A number of the
tributes to film critic and scholar Peter Brunette, who died last week at the Taormina Film Festival in Italy, conveyed very movingly their opinion that he left this world while doing what he loved.
Those of us who followed Peter's activities and travels, at least from the vantage point of his social media network, certainly loved his updates on them, like his final
Facebook posting above. His death was a huge shock, and a great loss, notably to the two spheres -- film scholarship and theory, and film criticism -- that he managed to join up, much more successfully than most, through his own prolific practice (he gave an account of some of the issues at stake in this choice in an interview
here, and Gerald Peary's obituary beautifully refers to his unusual trajectory, for an academic,
here).
FSFF's author's acquaintance with Peter Brunette began with his 'director books' (listed with his other work in his
CV here), and in particular with his marvellous study of the films of
Roberto Rossellini, now one of the
best freely accessible e-books online, thanks to Peter and his
publishers. Peter was a fan and an important supporter of freely accessible culture and ideas on the Web, as
this article he wrote in 2000 testifies.
Fortunately, a very good selection of other articles and chapters (and a substantial
podcast) by him may be experienced at the click of a mouse, quite aside from the virtual reams of online movie criticism under his byline. That means that the following list of links to the former work - to Peter Brunette's formal film
studies - is, then, the most fitting tribute that
FSFF can give to a scholar who gave so much and influenced so many in his too short (or just long enough) life.
