Philip Baker Hall was an American actor.
A character actor, he was known for his collaborations with Paul Thomas Anderson in such films as Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999).
Tag Archives: 1931
RIP Walter Abish (1931 – 2022)
Walter Abish was an Austrian-born American writer known for such novels as Alphabetical Africa (1974) and How German Is It (1980).
RIP Margarita Lozano (1931 – 2022)
Margarita Lozano was a Spanish actress known for her parts in Viridiana (1961, Luis Buñuel) and A Fistful of Dollars (1964, Sergio Leone).
RIP Monica Vitti (1931 – 2022)
Monica Vitti was an Italian actress best known for starring in L’Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961) and L’Eclisse (1962).
These films were directed by Michelangelo Antonioni.
RIP Alvin Lucier (1931 – 2021)
Alvin Lucier was an American composer, perhaps best-known for his piece I Am Sitting in a Room (1969). That piece is a reflection on resonance and generation loss.
RIP Sylvano Bussotti (1931 – 2021)
Sylvano Bussotti was an Italian composer and poet known for such pieces as Five Piano Pieces for David Tudor (1959).
A piece of the “sheet music” of that composition is reproduced in A Thousand Plateaus (1980).
RIP Françoise Arnoul (1931 – 2021)
Françoise Arnoul was a French actress known for her parts in French Cancan, The Devil and the Ten Commandments and Forbidden Fruit; and not so much for her part in Post Coitum, Animal Triste (1997). However, I show you the trailer of that film, because of its title, which I have been able to trace into the 16th century, in the work of Jean Benedict in La somme des péchés et le remède d’iceux (1595).
RIP Eddy Posthuma de Boer (1931 – 2021)
Eddy Posthuma de Boer was a Dutch photographer.
RIP Johanna Fürstauer (1931 – 2018)
Johanna Fürstauer was an Austrian writer.
By reading Jan Verplaetse’s “Vrouwenpijn en mannenplezier: de antifeministische wortels van sadomasochisme in de Belle Epoque” (1999), I came across Johanna Fürstauer, an Austrian writer who specialized in Sittengeschichte, a famous German euphemism for histories of the vita sexualis. Fürstauer is from the same sex researching generation as Eberhard and Phyllis Kronhausen.
Above is a picture of the cover of Eros im alten Orient (1965) on Eastern erotica, the debut of Fürstauer.
RIP Nawal El Saadawi (1931 – 2021)
Nawal El Saadawi was an Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician, and psychiatrist.
She wrote many books on the subject of women in Islam, paying particular attention to the practice of female genital mutilation in her society.
She described her mutilation in The Hidden Face of Eve (1977) in these words:
“Then suddenly the sharp metallic edge seemed to drop between my thighs and there cut off a piece of flesh from my body.”
[…]
“I did not know what they had cut off from my body, and I did not try to find out. I just wept, and called out to my mother for help. But the worst shock of all was when I looked around and found her standing by my side. Yes, it was her, I could not be mistaken, in flesh and blood, right in the midst of these strangers, talking to them and smiling at them, as though they had not participated in slaughtering her daughter just a few moments ago.”