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Representatives of the Yolngu community, along with the deceased’s family, have issued a statement saying that in this one unique case, it is acceptable to refer to David Gulpilil by the name under which he became famous, as his family believe that this is what he would have wanted.

The Yolŋu Community & kin of the late David Gulpilil Ridjimiraril Dalaithngu wish to thank the nation for their respectful adherence to the request that he be referred to as David Dalaithngu for the immediate period following his passing.

David was an inimitable talent who ‘walked between two worlds’, that of his Country and Culture, and that of the film world, placing him in a unique position regarding posthumous naming cultural practice.

David wanted people to know his name, remember his work, and know his immense legacy to Australian cinema and Australian culture. He was rightfully proud. He wanted his storytelling through film to be shared, to be on the record for the generations to come.

As were his wishes, the Community now give permission for all of his names to be used.
He may be referred to as:
David Gulpilil
David Gulpilil Ridjimiraril Dalaithngu
David Gulpilil AM
David Gulpilil Ridjimiraril Dalaithngu AM
Permission remains to use his image.

Mandjalpingu is the name of his clan.
He’s from Ramingining Arnhem Land.
His homeland is Marwuyu.

In his own words:
“My skin group name Balang.
My language is Mandhalpingu
My moiety is Dhuwa.
My mother is same and my father side is same.
My name is Gulpilil, you know what that means? Kingfisher.
That’s my name, that’s my totem, that’s what I sing, that’s what I believe.

My name is in the tree, in the fish, in the sky, in the star, in the earth, in the storm, day and night.”
David Gulpilil Ridjimiraril Dalaithngu

I had no idea it was him in Walkabout AND Crocodile Dundee (along with The Right Stuff and The Proposition, but somehow those are less surprising).

And the Private Investigator in Until The End Of The World!

And Christopher Sunday in the final season of The Leftovers

Producer Martha De Laurentiis, best known for overseeing numerous adaptations of Thomas Harris novels, including projects like the Hannibal TV series which post-dated her husband Dino's death in 2010.

I was watching Andrei Rublev for the 1960s list and noticed Tarkovsky scholar Robert Bird died in September 2020, 50 years old.

HandMade Films co-founder Denis O'Brien. A major figure in 1980s British cinema by default, he deserves a lot of credit for keeping HandMade going far longer than its box office track record would normally have dictated (put bluntly, their only real hits were Life of Brian, The Long Good Friday and Time Bandits, all released near the start of the company's existence), and without that effort we might not have had Withnail & I amongst others.

That said, it would be equally fair to say that he doesn't come out of Robert Sellers' book on HandMade at all well, and not only for the embezzlement that led to a spectacular falling-out with his former business partner George Harrison, after which Harrison successfully sued him for $11 million, but failed to prevent him from declaring bankruptcy to avoid paying it. (I assume Sellers was mindful of Britain's libel laws - his publisher certainly would have been! - and that therefore his allegations were basically true.)

The only chapter in which O'Brien isn't indisputably the biggest arsehole is the one on Shanghai Surprise, when Sean Penn briefly holds that crown, but otherwise he sounds like a nightmare to work with, with filmmakers being constantly threatened with budget cuts and ham-fisted attempts at creative interference - many of which were successfully rebuffed (Withnail & I would have been unwatchable as the brightly-lit camp-fest that O'Brien envisaged), but although Neil Jordan succeeded in not having Grace Jones imposed upon him as the female lead in Mona Lisa (can you imagine?), it was at the expense of having to include a deeply unwanted Genesis song on the soundtrack even if it meant needlessly slowing the film down at that point in order to shoehorn it in.

He's indirectly come up in other forums of late thanks to the new Get Back series spurring a lot of Beatles-related talk, but if it wasn't for the misfortune he helped cause at HandMade, there's a chance the Anthology project would never have finished. (George went all-in on the project once it became clear he needed money fast and Anthology was easily the quickest, most reliable way of getting it, not to mention a LOT of it.)

Yes, I'd heard that, and it makes perfect sense. And there's a weird kind of symmetry to that because of course HandMade happened in the first place because the Monty Python team also needed money fast, at least if Life of Brian wasn't to collapse with a fair chunk of production funds already spent.

I always loved how Eric Idle would explain Harrison's decision to finance the rest of Life of Brian, calling it the "most expensive cinema ticket" ever simply because Harrison wanted to see the film as a fan.

I remember when George died, the Chicago-area press did a surprisingly good job reporting on his and HandMade's contribution to cinema. One article in the Tribune was particularly good - they even got Steven Soderbergh to talk about George's work as a producer and actor. I only knew George as a rock musician, so the idea that he had an important role in British cinema was quite a revelation.

Reggae legend Robbie Shakespeare

Lina Wertmuller discussion split off here

Sylwester Chęciński, not a director who made much of a splash outside his native Poland, mainly because he tended to specialise in popular comedies of a highly idiomatic kind that need footnotes as well as translation subtitles for international appreciation. But pretty much any random Pole of a certain age will know about the trilogy about warring peasant families in the postwar era that began with Sami swoi (1967).

Steve Bronski, co-founder of Bronski Beat

Mensi of the Angelic Upstarts, of Covid.

Actress Cara Williams https://variety.com/2021/film/news/cara ... 235131368/

Mexican singer and actor Vicente Fernandez

Way too young for her to go. I knew her ages ago as Gloria Watkins, she was a regular at a book/record store I used to work at, and she was always up for a fun chat.

An incomplete list of literature related deaths this year.

Wanda Young of the Marvelettes, lead singer on quite a few Motown classics including my favorite.