Entries by Michael

Rocha on DVD

/in , /by

Glauber Rocha’s Antônio das Mortes is surely one of the most astonishing films to come out of Brazil in the 1960s… See my review of the new DVD release in Sight & Sound here

What a gas!

/0 Comments/in /by

Anyone who still thinks the privatisation of utilities was a good thing needs their head examined. When I moved back to London some three years ago, I elected to take both gas and electricity from British Gas. Sometime later, must have been when new neighbours moved in upstairs, EDF came along and somehow took over […]

Academic boycott exercises Israeli TV

/1 Comment/in , /by

A current affairs programme on Israeli television is planning a report on reactions towards Israel’s policy in Gaza ‘taking place outside Israel, mainly in the UK’, and in particular, the call for an academic boycott. How I know is that I’m one of the people they’ve got in touch with to ask for my opinion. […]

Music Documentaries

/1 Comment/in , , /by

Back from ‘Sights and Sounds’, a small but stimulating and enjoyable conference on music documentary in Salford. Films about music and musicians have been a major strand of documentary since the 1960s, so it’s odd, especially given the huge predominance of music in popular culture, that they’ve escaped systematic study, even among documentary scholars. This […]

Activists return; Osama tells his story

/in /by

Report on return of British members of Gaza aid flotilla attacked in international waters by Israeli commandos on 31 May 2010. Osama Qashoo recounts his experience. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqHz-Twu8hs]

A message from Osama

/in /by

June 3rd Dear All Your love and energy kept us strong all the way through to face the ugly face of hate, death and injustice I am back again and tonight I saw the story for the first time on TV. I was not aware that you could see us as we did not know […]

Job Prospects

/5 Comments/in , /by

These are not the best of times for people completing their doctorates and looking for academic posts, especially in fields like film studies, and when we recently advertised two jobs in the area at the university where I teach, we knew we’d have plenty of applicants. Even so, we were taken by surprise when the […]