feeling listless

Film At the FACT Cente in Liverpool last week I was within spitting distance of film director Alex Cox (literally -- I was standing on steps directly over him as he passed by). I haven't liked any of his films not that I would say because I was always a fan of the BBC2 strand he used to present Moviedrome -- it introduced me to The Terminator (albeit in a cut version) and The Warriors. I always wondered why Mark Cousins took over and here he explains why:

"So Nick and I made a deal. The last year I did it, we agreed that if the foreign-language films were dropped, I'd go as well: I hadn't signed on just to present American, and a handful of British, films. And - in the suitably-inappropriate context of a swimming bath in Budapest - we shot an introduction to a magnificent double bill: two films by Francesco Rosi, Salvatore Giuliano and The Mattei Affair. No one honours Rosi now, but his talent, and his influence on the Italian cinema, are huge. Salvatore Giuliano was his first worldwide success, and The Mattei Affair (the story of the founder of the Italian petroleum business, probably murdered by the CIA at the behest of US oil companies) is one of the best films of all time. You can guess the rest. Salvatore Giuliano and The Mattei Affair weren't shown on Moviedrome. They weren't even purchased for broadcast by the BBC. The iron curtain had descended, shutting subtitles out, and so ended my talking-head telly career. I didn't miss it. But I did miss the subtitled films."

He portrays a fairly bleak picture, and it is. Although the TV version of Das Boot is doing the rounds again, the only place to see anything World is on BBC4 or the Sky Cinemas which is remarkably short sighted, especially when you consider how important the broadcast of these films could be as part of Modern Language courses in schools.