[The Daily] L’Atalante and More

Adrian Martin has made a discovery that definitely needs passing along here, the digital edition of L’Atalante, Revista de estudios cinematográficos, the esteemed biannual journal published in Valencia, Spain. Several of the most recent issues are also available in English. With “Desire and Eroticism in Dictatorial Times: Film Strategies Against Censorship in Totalitarian Regimes,” Núria Bou and Xavier Pérez introduce the latest, Issue 23, which includes essays on the cinema of Francoist Spain, Emma Camarero Calandria on “Pornochanchada and Cinema Novo during the Brazilian Dictatorship (1964-1985),” Orisel Castro López, York Neudel, and Luis Iván Gómez on Věra Chytilová’s Daisies (1966; image above), Bruno Hachero Hernández on Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentaries, and more.

Sampling all but randomly from a dip into the archives, we find:

• From Issue 22, essays on Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin’s Letter to Jane (1972), Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985), Frank Capra’s Why We Fight series, Maya Deren and Jean Rouch, and Marco Bellocchio.
• The focus of Issue 21 is the First World War.
• 20: Spanish cinema, the influence of Yasujiro Ozu on Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Paolo and Vittorio Taviani.
• 19: James Naremore on acting, Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg, Anna Magnani, and Guy Maddin.
• 18: Laura Mulvey on Godard’s Contempt (1963), an interview with Martin Scorsese, essays on Víctor Erice, Alfred Hitchcock, and Andrei Tarkovsky.
• And the first issue available in English before a gap of a few years was 12: David Fincher’s Zodiac (2007), Chris Marker’s La jetée (1962), Agnès Varda, and Roman Polanski.

At the bottom of each page with its abstract and footnotes, you’ll find “PDF (ESPAÑOL) PDF” and it’s that second “PDF” you’ll want to click for the English version of each essay.

MORE READING

“From 1984 until 1997, I was in an interracial marriage,” which gives Charles Lane, director of Sidewalk Stories (1989), a unique perspective on Michael Showalter and Kumail Nanjiani’s The Big Sick. He’s already drawing a slew of comments at the Talkhouse Film.

From Craig Keller: “Right on the heels of the riotous Go to Hell, Bastards: Detective Bureau 23, Seijun Suzuki unleashed what would come to be seen as his true breakthrough, the film that [would] cement ‘the Suzuki sensibility’: Youth of the Beast [1963].”

Michael Smith picks—and writes about—his top twenty-five films of 2017 (so far).

INTERVIEWS

“All my films are autobiographical in a sense that whatever I do, they all end up showing something of myself; all my films are not autobiographical in a sense that I’ve never meant to make a film that represents my life or a part of my life.” That’s Hong Sangsoo, talking to Jordan Cronk, who at one point asks, “Do you feel your work is becoming more openly emotional?” Hong: “Yes, it seems so.”

Also for Film Comment, Chloe Lizotte talks with William Oldroyd about Lady Macbeth, “the adaptation process, building the film’s contrasting rhythms, and the difficulties of stylistically emulating Béla Tarr.”

With Risk now available to stream and in UK theaters, Yohann Koshy talks with Laura Poitras about Julian Assange, his “gender politics, the impact of being placed on a terror-related watch list, and the origins of her unflappable rebelliousness.”

GOINGS ON

New York. “Jules Dassin, the ex-pat director known for heist films like Rififi, The Naked City, and Night and the City, turned his camera to the unsatisfied women of an Italian coastal town in The Law [1959], playing this week at MoMA,” writes Dana Reinoos at Screen Slate. “The Law stars Italian bombshell Gina Lollobrigida as Mariette, a scheming young woman who sees a chance to elevate her stature and escape her boring provincial life, and takes it, consequences be damned.”

And from Sonya Redi: “It is hard not to fall head over cowboy boots in love with David Byrne’s impressive first film True Stories [1986]. Driving around in a red convertible and a cowboy hat, Byrne acts as our friendly guide through the town of Virgil, Texas and its Celebration of Specialness in honor of its 150th anniversary.” Sunday and Tuesday at the Metrograph.

Chicago. “This July marks the two-year anniversary of Filmfront, a cine club and artists’ studio in Pilsen,” writes Ben Sachs in the Reader. “Filmfront will commemorate its second birthday with the release of a 24-page monograph called Film Food Footnotes. The book, according to cofounder and programmer Malia Haines-Stewart, combines production stills, research notes, and excerpts of film dialogue that relate to instances in movies where people discuss food. Over the course of the month Filmfront will host screenings of three films discussed in the monograph: Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet’s Sicilia! (1999), Jia Zhangke’s Still Life (2006), and Alexander Dovzhenko’s Earth (1930). As usual for the space, the screenings will be followed by audience discussions.”

And the new Cine-List is up.

OBITS

“Longtime motion picture producer and executive C.O. ‘Doc’ Erickson, who worked on Alfred Hitchcock’s movies along with Chinatown, Blade Runner, and Groundhog Day, died Wednesday,” reports Variety’s Dave McNary. Erickson, who also worked with John Huston, was ninety-three.

“During a long journalistic career Barry Norman, who has died aged 83, perfected a flair for talking beguilingly about cinema to a mass television audience but in a way that did not make true aficionados wince,” write Dennis Barker and Derek Malcolm. “As the presenter and critic of BBC TV’s original Film 72 through to Film 98, he was knowledgeable without affectation, and he did not seem overawed by the industry’s leading lights.” The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw: “I grew up watching Barry Norman: in fact, he was the only film critic that anyone could name (although I of course could name the Guardian’s Derek Malcolm) and he became the model of a certain type of mainstream, friendly, consumerist reviewing, giving you a reliable, friendly guide to what was likely to be on at your local fleapit. . . . His enthusiasm and love for film always shone through.”

LISTENING

Poster Boys Brandon Schaefer and Sam Smith talk about how David Lynch’s “unique cinematic vision has been marketed both in the U.S. and abroad since 1977 while looking at the role a one-sheet plays in honoring a filmmaker’s work.” (151’59”).

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