Offscreen Notes
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An Interview with Nima Javidi, director of Melbourne
Just posted, an interview with the young Iranian director of the award winning suspense drama Melbourne, Nima Javidi.
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Francesco Rosi, Anita Ekberg, RIP
Bad week for lovers of Italian cinema, with the deaths of the great director Francesco Rosi (at age 92 on Janaury 10, 2015) and Anita Ekberg, who died a day later at age 83 also in Italy. Ekberg was born in Sweden but chose to live in the country which gave the most to her acting career, Italy, where her appearance as Marcello’s angelic muse/fantasy in the Trevi Fountain in La Dolce Vita is arguably one of the most famous moments in cinema history. My personal favorite of her roles is as the uptight conservative Dr. Antonio Mazzuolo’s 50 foot fantasy terror billboard woman come to life in Fellini’s contribution to the omnibus film Boccaccio 70. Rosi was a writer/director of several key films of the 1960s, mixing a neo neo-realist aesthetic with contemporary social issues in such classics as Salvatore Giuliano (a huge influence on Martin Scorsese and the gangster/crime genres), Hands Over the City, The Mattei Affair, Lucky Luciano and Christ Stopped at Eboli.
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Preview of the 2014 World Film Festival
Writer David Hanley gives his recommendations on ten films to see at the 2014 WFF.
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More on An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
If my analysis of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge in issue 18/5 was not enough for you, I was contacted by a fellow fan of the film, Patricia D’Ascoli, after she read my piece and graciously provided a link to her own analysis, a comparison between the version that appeared on Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1959 and the version that aired on Twilight Zone and how they differ from the Bierce short story. The paper served a pedagogical tool to help her Literary Criticism students cultivate their analytical writing skills. Here essay appeared in the Winter 2014 edition of the literary newsletter, Connecticut Muse (it begins on page 4). [the link appears to be dead now, alas]
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Artsforum Magazine
Recently discovered this Canadian wide-ranging cultural issues online journal which reminds me in its scope and literary bent of the excellent print magazine, The Believer Magazine, perhaps with a more politically driven interest (and from a Canadian perspective). Still, it is an ‘old-fashioned’ (I mean this in a good sense) liberal arts style magazine with a critical interest in all the arts (film, poetry, painting, photography, music, television, theatre, fiction).
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NFB does the 1960s
New NFB fiction channel focuses on their films made in or set in the 1960s.
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Wolf Koenig (1927-2014)
One of the great pioneers of Canadian cinema, Wolf Koenig, passed away on June 27, 2014 at the age of 86. Koenig’s often teamed up with Roman Kroiter or Colin Low and together they helped shape the history of Canadian cinema with their classic documentaries, animation and fiction films. As a member of the famed Unit B at the NFB, Koenig was part of the cinema verite (or direct cinema) documentary movement, with such films as City of Gold, Corral, Lonely Boy, and Glenn Gould: On the Record.
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The Glorious and The Grotesque: Horror Cinema of the 70s and 80s
Offscreen would like to announce the official launch of a new website dedicated to the study of horror cinema of the 1970s and 1980s, created, designed and written by Justin H. Langlois: The Glorious and The Grotesque: Horror Cinema of the 70s and 80s. This website is ‘sponsored’ by Offscreen, meaning that its development was encouraged by Offscreen and supported through editorial suggestions and guidance. This idea of sponsored websites is a new Offscreen initiative, which aims at helping to nurture and promote online film writing by young and upcoming critics, researchers, historians, and scholars. Stay tuned for other ‘sponsored’ websites to be announced on Offscreen. Langlois is an MA Graduate student in Film Studies at Concordia University, and this website bears the fruit of his graduate research. As it stands the content was written by Justin, but the goal of these ‘sponsored’ websites is to make them an ‘open source’ reference point for ongoing research that any one can contribute to in any number of ways, depending on the nature and subject of the website. For example, where “The Glorious and The Grotesque” is concerned, interested readers can contribute additional entries on remakes, reviews of relevant material, links, and sources. All contributors will be cited by name on the website. Received material will of course be subject to editorial scrutiny but the hope is to keep the sites open to a variety of writing styles, approaches and research methodologies. Final decision on inclusion will be reserved to the site creator and/or Offscreen. Any one interested in submitting a contribution to “The Glorious and The Grotesque” website please email their queries or submissions to either Justin H. Langlois or Donato Totaro.
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Visioni Proibite
Hot off the press, just landed in my lap is regular Offscreen contributor Roberto Curti’s latest book co-authored with Alessio Di Rocco, with a preface by filmmaker Carlo Lizzani, Visioni Proibite: I Film Vietati dall censura Italiana (1947-1968). Roughly translated (from original Italian) to Prohibited Viewings: Films Forbidden by the Italian Censors (1947-1968). At over 570 pages, this is the first of a two-volume set from Lindau publishers. The authors had access to primary documents and have come up with a chronological listing (tagged by a censor number) of films, not just Italian, that were censored in Italy. Each entry has the original title submitted to the censors, and (if changed) the eventual release title, (with running time differences noted in film meters), home video release, country of origin, year, credits, followed by a brief plot synopsis and then a detailed analysis of the film’s treatment by the censors, supported by contemporaneous ministerial documentation, and secondary material from newspapers, magazines, and trade journals. The authors set up the historical context in a long, detailed opening chapter entitled “Panni sporchi, anime candide. La censura nel dopoguerra, 1947-1962” (“Dirty Laundry, Candid Souls: Post-War Censorship, 1947-1962”), beginning with the Minister in charge of Entertainment, Giulio Andreotti’s regulations and his eventual run-ins with Neo-realism (out of which grew the chapter’s title, when Andreotti criticized Neo-realism for the negative view of Italy Neo-realist films exported around the world (Andreotti once saying about Neo-realism, that dirty laundry should be done at home). The book is a remarkable piece of historical analysis, relying on previously untapped primary material to project how the film censorship reflected and was in turn shaped by the social and political mores of Italy, and primarily the incumbent Christian Democratic Party, which led Italy either as either a majority or minority government, from 1946 to 1994.
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Fantasia International Film Market
With Fantasia 2014 just around the corner (July 17) the Film Market component of the Festival which runs from July 24-27, 2014, has just announced its 2014 projects.
