Magaluf Ghost Town hands us a guilty pleasure, a cinematic
ensaimada in which each layer offers a different texture. At times, Blanca tears us away from the ruckus to check in with the resort’s handful of year-round residents, for whom low-cost tourism is both a vital source of income and a monumental headache, creating a dichotomous relationship between locals and visitors convinced they’ve landed in a hedonistic paradise. This aspect of the film is grounded in reality: Blanca makes use of news footage, mobile phone videos and other technological devices to construct a fictional account as fantastical as it is entertaining. The lady from Andalusia and her African neighbour are especially good value. Certainly, these scenes are the most relaxing to watch in the entire film, a project that had no difficulty finding partners and collaborators at various industry events at festivals including Abycine, Thessaloniki and Gijón.
From Carry On to EastEnders, we pay tribute to national treasure and showbiz royalty, Barbara Windsor.
11 December 2020
Sparrows Can t Sing (1963)
Barbara Windsor, who has died at the age of 83, had a long reign. She changed her surname from Deeks around the time of Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953 and withdrew from public gaze on leaving the Queen Vic for the last time in 2016. In between times, ‘Babs’ became a national treasure, although she is bound to be remembered for the wrong reasons, as there was much more to her than that pinging green bikini in Carry On Camping (1969).
As part of Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, Windsor had announced herself in Lionel Bart’s Cockney musical, Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be (1959), and she went on to earn a Tony nomination for the Broadway transfer of Oh, What a Lovely War! (1965). Littlewood had urged her to drop out of the Carry Ons, and Windsor took 2 wilderness decades to emerge from their shadow. The talent was a