Tag Archives: Maria Luisa Bemberg

José Arroyo in Conversation with Cinema Mentiré on Maria Luisa Bemberg

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I was lucky enough to see Maria Luisa Bemberg’s SEÑORA DE NADIE (NOBODY’S WIFE, 1982)and YO, LA PEOR DE TODAS (I, THE WORST OF ALL, 1990) at this year’s CINEMA REDISCOVERED in Bristol, in gorgeous prints, with an  appreciative and enthusiastic audience. I’m a long-time fan of Bemberg’s but I’d never had the opportunity to see  SEÑORA DE NADIE and I’d never seen YO LA PEOR DE TODAS in such a beautiful version.

 

The films surprised and delighted. But what I was most taken with was the effervescence, energy and brilliance of Amina Ferley Yael and Natalia Christofoletti Barrenha who introduced the two films. They along with Marta Calderon Quiñones are Cinema Mentiré. This podcast is the result of my wanting to know more about Cinema Mentiré, who they are, what they do; and also, of my wanting to publicise the re-circulation of such marvellous films by a legendary female filmmaker in new restorations (which films? What are they about? What are they like? Why are they worth seeing now?), and with new subtitles undertaken by Cinema Mentiré themselves.

Cinema Mentiré was founded in 2023 by Natalia Christofoletti Barrenha, Amina Farley Yael, and Marta Calderon Quiñones with the mission to redress the relative low circulation of Latin American Films in the UK. In the podcast they talk about how even when the films they screen are decades old, they are often still UK premieres. The name  of their group was inspired by  Colombian filmmaker Luis Ospina. Latin American cinema is often associated with the solemn, the serious, the tragic. They wanted to bring out the more playful side, inherent in the title of their group. If for Godard ‘Photography is truth; cinema is truth 24 times a second’; For Ospina cinema is ‘de mentiras’, the way Godard’s phrase is misremembered as ‘cinema is lies 24 frames a second’,  a fiction, a web of inventions and lies that could convey deeper truths, often accompanied by a skewy, questioning stance that acts as a pinprick to pomposity.

It is with this this purpose and spirit of fun that Cinema Mentiré is now providing some of the key works of a Maria Luisa Bemberg, a seminal Latin American filmmaker,  working with an equally seminal female producer, Lita Stantic, on the wings of second-wave feminism , producing works in a popular vein that continue to move, engage, surprise. A lesbian scholar sitting next to me at the screening of YO, LA PEOR DE TODAS turned to me after the screening and said ‘I can’t believe I’d never heard of this filmmaker or this film until now.’ We talk about all of this and more in  podcast 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

 

All the details on Cinema Mentiré may be found on their home page here: https://www.cinemamentire.co.uk/

 

Their programme of screenings of Maria Luisa Bemberg films may be found here: https://www.cinemamentire.co.uk/daring-to-dare-the-films-of-maria-luisa-bemberg

 

Books on Bemberg:

 

Books by Lita Stantic:

On Luis Ospina and Cinema Cali:

Cine Club de Cali

Agarrando Pueblo/ The Vampires of Poverty (Luis Ospina/ Carlos Mayolo, Columbia,1977)

200 – Luis Ospina on MUBI – The Vampires of Poverty, A Paper Tiger, and It All Started at the End

José Arroyo

 

 

THINKING ALOUD ABOUT CINEMA: CINEMA REDISCOVERED 2025 WRAP-UP

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If a week ago we podcast on what we were looking forward to at the CINEMA REDISCOVERED festival, this is the bookend reflecting on what we actually saw. We are once again full of praise for the organisers, the friendliness of the staff at the Watershed, the originality and diversity of the programme, the community aspect, the educational component and the way that it trains young people up to programme and curate and then gives them an opportunity to exercise those skills.

Emotional highlights included a reunion of Stephen Frears, Hanif Kureishi and Gordon Warnecke at the MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE screening and Stephen Woolley and Julian Temple getting back together to reminisce about Palace Pictures and ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS, which we liked so much we plan a separate podcast on it.

We appreciated the mini programs scheduled on single days (Carlos Saura, Maria Luisa Bemberg, Anna Mae Wong) and the longer ones (the AGAINST THE GRAIN: 1980s BRITISH CINEMA, MASUMURA x WAKAO). It was fantastic to be able to see some films at the BRISTOL MEGASCREEN (THE FALL OF OTRAR, DIVA, THE BEAST TO DIE, MANJI). We talk at some length on individual films as well (ROSA LA ROSE, FILLE PUBLIQUE; THEMROC, DESERT HEARTS, ONE POTATO TWO POTATO and others. In such a full program, there are also films we both missed, such as the great HANDSWORTH SONGS.

We praise the way Sheldon Hall designed his talk on films on Channel 4 for this particular audience, including broadcast dates on every film at the festival and under which strand; for Stephen Horne’s fantastic, multi-instrument accompaniment to the Anna Mae Wong programme; and the care in curating the introductions to the films, with most speakers understanding that the intro is not about them or their interests but about enhancing the audience’s experience and appreciation.

The festival left us wishing for a fuller programme the last evening but being left wishing for more is not a bad thing.

