[KineJapan] Freda Freiberg

[Aaron Gerow]

Very sorry to hear from Adrian Martin that Freda Freiberg has passed away. She should be about 90.

Many of you have encountered her writings on Japanese cinema, especially on Naruse, Mizoguchi, Yamanaka, and others, though she wrote about much of world cinema. She was especially important in promoting filmmakers such as Naruse, starting in Australia but elsewhere as well. I only met her a couple of times, but she was a kind and generous person.


This is from Adrian’s post on Facebook:

Very sad news of the passing of Freda Freiberg this morning (Friday 26 April) in Australia. She was (I believe) 90, and I’m told she was in health (and not in pain) almost to the last day. She was central to so many circles of vibrant film culture, so active in her involvements & engagements – writing (she was a superb, clear writer, who proudly eschewed all jargon), teaching, networking (in the best sense), bringing people together ... She was a feisty soul who never stood for any bullshit; whenever the occasional ‘honour’ in the film field came my way, for instance, she would be the first to say to me: “Don’t let it go to your head!” She was extremely loyal in her life-long friendships (such as with Ken Mogg, who also left us a while ago). She published in many places, in small magazines, bigger magazines, chapters in significant books (like the late ‘80s DON’T SHOOT DARLING on Australian women’s cinema, which she co-edited), reviews in the Jewish newspapers, online in SENSES OF CINEMA, more recently in FILM ALERT 101 ... we were together on the editorial team of the short-lived film magazine BUFF, back in 1980, and that was when I first grasped how central her family, feminism, and religious values were to her very full, rich life. She wrote one of the first important publications in English on ‘women in Mizoguchi’, and – as I recorded just the other day in my BFI commentary for FLOATING CLOUDS – she excitedly brought the ‘news’ about the discovery in the West of Naruse to the readers of FILMNEWS after a small retro at the Melbourne Film Festival. In fact, the filmed discussions I did with Freda (commissioned by Paul Willemen) for an earlier BFI Naruse box are about to be recycled on the new release, which is great. And there’s a special Film Studies Library (containing her lifetime’s worth of often rare materials, plus much of my book & magazine collection) named after her at Monash University! I am sure there will be many fond recollections of Freda, from many people, in the weeks and months to come.


Aaron Gerow
Alfred W. Griswold Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Film and Media Studies
Chair, East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
320 York Street, Room 108
PO Box 208201
New Haven, CT 06520-8201
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6729
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
website: www.aarongerow.com






















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