Rachel Cusk, Second Place

Lotte Laserstein, Self Portrait with a Cat (1928)

Films watched over lockdown to date pt 3

• Heat
• Citadel
• Can't Get You Out of My Head
• Ponyo
• The Colour Wheel
• The Twentieth Century
• King of Comedy
• Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
• Josep
• Bad Tales
• Carino Royale
• Kajillionaire 
• Fantastic Planet
• LA Confidential
• Beyond my Grandfather Allende
• Adoption
• Kids Return
• Palm Springs
• Songs My Brothers Taught Me
• Personal Shopper
• The Things of Life
• Sound of Metal
• Uncle Frank
• Inside
• Lovesong
• Gosford Park
• The Century of the Self
• Shiva Baby

Annie Ernaux, The Years

Really fascinating book weaving in personal and collective history and memory from 1940 to the early 2000s, documenting and commenting on vernacular and mundane snippets of domestic life and popular culture, dipping in and out of politically active spaces and mindsets, the personal and international impact massive global/political/technological events, the push and pull of conflicting ideologies and desires, the oscillating experience of empathy/apathy /energy/exhaustion /hope/disappointment, the memories and past selves housed in old photographs, the desire to document and write down moments of a life come and gone. 

Alejandro Zambra, Ways of Going Home

Beautifully written book about the political climate in Pinochet's Chile, the 1985 earthquake, childhood  memories, the purpose of writing, the dissolution of autobiography and fiction, the making of secondary characters.