 

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 2025 Preview

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Richard and I are once more excited about the prospect of Cinema Rediscovered, which begins next week on the 23rd and runs right to the 27th at the Watershed in Bristol. This year’s is a beautifully balanced programme with directors (Carlos Saura, Maria Luisa Bemberg, Stephanie Rothman, Yasuzō Masumura) and stars (Anna Me Wong) ripe for rediscovery; but also featuring key exemplars of queer cinema (MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDERETTE, DESERT HEARTS, THE ANGELIC CONVERSATION; ostensibly the first film to feature queer representation in India, BADNAM BASTI (NEIGHBOURHOOD OF ILL REPUTE); black cinema (HANDSWORTH SONGS, THE KILLER OF SHEEP), feminist exploitation cinema (THE WORKING GIRLS, THE VELVET VAMPIRE); key works from classic directors (Sam Fuller’s THE HOUSE OF BAMBOO, John Ford’s YOUNG MR. LINCOLN; a whole strand of 1980s British Cinema (from ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS to A ZED AND TWO NOUGHTS),  newly restored masterpieces (THE FALL OF OTRAR, YEELEN); and a smattering of films from practically every hemisphere. A great program, which includes not only films but workshops, talks, introductions; for Cinema Rediscovered is not only about seeing films in the best possible conditions but also about learning about cinema from filmmakers, curators, programmers, critics, academics and other practitioners.

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

One of the lunchtime talks will be A BRIEF HISTORY OF FILM ON CHANNEL 4 with Sheldon Hall. I interviewed Sheldon Hall on his book on films on his book ARMCHAIR CINEMA: FEATURE FILMS ON BRITISH TELEVISION, 1929-1981 here:

In the accompanying podcast Richard and I go through the programme day by day and highlight those  films we have already seen at Ritrovatto or elsewhere and can recommend. These include:

Jose Arroyo

 

‘Ten Films in Ten Days’: Day Five – Maria Candelaria

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Day Five: Maria Candelaria (Emilio Fernández, Mexico, 1944)

I have a particular love for melodramas that actually make you cry, and sometimes also gasp at the impossible beauty and sadness of it all, in whatever style: Sirk (Imitation of Life), Wong Kar-Wai (In the Mood for Love), King Vidor (Stella Dallas), Lean (Brief Encounter), Maria Luisa Bemberg (Camila). Today I’m in the mood for those directed by Emilio Fernández.. His films often focused on the marginalised in society, fishermen, peasant farmers, prostitutes, gangsters, usually cast from the great beauties of the day (Maria Felix, Dolores Del Rio, Pedro Armendariz) . The setting was usually rural, (Flor Silvestre, La Perla, Maria Candelaria) sometimes historical and revolutionary (Río Escondido, Salon Mexico, Enamorada, Las abandonadas) . The great Gabriel Figueroa filmed Mexico, it’s landscapes and its people with great skill and feeling so as to show beauty, complexity, depth, so that it ennobled those people and that place. The endings were often tragic. Dolores Tierney has already chosen Enamorada so today I chose Maria Candelaria. Particularly because of that moment where Dolores Del Rio as Maria Candelaria goes to sell her flowers, the flowers she needs to make a living, to feed her pig, and thus to marry. And the whole village, who’s been whispering that she’s the daughter of a prostitute, turns out in their canoes to stop her from doing so, thus denying her honest work and almost certainly condemning her to her mother’s life. It’s an unsentimental moment –peasants can be nasty, violent, cruel; communities can destroy and cast out – but a beautiful one in terms of the way its filmed and also the sadness, unfairness, and determination that it expresses.

Martin Scorsese’s appreciation of the director and one of his other great films, Enamorada, can be seen here

José Arroyo

A Conversation with Rosa Bosch

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I was invited to participate in a discussion on Una mujer fantástica/ A Fantastic Woman with the legendary Rosa Bosch, now also Honorary Visiting Professor at Warwick, and thought I’d grab the opportunity to lasso her from her busy schedule and into a conversation on her extraordinary career. In fact no lassoing was necessary, and she was as open and generous with her time, experience and knowledge as anyone could wish for. And great fun.

 

Born in Barcelona in 1962, part of the last generation to have experienced Franco’s dictatorship, Bosch depicts her career as peripatetic. She dropped out of studying chemistry, fell in love with an American, moved to LA around 84-85, and began working at the AFI Fest in Los Angeles, where because of her language skills, her first task was looking after Agnès Varda, Yevtushenko, and Tarkovsky. When the AFI decided to send someone to Havana, the American embargo and Bosh’s speaking Spanish contributed to her being chosen as the delegate. The Havana film festival was then the focal point and agenda setter for Latin American film cultures world-wide; and as Bosch tells it, Latin American cinema and culture has been, in one way or another, at the centre of her life ever since.

 

Names like Pedro Almodóvar, Fernando Trueba, Wim Wenders, Terry Gilliam, Fernando Birri, Gabriel García Marquez (Gabo), and Julie Christie pepper the conversation. She’s got a connection to Warwick through John King and pays homage to Sheila Whitaker who brought over to London to help bring Latin American cinema to the London Film Festival.

Bosch  shares anecdotes about the screening of Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone at the Toronto Film Festival falling on 9/11; about the great Maria Luisa Bemberg taking her under her wing; about the making of The Buena Vista Social Club and about how Julie Christie sparked her re-connecting once more with The University of Warwick. The conversation ranges through various aspects of her extraordinary career – she’s been engaged with the business of culture in almost every capacity from curating to finding money for films like Amores Perros to developing campaigns so that films succeed in reaching their audience– right up to her producing the legendary Karl Lagerfeld/Chanel show in Cuba, which catwalked its way down Havana’s legendary Prado and evoked a clash of ideologies still heatedly discussed today.

The conversation can be listened to here:

Many thanks to Alison Ribeiro de Menezes and the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Warwick for arranging the event and making the interview possible.

 

José Arroyo