Invite - a Zoom chat with David Thomson

My friend Tipu Purkayastha (whom some of you know from our online video discussions and the WhatsApp group) has set up an event that I’m excited about – a Zoom chat with the veteran film critic David Thomson on Sunday, March 31, 8.30 pm IST. The “peg” for the conversation: the Sight and Sound greatest-films lists that Thomson and I contributed to a couple of years ago (and the foolishness + inevitability of list-making more generally). But it should be a wider-ranging talk; Tipu will see to that.

 

Thomson has been one of my favourite writers for a couple of decades now, and I usually keep his books Have You Seen…?, A Biographical Dictionary of Film, and The Big Screen within easy reach. (I also have strong disagreements with some of his broader positions, and his views on specific directors like John Ford and Brian DePalma – and I bristled and eye-rolled quite a bit while reading his entry on Khuda Gawah in Have You Seen...? Not sure I’ll bring any of that up during the talk, though: the man has been very sweet on email. And he is 83.)

 

Save the date, try to make it. Meeting link here.

 

P.S. my Sight and Sound list is here. And David’s is here.

(His list has at least four films that I could very easily have put in mine if I had made it on another day, or another time of day. I doubt David would have Sholay or Mayabazaar in his, though!)