Michael Chanan

Oct 17, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | Josh Slater-Williams |Ibrahim Azam |Michael Chanan |Michal Leszczylowski

‘There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.’— Ecclesiastes 1:2The darkness was so intense that July night that it seemed impassable and time might have stopped. Only the music streaming from the car radio and the monotonous sound of the engine were proof that time did flow. I found the Chalons-sur-Marne railway station in the nick of time.

Oct 14, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | Josh Slater-Williams |Ibrahim Azam |Michael Chanan |Emily Maskell

Sean Baker, director of the Palme d’Or winning Anora, spoke to the LFF audience about wildly differing reactions to his films, and why ‘non-professional actor’ is a damaging term.

Oct 14, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | Ibrahim Azam |Michael Chanan |Emily Maskell |Stuart Isaac Burnside

At his LFF Screen Talk, the Dune director spoke of the formative influence of Steven Spielberg, the female characters at the centre of the Dune franchise, and the scar that reminds him not to act. 14 October 2024For a filmmaker who eschews heavy dialogue in his work, Denis Villeneuve certainly has a way with words.

Oct 10, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | Michael Chanan |Emily Maskell |Stuart Isaac Burnside |Faye D. Effard

Though scholars of early film have been much preoccupied with the emergence of storytelling and narrative, the dominant mode of early cinema – beginning with the first films of the Lumières in 1895 – was in fact the actuality, or what might be called documentary before documentary.

Sep 23, 2024 | versobooks.com | Michael Chanan |Fredric Jameson

The death of Fredric Jameson leaves a huge gap in our intellectual world. Twenty-five years ago, when Jameson invited me to spend a semester at Duke University as a visiting professor, I sat in on his graduate seminar on Lacan. One day he asked my help to solve a problem. He’d mixed up his diary and had agreed to give a lecture somewhere else on the day of the seminar, so would I shoot a video of the seminar and show it to the students on the day?