Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.
NEWS
Above: aKasha (Hajooj Kuka, 2018).
- We've been alerted by the programming team at the Toronto International Film Festival that Sudanese filmmaker Hajooj Kuka (aKasha), along with five other artists, has been sentenced to two months in prison.
- Speaking of TIFF, Chloé Zhao's Nomadland won the disrupted festival's People's Choice Award. Other notable winners this year include Michelle Latimer's Inconvenient Indian, Chaitanya Tamhane's The Disciple, and Dea Kulumbegashvili's Beginning.
- The great French actor Michael Lonsdale has died at the age of 89. Lonsdale's career range was incredible, including Jacques Rivette's epic Out 1, the James Bond film Moonraker, Marguerite Duras's India Song, and Spielberg's Munich. His physically towering presence was one of the great connective tissues across international cinema.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- Spike Lee has been having a big year, first with Da 5 Bloods and now David Byrne's American Utopia, a concert documentary shot during Byrne's 2019 Broadway show. It premiered at TIFF and will be showing at the New York Film Festival.
- The official trailer for Septet: The Story of Hong Kong, which will be premiering at the Festival Lumière in October. The anthology film features Sammo Hung, Ann Hui, Patrick Tam, Yuen Woo-ping, Johnnie To, Ringo Lam, and Tsui Hark, and explores seven decades of Hong Kong's history.
- The New York Film Festival has finally started, beginning with the opening night premiere of Lovers Rock, part of Steve McQueen's five-film Small Axe series. Following that premiere, the festival hosted a virtual discussion with Steve McQueen, Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn, and Micheal Ward, moderated by Director of Programming Dennis Lim.
- A new trailer for the U.S. release of Pietro Marcello's Martin Eden. (We spoke with Marcello at the film's Venice Film Festival premiere.)
RECOMMENDED READING
- With this September's publication of the first full-length biography of Wendy Carlos, Will Stephenson at Harper's discusses this electronic music pioneer who, among many other triumphs, produced music for the soundtracks to A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. (The ninth Notebook Soundtrack mix was devoted to Carlos's film music.)
- Scott Tobias at the Ringer looks at the popularity of the social media film site Letterboxd, an essential utility and resource for many cinephiles: "It’s not the most reliable source for criticism per se, but as a thumbnail sketch of what you might want to see or avoid, it’s uniquely personal and helpful."
- Over at The Chiseler, Martin Billheimer has provided an insightful look into Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Kurt Kren's work with "the unpleasant bodily-fluid ridden productions of the Vienna Aktionists."
- Marking the premiere of Garrett Bradley's Time at the NYFF, Filmmaker Magazine has made Bradley's conversation with critic and programmer Ashley Clark available online.
- In a new interview with IndieWire, Steve McQueen discusses the 11-year process of making the anthology series Small Axe, inclusion rules for future Oscar candidates, and "doing it yourself."
- "My condition, [Brooks' films] remind me, is a human one, to be suffered not in isolation but rather in solidarity with Albert Brooks." Ari Aster on Albert Brooks' comedy of ambivalence.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- A festival correspondence has started between Daniel Kasman and Doug Dibbern at the New York Film Festival.
- Aaron E. Hunt interviews Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who discusses Wife of a Spy, the economy of genre filmmaking, and the responsibilities of portraying the past.
- Artist Jett Allen illustrates recent experiences at drive-in movie theaters, which have seen a surge in popularity during the pandemic.
- Annabel Brady-Brown examines the "Walker" series made by director Tsai Ming-liang and actor Lee Kang-sheng, "an endlessly expanding project that slips somewhere between non-narrative filmmaking, installation, and performance art..."
EXTRAS
- From Adam Piron, a mysterious thank you to John Woo's kitchen knife at the end of Gus Van Sant's Psycho.