Ginette Vincendeau

Alon Aboutboul (28 May 1965 – 29 July 2025): Israeli actor (Nina’s Tragedies; 2008’s Out of the Blue) who also had supporting parts in Hollywood productions (The Dark Knight Rises). Héctor Alterio (21 Sept 1929 – 13 Dec 2025): starred in some of the most significant films in Argentine cinema and also regularly worked in Spain (1974’s The Truce; Cría cuervos; The Official Story).

Cinema dealt with dreams, the subconscious, the surreal, and undercutting the supposed Norman Rockwell-like wholesomeness of American life long before David Lynch began making films. But did anyone go as far as he did in making the subversive and the experimental part of the mainstream?

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Black Narcissus (1947) was a hugely ambitious production. Powell famously decided not to shoot any of the Indian-set story in India, decreeing “the atmosphere in this film is everything… we must create and control it from the start”. It was therefore filmed primarily at Pinewood Studios, with a small number of exteriors at Leonardslee Gardens in West Sussex doubling for India, and Irish-set flashbacks filmed in Galway.