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Rushes | AI Script Readers, White House Theater Demolished, Austria Eyes Streamer Levies

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NEWS
Independence Day (Roland Emmerich, 1996).
DEVELOPING
REMEMBERING
The Brood (David Cronenberg, 1979).
  • Samantha Eggar has died at 86. The American actress first rose to prominence on the stage, performing in several Shakespeare companies, including as Titania in Tony Richardson’s 1962 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She rose to prominence after playing kidnapping victim Miranda Gray in William Wyler’s The Collector (1965), in the course of which the actress was reportedly ill-treated by Wyler and star Terrence Stamp. (“What you see onscreen was really taking place on set,” Eggar remembered.) Her performance netted her a Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar nomination. She went on to star opposite Cary Grant in Walk, Don’t Run (1966), Rex Harrison in Doctor Dolittle (1967), and Sean Connery and Richard Harris in The Molly Maguires (1970). In the 1970s, she garnered acclaim as a horror actress, appearing in a series of giallo and slasher films, including David Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979). Eggar also had a prolific television career, including a recurring role on All My Children (1970–2011; 2013) and an appearance as Jean-Luc Picard’s wife Marie in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994).
  • Björn Andrésen has died at 70. The Swedish actor and musician appeared as a child in Roy Andersson’s debut feature, A Swedish Love Story (1970) and played Tadzio in Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice (1971) but came to resent his overt sexualization in the latter film. Those feelings were explored in the documentary The Most Beautiful Boy in the World (2021), named after Visconti’s proud declaration about the young Andrésen. “He had an incredible charisma and presence in front of the camera,” said Kristian Petri, the documentary’s codirector, who describes the actor as a “very brave and straightforward person.” Though he continued to act in film and television, including in a small role in Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019), he also garnered acclaim as a pop star and an accomplished pianist.
  • Patrícia Saramago has died at 49. The Portuguese editor worked Pedro Costa on the films In Vanda’s Room (2000) and Change Nothing (2009) and collaborated throughout her career with Rita Azevedo Gomes, for whom she edited several films, including Fragile as the World (2001) and The Portuguese Woman (2018). According to critic and programmer Luis Miguel Oliveira, she left behind an unreleased feature that would mark her directorial debut. “With such a diverse body of work and a discreet yet vital presence behind the camera, Patrícia Saramago helped give shape, rhythm, and voice to stories that touch us,” reads the Portuguese Film Academy’s obituary. “Her career dedicated to the art of film editing leaves a lasting legacy and inspiration.”
RECOMMENDED READING
Orchard Street (Ken Jacobs, 1955).
  • “Although it is tempting to call [Ken] Jacobs an alchemist or magician of the moving image, his practice proves otherwise: it was always grounded in deep and critical attention to the material world. Understanding that we live amid ceaseless crises, he trusted in the power of the act of looking.” For e-flux Notes, Lukas Brasiskis remembers the late avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs and the ways that his “aesthetic radicalism” were inseparable from his politics.
  • “If there is today a greater appreciation for the immense stylistic span of nonfiction filmmaking, then The Perfect Neighbor (2025) … nevertheless embodies the kind of one-to-one relationship between image and event that has always been the public’s Platonic ideal of the form.” For Reverse Shot, Keva York reviews Geeta Gandbhir’s documentary about the killing of Ajike Owens, composed mostly of police body-cam footage.
  • “The odds of recovering from chemical dependencies as crippling as [Abel] Ferrara’s are infinitesimal; the odds of getting a steady stream of projects off the ground for almost fifty years as an independent filmmaker are not much better. Scene is the work of a tenacious survivor, a seasoned operator who has managed to keep moving ahead, loosening purse strings around the globe.” For Harper’s, Nick Pinkerton unpacks Abel Ferrara’s Scene: A Memoir (2025) and examines his unlikely career in the context of American cinema’s “decision-by-committee corporate filmmaking.”
  • “To Murch … film editing is a sensual ‘full-body’ experience: ‘a kind of dance, a choreography of images and sounds in the flow of time, forged in movement, eventually crystallising into permanence.’” For the London Review of Books, John Lahr examines Walter Murch’s new book, Suddenly Something Clicked: The Languages of Film Editing and Sound Design (2025), a “intellectual high-wire act of technical expertise and personal anecdote.”
RECOMMENDED EVENTS
Yes (Nadav Lapid, 2025).
  • New York, October 30–November 6: Roxy Cinema and L’Alliance present the New York edition of “Director’s Fortnight Extended,” a selection from the 2025 edition of the independent program presented in parallel to the Cannes Film Festival. From November 7 through 9, Acropolis Cinema and the Directors Guild of America present the Los Angeles edition.
  • Brussels, November 9: Sabzian presents “State of Cinema 2025”, an annual event hosted by the international film journal that invites a guest to write a survey of the cinematic landscape and present a related film. This year, Isabelle Huppert will be in conversation with critic Jean-Michel Frodon following a screening of Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves (2023).
  • London, through January 11: Studio Voltaire presents Very High Frequency, a new installation by Hilary Lloyd that explores the legacy of playwright and television dramatist Dennis Potter. The exhibition “combines audiovisual elements, performative interludes, filmed interviews and archival materials to stage a non-linear encounter with Potter’s work.”
  • Shanghai, through February 8: The Rockbund Art Museum presents Nula, Irena Haiduk’s hybrid exhibition, based on a novel she cowrote, that invited, earlier in its run, audiences to participate in an in-progress feature film production directed by Haiduk and photographed by Lars von Trier collaborator Manuel Alberto Claro, set in 1990s Yugoslavia.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
  • Neon presents a trailer for Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent (2025), a political thriller following a former professor (Wagner Moura) turned political refugee on the run in the waning years of Brazil’s military dictatorship.
  • The Cinema Guild presents a trailer for Marta Mateus’s feature debut, Fire of Wind (2025), a documentary-inflected fable, produced by Pedro Costa, about a discontented peasant community of grape pickers who must flee to safety after a black bull becomes loose in the fields. The film will enter limited theatrical release at New York City’s Anthology Film Archives on October 31 where they will also screen Mateus’s acclaimed short film Barbs, Wastelands (2017) alongside other films selected by the director.
  • Kino Lorber and Milestone Films present a trailer for the restoration of Sherman Alexie’s The Business of Fancydancing (2002), about two estranged friends from the Spokane Reservation who confront the tension between them following the death of a childhood buddy. The film will begin its theatrical run at New York’s Quad Cinema on November 14 before expanding to select cities in the subsequent weeks.
  • A24 has released a ten-minute selection from the audio commentary for Friendship (2024), featuring writer-director Andrew DeYoung, D.P. Andy Rydzewski, and actor and comedian Conner O'Malley. The full-length commentary can be heard on the film’s Blu-ray release.
RECENTLY ON NOTEBOOK
Illustration by Michelle Urra.
EXTRAS

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