Editorial

Dear Readers: welcome to Issue 111 of Senses of Cinema, a journal in which the serious and eclectic discussion of moving images past, present, and future never dies, no matter the historical ruptures all around us.

We open with a special 13-text dossier that is sure to become a touchstone for researchers, students, cinephiles, and enthusiasts of all sorts in the future. Guest edited by Adrian Danks and Olympia Szilagyi with editorial assistance from Digby Houghton, “‘A very open-ended canon’: The Many Histories of the Melbourne Cinémathèque” pays tribute to (and diligently historicizes) the eponymous film society, a pivotal institution in Melbourne and Australian cinemagoing culture. As Danks notes in his succinct introduction, the dossier offers “only a partial and proudly parochial account of this history,” leaving vast amounts of the Cinémathèque’s 75-year life untouched. Yet the reader – Melbourne-based or not – is left with the distinct and deep impression of the inexhaustible vibrancy of an organisation dependent not just on films, but especially on people: the members without which cinema is just a dark room full of dusty seats.

True to the Senses mission statement, our Features section is as diverse as ever. Alongside Donald Brackett’s microhistorical consideration of Billy Wilder, regular contributor Dirk de Bruyn unpacks an Australian ‘classic’: Albie Thoms’ Sunshine City (1973), an experimental docu-film shown recently in Melbourne, which de Bruyn credits for sparking his own interest in filmmaking. In his piece “Sadie and her Sisters”, Rob Nixon provides a detailed historical overview of the ‘itinerant showgirl’ archetype, originating from a 1921 short story by Somerset Maugham, and subsequently appearing in Hollywood films throughout the ‘20s to the ‘50s, ultimately morphing into a strong female character that is the subject (not object) of desire. Daniel T. Roberts explores a double complexity in Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron (2023), a film criticising Japanese militarism and imperialism of the mid-20th century that, at the same time, can also be read as an allegory of the complex relationship between Miyazaki and his highly demanding mentor Takahata. What’s more, while reading this essay we can peer at profound cultural and ideological Japanese traits. Huirong Ye, on her part, analyses the evolution of the interview in two of Wang Bing’s recent documentaries, where oral history encounters sensory and performative storytelling.

The Interviews section includes the second instalment of Hamad Sarrafi’s interview with El Pampero Cine member Alejo Moguillansky, which continues from where their conversation ended in the previous issue. It covers the central role of music in Moguillansky’s storytelling as well as the values that underpin the unique collective. Arindam Sen, meanwhile, pays tribute to recently deceased Indian filmmaker Kumar Shahani, whose most well-known film Maya Darpan turned 50 recently. We wrap up with two interviews by regular contributor Gary Kramer, fresh from the festival circuit: Francesco Costabile on Familia (2024) and Pia Marais on Transamazonia (2024).

Keeping abreast with global cinema culture and its shifting parameters, our writers in this issue report from seven very different festivals on four continents. Patricia Di Risio found herself in Venice, Jaimey Fisher sent in a dispatch from Locarno, Paul Jeffery writes on the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), Maja Korbecka was in Busan, South Korea, while Anuj Malhotra, Kohei Usuda, and Neil Young covered the Flaherty Seminar, Toronto, and the Italian poliziotteschi retrospective in San Sebastián respectively.

In the Great Directors series, Eli Vannata looks at the oeuvre of Swedish director Mai Zetterling, whose career as a filmmaker and actress spanned more than six decades. Meanwhile in the Great Actors series, Mark Lager looks at the life and career of the late Alain Delon: the French actor who left an enduring legacy onscreen and a controversial legacy offscreen. The protagonist of films such as Il Gattopardo (The Leopard, 1963) and Le Samouraï (1967) was one of the most recognisable faces of world cinema in the 1960s and 1970s, a presence that Lager dissects and diagnoses in detail.

On this occasion, we have a particularly interesting Book Reviews section. Our opening piece is a re-evaluation of Béla Balázs’s Visible Man at 100 years from its original publication. Paul Dobryden and Ervin Malakaj’s text results in a remarkable reading: Balázs was well aware that film theory as a concept – at our distance we might say “as a field” – at that time needed to be forged, a feat that Balázs set out to accomplish by exploring facial expression, how media transform everyday life, and how the capitalist internationalism characterising cinema could set a common ground for audiences all over the world, among many other topics. In their review, Dobryden and Malakaj help us situate the book in its original context to weigh its relevance and setbacks after a century.

A happy accident happened as well, with two wide reflections appearing cross-sectionally through three outstanding reviews: Tony McKibbin’s take on Reverse Shot: Twenty Years of Film Criticism in Four Movements, Hannah Bonner’s approach to the English edition of My Cinema: Writings and Interviews by Marguerite Duras, and Emmanuel Bonin’s creative study of On the Figure in General and the Body in Particular by Nicole Brenez. Bonner and McKibbin both study (film) criticism: an endeavour devoted to analysing works in order to generate discussion, but in recent times – with the economic unviability of most cultural media – almost always produced out of sheer commitment to critique itself, and seldom mediated by honoraria. On the other hand, the ensemble of Bonin and McKibbin launch an urgent criticism to a publishing industry too expensive for individual readers and trapped in a contradiction: wanting reviewers to recommend those pricey physical books all the while sending them only PDF files, naturally at no cost. The section closes with M. Sellers Johnson’s overview of Hannah Goodwin’s Stardust: Cinematic Archives at the End of the World.

Wherever in the world you are, we hope you enjoy reading the 111th iteration of eclectic and serious (but never dejected, defeated or sombre) film reflection.