Passages

[dadaistnun]

Nothing But a Man director Michael Roemer.

[beamish14]

Nothing But a Man director Michael Roemer.

A small, but basically perfect filmography. It took decades for each of his films to get the acclaim they deserved

[hearthesilence]

Great filmmaker and wonderful human being. I wasn't enrolled at Yale, much less in one of the classes he taught there, but I did get a chance to spend one late morning at a local coffee shop with him and an employer who was a former faculty member. We basically had a long and leisurely discussion over an early lunch. I'm glad I got to say hello to him one more time at one of his recent appearances at Film Forum - he might've been a little more fail but for someone in his mid '90s he seemed to be in terrific health, both mentally and physically. I'm glad he got a chance to see his work rediscovered and preserved, and I hope the newly restored Dying gets released for home viewing (Blu-ray, streaming, etc.) very soon - it's a great film and it may be the purest expression of his thoughtful and moral approach to filmmaking.

[DeprongMori]

Great filmmaker and wonderful human being. I wasn't enrolled at Yale, much less in one of the classes he taught there, but I did get a chance to spend one late morning at a local coffee shop with him and an employer who was a former faculty member. We basically had a long and leisurely discussion over an early lunch. I'm glad I got to say hello to him one more time at one of his recent appearances at Film Forum - he might've been a little more fail but for someone in his mid '90s he seemed to be in terrific health, both mentally and physically. I'm glad he got a chance to see his work rediscovered and preserved, and I hope the newly restored Dying gets released for home viewing (Blu-ray, streaming, etc.) very soon - it's a great film and it may be the purest expression of his thoughtful and moral approach to filmmaking.

From what I understand, Dying will be packaged with the related feature Pilgrim, Farewell for Film Movement. I believe they may be working on restoring and bringing out his other documentary films.

Yes, a small but perfect filmography.

[hearthesilence]

Sacha Jenkins, the hip-hop journalist and documentary filmmaker who co-founded the highly influential Ego Trip magazine, due to complications from multiple system atrophy. He was only 54.

[hearthesilence]

Reported by friends and associates on social media, Peter David. Possibly best-known for his work writing comic books like The Incredible Hulk, he also wrote novels and for television, films, and video games.

[Orlac]

Reported by friends and associates on social media, Peter David. Possibly best-known for his work writing comic books like The Incredible Hulk, he also wrote novels and for television, films, and video games.

I had his excellent BATMAN FOREVER novelisation as a kid.

[PfR73]

Sad news. He wrote what became my favorite single comic issue ever, X-Factor #87. I was young, so I don't have a great memory of it, but I know I met him & got his autograph at a local comic book store sometime in the early 90s.

[Never Cursed]

Marcel Ophuls (The Sorrow and the Pity), at the too-young age of 97

[Caligula]

Presley Chweneyagae, according to local reports. He will be primarily remembered here as the lead in Tsotsi (2005)

[Buttery Jeb]

Rick Derringer

[hearthesilence]

Marcel Ophuls (The Sorrow and the Pity), at the too-young age of 97

The New York Times has an excellent obituary:

Mr. Ophuls had directed several minor feature films before vaulting to fame in 1969 with “The Sorrow and the Pity,” his four-and-a-half-hour documentary on wartime Clermont-Ferrand, an industrial city located almost at the center of France. In a dispassionate, incisive style, he interviewed shopkeepers and farmers, bankers and entrepreneurs, teachers and lawyers who either collaborated with the Nazis and the Vichy regime or actively resisted the occupation — but who in most instances had turned a blind eye to the roundups of Jews and anti-Nazis.

When the film was first shown in Paris cinemas, it was met with shock, outrage and tears. It stripped away the myth — fostered by Charles de Gaulle when he returned to France with the victorious Allied armies in 1944 — that a vast majority of his compatriots were either open or secret supporters of his resistance movement.

Originally produced for television, “The Sorrow and the Pity” was banned from French airwaves until 1981. Conservative politicians denounced Mr. Ophuls, calling his work a “prosecutorial film” that unfairly portrayed the French as cowardly or worse. “It doesn’t attempt to prosecute the French,” Mr. Ophuls insisted in a 2004 interview with The Guardian newspaper. “Who can say their nation would have behaved better in the same circumstances?”

[PfR73]

Rick Derringer

I know him best as producer of Weird Al's first 6 albums.

[hearthesilence]

Forgot to mention, Milestone posted a tribute to Marcel Ophuls, recalling "his joy at seeing Scott Meola's poster for our re-release of The Sorrow and the Pity. He loved that there was no Nazis or swastikas. Just the Eiffel Tower against the blood-red sky. He explained that his focus was never on Nazis but what do people do in times of great danger in all their humanity. And that was the focus of all his films he said..."

[bearcuborg]

Sad news. He wrote what became my favorite single comic issue ever, X-Factor #87. I was young, so I don't have a great memory of it, but I know I met him & got his autograph at a local comic book store sometime in the early 90s.

I had the exact same experience! Dude was very funny. He and Larry Strohman were a great combo.

[beamish14]

Co Hoedeman, Dutch-born animator who worked for the NFB in Canada. Best for the Oscar-winning The Sand Castle

[beamish14]

Not widely reported in the Anglosphere, but Dutch screenwriter Gerard Soeteman passed away earlier this month. Most well-known for co-authoring the majority of Paul Verhoeven’s Dutch-language films, he also wrote Fons Rademakers’ Max Havelaar and The Assault, both of which were submitted by the Netherlands for Oscars consideration. The latter won, making it the only Cannon Films-distributed movie to pick up an Academy Award

[hearthesilence]

Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina, the first Arab and African director to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival, at age 91. He won the prize in 1975 for Chronicle of the Years of Fire, a historical drama about the Algerian war of independence.

[hearthesilence]

Presley Chweneyagae, the South African actor who starred in the Oscar-winning feature Tsotsi, at the age of 40.

[Aunt Peg]

Ed Gale, Chucky and ‘Howard the Duck’ Actor, Dies at 61:
https://variety.com/2025/film/news/ed-g ... 236411971/

[beamish14]

Al Foster, drummer who collaborated with Miles Davis on his incredible fusion albums from the 1970’s, including On the Corner and Agharta

[denti alligator]

Al Foster, drummer who collaborated with Miles Davis on his incredible fusion albums from the 1970’s, including On the Corner and Agharta

He was not one of the three (!) drummers on On the Corner. But he was on Dark Magus.

[hearthesilence]

James Lowe, lead singer of The Electric Prunes (perhaps best-known for "I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)" which was immortalized on Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968), and a producer perhaps best-known for Sparks' A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing

[captveg]

James Lowe, lead singer of The Electric Prunes (perhaps best-known for "I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)" which was immortalized on Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968), and a producer perhaps best-known for Sparks' A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing

One of the groups from that era that I only know from a surviving poster where they are listed alongside my father's even more fleeting band, Teddy and His Patches.

[FrauBlucher]

Loretta Swit (Hot Lips Houlihan)