New column by Peter Cowie - author of Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu

Peter Cowie, legendary film critic, writer, editor, and friend to the Louise Brooks Society has a new column. Cowie, the author of Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu, will write a series of essays for the Criterion Collection website. His first column, titled "A Series of Flashbacks," can be found here. The LBS encourages everyone to check it out.

Cowie's first column starts this way: "I began writing about films more than sixty years ago. My first review was of Ingmar Bergman’s The Magician, in an arts magazine at Cambridge University. I never followed an orthodox career path for very long, starting as a critic for the weekly What’s On in London, sending dispatches to The Financial Times and Sight & Sound, and writing and publishing numerous books about national cinemas and directors. Across the years, I have seen countless films being made, in places as far apart as Belgrade, Stockholm, Vallejo, Singapore, London, and Rome. I’ve escaped by helicopter with Max von Sydow from an Arctic ice floe during the shoot of Jan Troell’s Flight of the Eagle; I’ve seen celebrated directors physically fighting over politics during the breakup of the Cannes Festival in 1968; and I’ve witnessed what so many actors and technicians had already seen — Otto Preminger flying into a rage."

Wow! If you have read Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu, then you know Cowie also knew Louise Brooks. He has had — and continues to have — a storied career as a film journalist and film historian.

Here is a snapshot of Peter Cowie and Thomas Gladysz (founder of the Louise Brooks Society, that's me) at the Balboa Theater in San Francisco in 2006. The occasion was an LBS sponsored event celebrating Louise Brooks and the publication of Cowie's book. Notice the Louise Brooks Society button Cowie is wearing. He continued to wear it throughout his tour on the United States, including, even, in Rochester, New York.

Don't forget to check out Peter Cowie new column. It starts at http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2805-a-series-of-flashbacks