AFS Viewfinders

AFS Viewfinders is a film culture website with information, resources and opinions designed to deepen and broaden appreciation of film.

John Sayles to Write New DJANGO Western with Franco Nero to Star

The Hollywood Reporter posted yesterday that John Sayles has been engaged to write a new DJANGO film. The first DJANGO film was made by the great Sergio Corbucci in 1966. While there are a couple of semi-official sequels, the name Django caught on with quick buck exploitation producers and they slapped it on many films […]

Happy Birthday to Master Provocateur Dusan Makavejev

Dusan Makavejev is one of our greatest and most important filmmakers. Born in Serbia on this day in 1932, he studied psychology before he began making films. His initial efforts trod the boundary line of social and political acceptability, mainly due to their sexual content. With 1971’s W.R. MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM, he obliterated that […]

Director Brian Trenchard-Smith on the Life and Legacy of Bruce Lee

There’s a nice Bruce Lee article on the site Talkhouse this week. Brian Trenchard-Smith is a very prolific director of (mostly) low-budget fare. Don’t let the downmarket pedigree fool you though, he is a very smart man and a clever, talented filmmaker. His piece on Bruce Lee, still the most influential martial arts star ever […]

Happy Birthday Guillermo del Toro: Watch His Spellbinding Texas Film Awards Speech

Every year at the Texas Film Awards, all of us AFS staffers are busy running around, doing our jobs,  trying to appear convivial and have fun while simultaneously doing what we can to make the show run well. As a result, we don’t often get to see the speeches and presentations onstage except in hurried, […]

Klaus Kinski Was So Difficult That One of His Producers Plotted to Kill Him for the Insurance Money

Klaus Kinski, who died back in 1991, had a well-deserved reputation for being a difficult actor. He could be a pussycat in meetings or in social situations but as soon as he was on set he was undercutting everyone, starting fights, sowing discord and being a very bad team player. Werner Herzog’s documentary MY BEST […]

“She Was Cinema” Chantal Akerman’s J’AI FAIM, J’AI FROID

Chantal Akerman, whose death was announced yesterday, was one of a small number of filmmaking masters who could be considered a great artist worthy of mention with the best of all time. Though her best known film is the masterpiece JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES made in 1975 when she was only […]

Watch Groucho Marx Get Completely Freaked Out with Hilarious Results

Groucho Marx, born on this day in 1890, is rightly considered one of the quickest wits ever to trod the boards. After a long stage and screen career, he, at an age when most people retire, became the host of a game show YOU BET YOUR LIFE, first on radio and then on TV. It […]

Great Actor & Hell-Raising Hall-Of-Famer Richard Harris Born On This Day in 1930

The Irish actor Richard Harris, who died in 2002, would have been 85 years old had he lived, which, considering his well known excesses (he diagnosed himself as “excessive-compulsive”), was not likely or maybe even possible. He was one of the most naturally gifted actors of his time, with a reputation as a dissolute drinker, […]

Watch This: Ivan Cardoso’s 1982 Brazilian Horror Oddity SECRET OF THE MUMMY

This excerpt from the ultra-low budget 1982 horror by Brazilian basement auteur certainly holds up well today. Cardoso surfaced on the radar of American horror fans with an early ’90s Something Weird Video release called NOSFERATU IN BRAZIL which compiled a number of Cardoso’s films. Those expecting something more akin to the work of his […]

Watch This: Brigitte Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg’s Sci-Fi Glam CONTACT Video

It’s Brigitte Bardot’s 81st birthday today. In the ’50s and ’60s no one more than BB personified the mix of youth, sophistication and specifically European sexiness better than Bardot. Her turn in Roger Vadim’s …AND GOD CREATED WOMAN (1956) kept the lights burning in countless art house theaters. As a screen subject she had a […]

Happy 66th Birthday to Pedro Almodóvar: Watch this 1994 Conan O’Brien Interview

When we look around us at the great masters of film still working among us, Pedro Almodóvar must be considered one of the very greatest. His still growing body of work continues to compel us and instruct us, even as it thrills us. It’s never a chore to watch a new Almodóvar film. Also, as […]

Two Teenage Sisters Watched Every Best Picture Winner & AFI Top 100

When the story about the two teenage girls who watched every Academy Award Best Picture Winner and every film on the AFS 100 Movies… 100 Years list started showing up in my social media feed I felt a little curmudgeonly about it. After all, the Oscar is a trade award and not necessarily an imprimatur signifying […]

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