Bob Dylan, Maura Delpero's Vermiglio and an opera singer reviews 'Maria'
Cultural stories on A Rabbit's Foot this week
Can Pablo Larraín solve a problem like Maria?
Most people with even a passing knowledge of opera know that Maria Callas, the only opera singer to achieve celebrity status, died of a broken heart, alone in her Paris apartment at age 53. Callas is one of opera’s most enduring icons and for young performers a cautionary tale. Most singers will be told at some point in their studies: ‘If you can do anything else—do that. This career will take everything you have.’ Maria Callas’ life and death are given as a cautionary example.
For A Rabbit’s Foot the author and former opera singer Lauren McQuistin reflects on Pablo Larraín’s cinematic portrait of Maria Callas, which—split between Maria, the person and La Callas, the star—shows the loneliness of performance and the void that comes with it.
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A film lover’s guide to Bob Dylan
How do you make a movie about an artist whose mythology is so vast and malleable that it defies definition? It’s what makes Bob Dylan both an impossible subject as well as one worthy of endless cinematic speculation. As James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown hits cinemas, Luke Georgiades rounds up five films—from the likes of Martin Scorsese, Todd Haynes and the Coen Brothers—that have tackled the legacy of one of music’s most enigmatic artists.
Maura Delpero: “I need to begin from the ground—from reality”
Vermiglio is a small village located in the Vai di Sole, a valley in the province of Trento in northern Italy. The vertiginous location is the eponymous setting for Italian director Maura Delpero’s second feature film which follows a large family—collectively and individually—during a fateful year: Winter 1944 to Autumn 1945. Punctured with moments of bruising beauty—the cabbage leaves desperately wrapped over a sick infant’s head, love letters surreptitiously exchanged, the candlelit feast of Saint Lucia sonically illuminated with carols, Kitty Grady speaks to Delpero about Neorealism, Natalia Ginzburg and the powerful sound of silence.
Usman Riaz on The Glassworker, Pakistan’s first hand-drawn animated film
“I wanted the narrative to escalate throughout the film; and as the characters grew, I wanted the story to become progressively darker, much like how Pinocchio in the third act becomes extremely dark, an echoing of what the character is going through. Because The Glassworker is about war I felt we had to show the consequences of everything that is happening around the characters—it was inevitable to go in that direction.” Now online, A Rabbit’s Foot Creative Director Fatima Khan speaks to filmmaker Usman Riaz about his debut feature The Glassworker, what he learnt visiting Studio Ghibli in Japan, and how he established Pakistan’s first animation studio.
A Rabbit’s Foot Holiday Shop
It’s still possible to order prints from our Holiday Shop! A Rabbit’s Foot are offering our readers the chance to purchase original cinematic photography by the likes of Eve Arnold, David Montgomery, Jeff Bridges and many more…
