Passages

[flyonthewall2983]

John was also in the really good HBO movie Citizen X as a bureaucratic detective.

Fred Imus. I always liked listening to him on his brother's show. They had a quirky synergy which made for good radio (or in my case television, when I watched Don's show on MSNBC).

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

I'll always remember him as Lord Thurlow. RIP.

[Soothsayer]

Claude Laydu

[MichaelB]

Robert Breer.

[colinr0380]

Shammi Kapoor, though I wonder if the BBC report has confused Chinatown with China Town (amazing what a well placed space can do to a film title!)

[MichaelB]

Gualtiero Jacopetti.

[colinr0380]

How to react to the two controversial epics that capped the Jacopetti and Prospero film partnership - Africa Addio and Goodbye Uncle Tom? Both of those films push the well tested exploitation formula of the Mondo films (a sequence featuring something sweet and fluffy followed by a sequence of something nasty and gruesome, repeat ad nauseum) deep into the much more disturbing, murky territory of staged events in documentaries, problematic re-enactments and worrying interchangeable narrations. I don't think either of those two films could be recommended to the faint hearted, but I do think they are powerfully instructive in some ways of the seductively dangerous power of film, as well as charting some sort of extreme outer limit of filmmaking.

I am still unsure whether those two films are blunderingly horrible, overly exploitative (mixed with hilarious, almost lunatic bouts of heady sentimentalism - the moment from Africa Addio of the newly orphaned baby zebra being carried underneath a helicopter into the sunset underscored with a sentimental song is probably the most delirious sequence in any film I have ever seen) bad taste attempts to wrestle with inflammatory racial material, executions, mercenary wars and animal butchery or whether they are magnificent exposes of every other filmmaker or documentarian's sanitised approaches to historical and current events as they explode the narrowly defined conventions of such genres. Either way, for good or ill, they are often jawdropping.

Goodbye Uncle Tom in particular plays like a nightmare version of Gone With The Wind mixed with Amistad, though of course being filmed in Haiti at the height of the Papa Doc regime plays even more uncomfortably with the detailed recreations of historical attitudes to slavery without 'modern era condemnation' of the acts, which then itself gets weirdly up-ended with a jarring jump to a modern 1970s coda as all American families get mown down by a modern Nat Turner-figure (who commits the worst atrocity in the film - bursting a young boy's ball right in front of him! I assume that has to be a metaphor for something!)

[John Edmond]

Yekaterina Golubeva.

[Adam]

Robert Breer.

I did a Q&A with Breer after his screening at Los Angeles Filmforum in 2008, and it's available on You Tube in 5 parts, at:
Part 1 http://youtu.be/4izIkbAIJeo" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Part 2 http://youtu.be/YhmEwupo_NM" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Part 3 http://youtu.be/4U0CN9UpUSk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Part 4 http://youtu.be/Cwm3n6JlQ0Q" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Part 5 http://youtu.be/itrLEpNsME0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

He was a really wonderful person and artist.

[colinr0380]

Yekaterina Golubeva

I'm afraid that I still have not caught up with Pola X or the Claire Denis films that she was in but she was certainly one heck of a fearless performer based on her work in Dumont's Twentynine Palms.

[John Edmond]

It's safe to say she was consistently fearless.

[Anhedionisiac]

Sad news, she'll be missed.
I'm afraid I don't speak french. Do the articles mention Yekaterina Golubeva's cause of death?

[Duncan Hopper]

Jimmy Sangster.

Quote form Hammer twitter:
"We are deeply saddened to learn of death of screenwriting legend & key part of Hammer's story, Jimmy Sangster. 2 Dec 1927 - 19 Aug 2011 RIP."

Very sad news, Jimmy wrote so many of the greatest Hammer films, Dracula Prince of Darkness was a constant in my VCR throughout my childhood.

[John Edmond]

A sad day. Raul Ruiz.

[domino harvey]

Oh shit

[Mr Sausage]

Jimmy Sangster.

Quote form Hammer twitter:
"We are deeply saddened to learn of death of screenwriting legend & key part of Hammer's story, Jimmy Sangster. 2 Dec 1927 - 19 Aug 2011 RIP."

Very sad news, Jimmy wrote so many of the greatest Hammer films, Dracula Prince of Darkness was a constant in my VCR throughout my childhood.

Damn. I actually had no idea he was still alive. Can't even tell how many of the films he's written or directed that I've seen over the years.

He, along with Terence Fisher, Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee were chiefly responsible for Hammer's vault to success in the late fifties.

[swo17]

A sad day. Raul Ruiz.

Devastating.

[Robert de la Cheyniest]

I just saw Mysteries of Lisbon a week ago, it was my first Ruiz, and I thought it was absolutely wonderful. This is terribly sad news.

[Finch]

Recently got the Portugese Blu of Mysteries of Lisbon (the best film of 2010) and the film remains totally mesmerising. A terrible loss indeed.

[knives]

I only recently discovered Ruiz, but this still comes as a massive blow to me. Especially since he was only just recently beginning to gather the world recognition that he so clearly deserves. Hopefully at least this will pave the way for more of his films to become available so that he can live again through his audiences.

[Michael Kerpan]

A sad day. Raul Ruiz.

Devastating.

Took the word right out of my mouth. An immense loss.

[Duncan Hopper]

A sad day. Raul Ruiz.

Devastating.

Took the word right out of my mouth. An immense loss.

Indeed. But what a rich body of work he left us, so many ripe for rediscovery. I had the pleasure of meeting the great man a couple of years ago when he was at the London film festival introducing his film Nucingen House, such a gentleman, he will be missed.

[karmajuice]

I was not prepared for this. A man who mystified and delighted me long before I managed to see his films, who even invaded my dreams, and I've only become more transfixed since. I'll be watching something in his memory tonight. Here's hoping he finds his way into my dreams again.

[colinr0380]

Tareque Masud, probably best known as director of The Clay Bird (the first Bangladeshi film to be nominated for Best Foreign Language film at the Oscars and winner of the FIPRESCI award at Cannes). His most recently released film was Runway.

[James]

It's safe to say she was consistently fearless.

She'll be missed for sure. One of my first favorite actresses and I still haven't seen Pola X or any Bartas movies.