapter 1: Hou Hisao-Hsien Films and Readings, The Ethics of Witness: Dailiness and History in Hou Hsia-hsien’s Films, Springer: Singapore, 2019, pp. 1-3

-Yueh-yu, Yeh. Post Script – Essays in Film and the Humanities; Commerce, Tex, Vol 20, Iss 2-3 (Winter 2000) 61-76.

Y-ip, June, ‘Taiwanese New Cinema’ in The Oxford History of World Cinema, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith ed. New York, United States, Oxford University Press, 1996)

 

-Wen, Tien-Hsiang (trans by GAN Sheuo Hui), ‘Hou Hsiao-Hsien: a standard for evaluating Taiwan’s cinema), Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol 9, number 2, 2008.

 

The Youssef Chahine Podcast: No. 36 – Al-Karnak (Ali Badr Kahn, Egypt, 1975)

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Richard returns! We discuss the famous Al-Karnak (Karnak Café) directed byAli Badr Kahn in 1975. A political film, a critique of the previous regime, based on a novella by Naguib Mahfouz, and a ‘model of de-Nasserfication’. The film is pulpy, melodramatic, sensationalist, a box-office smash. A very interesting work to discuss in relation to Chahine’s The Sparrow (1972), which deals with similar subject matter but in a a very different way. Ali Badr Kahn and Mahfouz had previously collaborated with Chahine as well so the film is an interesting focal point to a whole series of issues that intersect with Chahine’s work.

 

The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

 

José Arroyo

 

The Youssef Chahine Podcast No. 32: Youssef Chahine’s Cinema — An Egyptian Perspective, Part II

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We continue our discussion with Hussein, to garner an Egyptian perspective on the career of Youssef Chahine to 1985. We touch on Son of he Nile/ Nile Boy (1951), The Blazing Sun,/ Struggle in the Valley (1954) ‘The Turn of the Decade’ films (Forever Love/ Forever Yours (1959), In Your Hands (1960), A Lover’s Call (1960), A Man in My Life (1961). We continue with all his major films and discuss how some phrases from them have become common parlance in Egyptian culture. We also touch on the complicated relationship with Mohsen Mohieddin Mohsen Mohieddin and we end with Dalida and The Sixth Day (1986). It’s a conversation still to be continued, and we will cover the last phase of his career in the next podcast.

The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

Hussein also sent some wonderful photos which he describes as follows.

First photo (above) is a film poster from one of his first films, not sure which.

Second (below) is from Forever Love, the first of the four “turn of the decade” films.

 

Third is a photo  I took on my way home from work today of the building where Chahine lived most of his life till death, he lived in one of the three upper floors with the many windows. He actually shot many scenes there, in Egyptian Story (1982), Alexandria Again and Forever (1989), Cairo as seen by Chahine (1991)and Silence on Tourne (2001).

 

The last one is the plaque at the entrance of the building memorializing him. He used to live in the downtown Nile island of Zamalek, one of the more affluent neighborhoods of Cairo back in the days and still today.

José Arroyo

José Arroyo & Richard Layne on Filmfarsi (Ehsan Khoshbakht, 2019) Wales One World Festival

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The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

 

A discussion of Filmfarsi, a film by Ehsan Khoshbakht, on a mode of filmmaking extremely popular in Iran — urban gangster films, melodramas, musicals — set in urban working class milieus, that evoked and challenged the country’s vaunted leap in modernity. IAccording to Ehsan Khoshbakht, the film’s director, ‘Something rare, euphoric and mad was recorded on celluloid: the Iranian way of life after the second world war, with all its paradoxes. Even the sleaziest films became documents. If the majority of key Iranian arthouse films of the 1960s and 1970s were set in villages and rural areas (a tradition continued until after the revolution), filmfarsi was about the thriving cities, which were expanding blindly, thanks to petrodollars’.

t’s very different to the type of cinema Abbas Kiarostami was also doing in this period. It’s a cinema quickly banned after the ’79 revolution, and a cult on VHS. The filmmaker shows the wide range of filmmaking, its transnational perspective, its ritual and fetishistic post -79 consumption, and well evokes why it was so powerful, why it’s been banned and why it is so cherished.

He’s also offered a wonderful introduction in The Guardian, which can be found here.

It begins with: ‘Shortly after the 1979 Iranian revolution, the country’s national newspapers published a joint subpoena, unique in film history. All the key stars of “filmfarsi” – a form of popular cinema that embodied the aspirations and illusions of a modernising society – were summoned to the revolutionary court. The careers of hundreds of actors and directors ended overnight. Unlike the Hollywood blacklisting of the McCarthy era, there was not even the opportunity for a mock hearing. The cinema, seen as emblematic of corruption, “westoxification” and the decadence of the ousted Pahlavi regime, was consigned to oblivion.

 

Those of you interested in watching the film can follow up bookings here. Many thanks to Wales One World for their superb programme and for the free screenings.

You can see Ehsan Khoshbakht speak to David Gillam on Filmfarsi here:

 

 

José Arroyo

The Youssef Chahine Podcast No. 29: Dawn of a New Day (Youssef Chahine, 1964)

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The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

 

Richard Layne and I return with a discussion of Dawn of a New Day, one of Chahine’s best. It echoes Sirk once more and has traces of An Affair to Remember and European Art Cinema like Antonioni’s La notte (1961) or Fellini’s La dolce vita (1960) whilst remaining very much a popular melodrama about love which is also a commentary on the state of the nation and its future. A very beautiful film and so accessible it’s a real pity it’s not part of the current Netflix package.

Richard and I discuss the very beautiful cinematography by Abdel Aziz Fahmy, and I’ve provided some image capture below to give you a taste of it:

We also discuss the extent to which Chahine deploys Sirk, his style is a kind of vernacular through which Chahine expresses himself whilst also offering a visual analysis which would not be made in prose criticism until a decade later.

Richard and I also discuss melodrama, and how the abandonment of the child lingers over the last part and offers a critique which would be absent had the focus been solely on the love affair. I include it below though sadly without sub-titles.

 

 

Richard has also provided the following links which some of you may want to pursue and which I will add to as i come across them:

José Arroyo in Conversation with Fiona Cox on ‘It’s a Sin’

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The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

 

A discussion between friends, informed but informal, eager for exchange and hoping to contribute to a discussion, practically unedited. We probably missed many reference points but as soon as we stopped talking I realised the most obvious one is 120 BPM. You can nonetheless follow up discussions on that truly great film here:

A Conversation with Adam Carver on 120 BPM

and here:

Eavesdropping at the Movies 62 – 120 BPM

 

José Arroyo

Burt Lancaster: More than Muscles and Teeth

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A recorded version of the talk I gave for Westminster Libraries on January 13, 2021 at 6.30 pm: