HECTOR BABENCO

14 Jul

(7 February 1946 - 13 July 2016)

The Argentinian-born Brazilian film director, producer, writer and actor worked in films from 1973 with his documentary on racing driver Emerson Fittipaldi. His first feature was King of the Night (1975), about a man in Săo Paulo who has affairs with two daughters of his mother’s friend. Mainly dealing with social or political problems, Babenco became better-known through Pixote (1980), about street boys and their sexual relationship; Kiss of the Spiderwoman (1985) with William Hurt and Raul Julia as two men in prison, one for political activities and the other for illicit underage gay sex; Ironweed (1987) with Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep as a couple in the Great Depression; At Play In the Fields of the Lord (1990), about two Amazon Basin explorers, with Tom Berenger and John Lithgow; and Carandiru (2003), on a prison massacre in a Latin American jail. His last film was My Hindu Friend (2007), which concerned a dying film director and starred Willem Dafoe.

MICHAEL DARVELL

Michael Darvell

Michael Darvell trained as a librarian at Watford and in Surrey before joining Ealing Libraries where he became Music Librarian for the borough. He edited Masthead, the magazine of the University of North London School of Librarianship, The Surrealist, the staff magazine of Surrey County Library, and contributed to the Assistant Librarian and London Librarian professional journals. A freelance film reviewer since 1970, he has written for Film, Films Illustrated, Film Review, Movie Maker and Radio Times, as well as editing Montage, the London film societies magazine, for ten years. A change of career saw him joining What’s On in London as Features Editor and he eventually stepped into the shoes of the late F. Maurice Speed (founding father of Film Review annual) as the magazine’s Editor. From 2007 to 2015, he was co-editor of the Film Review annual with Mansel Stimpson. As well as writing about films, Michael has reviewed theatre for The Stage newspaper, and has written about music theatre and cabaret for the Classical Source and Musical Theatre Review websites. He is also a former restaurant critic for the ViewLondon website. Michael has been a member of the London Film Critics’ Circle since 2005.

HECTOR BABENCO

LISA GAYE

JOHN McMARTIN