Jazz 625: An Illustrated Talk

Behind the scene of episode 1, feat. Duke Ellington

Jazz 625: Music Giants on the Small Screen

An illustrated talk by Ehsan Khoshbakht at Close-Up Cinema on July 20

Its title alludes to the new 625-line broadcasting technology, which provided higher image quality. Jazz 625 captured the excitement of the newly launched BBC2 and showcased the cream of American – and occasionally British – musicians during their UK tours. This talk sheds light on the history of jazz on television through a close examination of Jazz 625, accompanied by rare excerpts from its episodes, featuring jazz giants such as Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, Thelonious Monk, Erroll Garner, Ben Webster, Bill Evans, and many more.

Barbara Stanwyck: Fire and Desire (Richard Schickel, 1991)

This television documentary by Richard Schickel plays at Il Cinema Ritrovato on June 17, 2026. — EK

“Kiss me in my mouth as if we are lovers,” a 76-year-old Barbara Stanwyck – still provocatively breaking taboos – tells a priest (Richard Chamberlain) in the TV miniseries The Thorn Birds (1983). Rejected by him, she lambasts a vengeful God who cruelly punishes bodies and beauty – in effect a God who undoes a star, though in Stanwyck’s case not entirely successfully.

Blur-ray Release of Treasures from the Golestan Film Studio

For the first-time ever on home video, this collection presents the complete output of the iconoclastic independent Iranian film studio founded in the late 1950s by a towering figure of Iranian culture, Ebrahim Golestan. The studio’s earliest productions were documentaries that helped bring Iranian cinema to international attention, including The House Is Black, directed by the poet Forough Farrokhzad. From 1961, the studio turned to fiction. Two feature films were completed, including the pivotal Brick and Mirror – both of which are presented here. After years of circulation in compromised versions, sometimes altered by censorship, these classics, which map the origins of the Iranian New Wave, are now presented in restored and definitive versions. The nine films in this set move fluidly from prose poetry to political allegory, achieving remarkable results that have inspired generations of filmmakers from Abbas Kiarostami to Jonathan Glazer.

Red & Black: The Hollywood Blacklist Podcast

 

This six-part series on the Hollywood Left and the Blacklist is my first foray into the world of podcasting.

Written and produced for the Locarno Film Festival – where I have also curated a major retrospective on the same subject for the forthcoming 2026 edition – the series is narrated by Eve P. Thompson and sound-edited by Rob Szeliga.

The episodes are:

1. The Left on the Rise

2. From Hot War to Cold War: Years of Anxiety

3. The Cinema of the Left and the Radical

4. HUAC Attacks!

5. Blacklisted and Rejected: Fronts and Exiles

6. The New Left and Coming Out of Darkness

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026 | The catalogue

A Man on the Beach (Joseph Losey, 1955)

Restored in 4K in 2026 by Hammer Films at Silver Salt Restoration laboratory, from the original 35mm elements. Note written for the world premiere at Il Cinema Ritrovato. — EK

What at first seems to be a genteel story of an Englishwoman abroad being driven around in an antique Rolls-Royce by the Mediterranean Sea – all in calm, saturated Eastmancolor – is in fact a coldly executed heist plot that descends into murder.

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026 | Films on Film (16mm & 35mm)

This year, Il Cinema Ritrovato will present more than 120 titles on celluloid, the majority in 35mm and a dozen in 16mm. These are the films to be screened on film:

Newspaper ad for Secrets of the Jinn Valley Treasure (1974)

Newspaper advertisement for the second theatrical run of Ebrahim Golestan’s Secrets of the Jinn Valley Treasure (1974), which opened on 27 June 1978. (The film’s original release was on 10 December 1974.) In the atmosphere of mounting revolutionary fervour, it was this time promoted under the subtitle “The Secrets of the Nouveau Riche Society.” The film played for two weeks at the Moulin Rouge cinema.

The new restoration of the film, based on the shorter cut prepared for its 1978 reissue, will be screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026.

Highlights from Il Cinema Ritrovato XL (Part IV)

Eight Girls in a Boat

Final part of my recommendations from Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026. — EK

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Tol'able David

Dir: Henry King | USA, 1921

We dedicated a retrospective to Henry King’s sound films in 2019, and this is the perfect opportunity to catch up with what both King and his admirers regarded as his first true masterwork. The film bears touches of autobiography in its depiction of the pre-industrial rural milieu from which King himself emerged. It tells the story of a shy country youth who is branded a coward but ultimately proves his courage. To be screened in 35mm.

Highlights from Il Cinema Ritrovato XL (Part III)

Tallinna Turg

Part three of what I – and, in some cases, colleagues I have spoken to – recommend from the 2026 edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato. Parts one and two can be accessed here.

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La Grève des bonnes

Dir: Charles Lucien Lépine | France, 1906

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Les Effets de la foudre

Dir: Gaston Velle | France, 1906

For the Century of Cinema: 1906 series, Mariann Lewinsky and Karl Wratschko watched approximately 500 films and ultimately selected 64 to be screened across six programmes. The screenings are closely modelled on the way exhibitors of the period organised their programmes, recreating a rich variety of emotional and aesthetic effects by combining different forms of production, including comic sketches, dramas, féeries, and topical films.

Two major highlights are La Grève des bonnes and Les Effets de la foudre, both produced by Pathé Frères. In La Grève des bonnes [The Strike of the Housekeepers], working-class women fight against exploitative labour conditions, going so far as to beat up policemen. Les Effets de la foudre [The Effects of Lightning] is particularly remarkable for its inventive use of experimental techniques, including scratching the filmstrip with a sharp tool to create striking visual effects.