First Impressions: Thinking Aloud About Film

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/01/03/ali-in-wonderland-ali-aux-pays-des-merveilles-rachid-boudjedra-achmed-rachedi-france-algeria-1975/ We talk Ali in Wonderland, currently on MUBI. It's an avant-garde political documentary whose play with form is intended to punch the spectator into awareness, and thus very much part of the deconstructionist zeitgeist of its time. We discuss the use of split screen, distortions, slow motion on beat, juxtapositions, its rendering of historical memory, the way the film connects colonialism with migration. It's a work you'd perhaps now expect to find more readily in a gallery rather than in a cinema like an installation, and worth seeing for many reasons, which we discuss in the podcast.

Trailer for a new series of podcasts by Richard Layne and José Arroyo that will be an umbrella for all themed podcasts we've been doing so far, Youssef Chahine, selections from Ritrovato in Bologna, and currently, a series of talks on the early cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/11/22/thinking-aloud-about-film-encounter-at-the-station-hsin-chi-taiwan-1965/ Encounter at the Station (Taiwan, 1965) is the last of the 5 Hsin Chi films programmed by the Anthology Film Archives in New York and available for all to see for free until November 30. It is a melodrama in the truest sense, with songs narrating or underlining the action at almost every moment. And what action! The film takes on every melodramatic trope possible and when you think it can’t get any more extreme it surprises you by going even further still. A young high school student falls in love with a boy at the station. On her deathbed her mother reveals to her that she is really adopted and to beware of the stepfather. And for good reason, as soon as the mother dies, he sells the young girl to a nightclub to pay for the mother’s funeral. Her love surprises her at the club and buys her out. But it’s no good, her secret’s revealed and she will be forever a B-girl. People have to give up their children, some go blind, some go mad. It’s never boring. We discuss all of this and more in the podcast below:

José Arroyo and Richard Layne discovered the work of Youssef Chahine at a retrospective of his work at Bologna last year, are thrilled that so many previously difficult-to-see films of his are now available on Netflix, and hope that these podcasts encourage people to watch and discuss the films. This is the first in a series. We hope to cover as many of them as possible, and in chronological order. We hope you join us on this journey

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/04/04/in-conversation-with-richard-layne-on-yoko-ono-music-of-the-mind-tate-modern/ I talk to Richard Layne on ‘Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind’, currently on at Tate Modern. You might recognise Richard from our podcast, THINKING ALOUD ABOUT FILM. What you might not know is that he is a long-time fan of Yoko Ono and one of the most knowledgeable people on her work as an artist and performer. In this podcast, Richard, compares this exhibition, billed as the largest ever undertaken on the work of Yoko One, and compares it to the many others he’s attended. We talk of how he became a fan, her various types of work, the performance art, the conceptual art, her books of instructions, the connection to Fluxus. We also touch on her collaborations with some of the key figures of mid-twentieth century art (John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, John Lennon) and how her work prefigures that of contemporary artists such as Marina Ibrahimovic. Our conversation broadly follows the flow of the exhibition itself, so I’ve included photographs from the exhibition in the blog so the listener might more clearly follow the points of conversation. Richard is very illuminating on why Yoko Ono is one of those figures that keep getting re-discovered periodically, on her extensive influence in various domains of art, from the gallery to punk, and on how she is a wonderful conduit to chance meetings with The Pet Shop Boys.