Hou in London

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Next month at BFI Southbank: a complete Hou Hsiao-hsien retrospective. Highlights that are otherwise completely unavailable on watchable video copies: Edward Yang's Taipei Story, Daughter of the Nile, The Puppetmaster. Also: Flowers of Shanghai (in a new 35mm print that I've been warned is not quite optimal), Good Men, Good Women, Millennium Mambo, Café Lumière, etc.

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Also worth noting: Horse Money screens in London, Manchester and across from the UK from 18th September, thanks to Second Run. Elsewhere: a Lav Diaz retrospective in Brussels, and AND in Grizedale Forest.

Illuminations #24

Studio firework in Roanoke, Virginia, 2008 - Jared Soares, originally from the series Small-Town Hip Hop in Virginia

88:88

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tears in your eyes, sharing a bed, shooting scenes, collecting cans, three years in prison, playing basketball, dancing on the couches, wandering alleyways, in my old kitchen, opening new books, always working, painting your blue house, our summer messages, lending mattresses, comrades this is for you...

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It's a great pleasure to see Isiah Medina's dazzling first feature 88:88 premiere at Locarno, then swiftly travel to TIFF Wavelengths and NYFF. Ripe for the booking by enterprising programmers! Recommended reading: Mark Peranson on Medina; Medina interviewed by Phil Coldiron in Cinema Scope; an interview in Blackflash Magazine – 'they can cut my electricity, but I will find a way to cut my own movies...'

Realism(s) #57

88:88 - Isiah Medina, 2015, HD/SD video

Realism(s) #56

88:88 - Isiah Medina, 2015, HD/SD video

Scholarship #5

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Too late for this to matter, but: as a result of doing the final corrections on my PhD thesis at a pretty difficult time (back in 2013), the final version of the thesis made publicly available at ORE had quite a few minor but sloppy typographical errors/slips in it. To those who took the time to read it – sorry about that! A corrected version has been uploaded at last; better late than never...

Ground Zero

A woman driven by unbearable thirst trying to catch black raindrops in her mouth - Akiko Takakura, 19 years old at the time of the Hiroshima bombing on 6 August 1945; age when image created: 49 years old

Realism(s) #55

Utskor: Either/Or - Laida Lertxundi, 2013, 16mm