Tony Rayns (1948-2026)

[FrauBlucher]

Huge loss for all of us…RIP Tony. Check on your older relatives and friends everyone…

A very sad way to go. I’m going to listen to his UGETSU commentary this week

[pistolwink]

Just one more thing. I seem to recall that like a lot of folks of his generation—including David Bordwell—Rayns got intrigued by Chinese cinema thanks to the action films that played lower-rent theaters in the early 1970s (and sometimes earlier). But unlike many other kung fu buffs, Rayns took these films seriously as cinema, and quickly made connections with filmmakers and film critics in Hong Kong and elsewhere. He became not only key to bringing the work of various Asian film movements to the attention of Western cinephiles but also a prominent figure within those artistic milieux, as Jia Zhange's tribute indicates.

Has Rayns ever written at length about his discovery of Chinese (and later, Phillipines and South Korean and Taiwanese etc.) cinema and how he became, well, Tony Rayns as we know (and mourn and remember) him today?

[MichaelB]

He was in the right place at the right time with regard to the Fifth Generation filmmakers who started to emerge in the 1980s, not least thanks to being a very similar age. They were very keen indeed (understatement) to have an authoritative and articulate English-speaking champion of their work after spending so long in government-enforced national isolation, and he was just as keen to champion said work.