Notebook #8
212 x 274 mm, 136 pages
New York, US
Biannual
First published 2022
Editor-in-chief: Daniel Kasman
Creative and art director: Pablo Martín
Notebook is a publication dedicated to cinema, art, and culture, created as an extension of indie cinema streaming platform, MUBI. Physically, it’s a beautiful thing: with its Swiss open binding, mixed paper stock, expressive typography and plenty of colourful stills. The team behind Notebook hope to celebrate, explore, appreciate and analyse the beauty of film. It’s a lovely addition to our film mag selection.
This artfully rendered eighth issue is dedicated to ‘Food on Film’, and takes its title—‘Shoestring Spaghetti’—from Charlie Chaplin’s iconic 1925 film ‘The Gold Rush’, in which a ravenous Chaplin tucks into a makeshift meal of boiled boot. Taking this unforgettable scene as its point of departure, the issue explores ‘the unique relationship between onscreen cuisine and spectator’, highlighting the collective and sensory potential of food on the silver screen.
Inside, the team invite eight cultural visionaries— including the likes of American poet Eileen Myles and German translator Esther Kinsky—to gather for a ‘cinematic potluck’, each bringing their favourite on-screen dish to the table; a ‘trio of tête-à-têtes’ woven throughout the issue pair writers with food industry experts to explore three films in which food plays a central role—from Les Blank’s 1980 cult documentary ‘Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers’, to Danny DeVito’s classic 1996 adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s book ‘Matilda’; and Courtney Stephens traces the evolution of the Hollywood ‘power lunch’, delving into the symbiotic relationship between the real life ritual and its on-screen glamorisation.