PUTNEY DEBATER
A personal blog
New government, shite
Farage, good riddance.
Greens, good vote share.
SNP, amazing.
Labour, pathetic.
Lib-Dems dug their own grave.
New government, shite.
Turnout, poor,
but UKIP vote share depressingly high.
So now, good people, brace yourselves.
And Europe, Scotland, watch out.
Salute to Fernando Birri
There was something magical about the first time I met Fernando Birri, who celebrated his 90th birthday a few days ago. I had just arrived in Cuba for the first Havana Film Festival in 1979. Checking in to the Hotel Nacional in the late afternoon, I looked for a bar to quench my thirst, where I found this strange but very friendly figure—all the more mysterious in the dim light—with his long straggly beard and wearing the hat which I later discovered he never took off. I found out who he was—happily still is—over the following days. Three years later, he became a key figure in the documentary I made for Channel Four about the New Cinema movement in Latin America, of which Fernando is one of the founding figures. This portrait is drawn from those films (with a snippet—the short sequence with Fidel—taken from the film I made a couple of years later on the Havana Film Festival with Holly Aylett, also for Channel Four.) Enhorabuena, Fernando!
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/122417391[/vimeo]
Radical Film in Birmingham
One of the notable features at the inaugural conference of the Radical Film Network in Birmingham last weekend was the mix of generations, from new blood to survivors from the days of the IFA (Independent Filmmakers Association) in the 1970s. Speaking as one of the latter, it was pleasing to find that what the comrades did back then has not been entirely forgotten, but more important, that this new initiative has a genuine sense of history, of historical inquiry, and is disposed to look to past experience both in order to commend what was achieved and to mull over its weaknesses.
But of course the political conjuncture of post-crash times is markedly different from those days, and there’s been a signal change in the political modus operandi. Read more