The Cinematologists Podcast (The Cinematologists)

Our intense desire for, and identification, with film characters and stars comes under the spotlight in this weeks' podcast. Neil is joined by filmmaker James Dean to introduce Pablo Larraín's unique and brutal Tony Manero (2008) about Chilean criminal who is obsessed with John Travolta's character from Saturday Night Fever. It is simultaneously bleak, shocking and unsettling with allusions to the darkest parts of human identity. Also on the podcast Dario interviews Professor Will Brooker from Kingston University about the year he is spending embodying the iconic David Bowie. 

Neil is joined on stage at Falmouth by Kingsley Marshall to introduce John Hughes' comedy Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987). The influence and persona of John Candy and Steve Martin is discussed along with the career of John Hughes as one the quintessential American 80s directors. The podcast also features an interview with Jeanie Finlay on her surprising and offbeat musical documentary Orion: The Man Who Would Be King (2015).

In our first podcast from the University of Brighton's Hastings campus we screen the strangely superb sci-fi thriller Seconds (1966). John Frankenheimer's key themes revolve around paranoia and conspiracy with titles to his credit including The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Seven Days in May (1964). This film takes a faustian theme and links it to social contexts of mistrust in government, consumerism and the increasing loss of identity in the modern age.

The episode also features an interview with writer and historian Andy Bass who has recently written an article on the shooting of the film in his home town of Scarsdale:

http://scarsdalenews.com/Scarsdale_Inquirer/8-21-15_NEWS__Rock_Hudson.html

Dario and Neil discuss Ida Lupino's 1953 film noir The Hitch-Hiker. Neil also interviews writer Jack Thorne about, amongst other things, his up-coming theatre adaptation of Harry Potter.

Link to the Film Programme episode discussed in the episode

Link to the Senses of Cinema Ida Lupino piece mentioned by Kingsley in the episode

In one of the highlights of the year The Cinematologists screen Wong Kar-Wai's stylish masterpiece as part of the BFI 'love' season in association with The Poly, Falmouth. A veritable modern masterpiece In the Mood for Love stars Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung in iconic roles as lovers seeking refuge from disappointment, loneliness and the harsh realities of their surroundings. Dario and Neil also discuss their cinematic highlights of the year.

The Guardian article by Peter Walker referred to in the podcast can be found here: http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2011/dec/19/in-the-mood-for-love

In a special bonus episode Dario talks to Dr. Catherine Grant, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sussex and founder of the Film Studies For Free online archive. The conversation covers a wide range of areas including Catherine's route in film academia, the current status of film and film studies particularly in the digital context, the Internet & open source publishing, teaching, research and the challenges of higher education for the arts and humanities, video essays, blogging & podcasting, feminism in film and academia, and discourses of free speech and political correctness.

Link's to Catherine's Websites: Film Studies for Free; InTransition: Journal of Videographic and Film and Moving image Studies; Reframe

Jason Mittell - Complex Television

Catherines's introduction to Laura Mulvey and Possibilities for the Digital

Bordwell and Thompson: Observations on Film Art

Girish Shambu: Film Blog

Kevin Lee: Shooting Down Pictures

Catherine's video essay using Laura Mark's notion of Haptic Criticism

Patricia White: Women's Cinema, World Cinema

Sophie Myers: Political Animal

Richard Dyer: Sissy Representations

Brett Easton Ellis Podcast: with Quintin Tarantino

Our first screening of 2016 is Orson Welles's at times overlooked classic, The Trial. Adapted from Franz Kafka’s dark novel about alienation, bureaucracy, and the fundamental question of freewill. The Trial stars Anthony Perkins in a role every bit as compelling as his star turn in Psycho and features Welles’s trademark kinetic cinematography which perfectly captures the terror of faceless institutional authority.

Read Richard Brody's New Yorker article on The Trial here.

This was our first screening at the wonderful Electric Palace Cinema in Hastings.

The episode features an interview with Josh Karp who recently published an exquisite book on the crazy saga of Welles's final, incomplete film, The Other Side Of The Wind. Find information on the book here.

Read a review from RogerEbert.com here.

In a wide ranging interview Dario talks to prolific film scholar Murray Pomerance. The discussion touches on everything from Zabriskie Point to The Force Awakes, from The Clouds of Sils Maria to The Bourne Identity, from Marnie to The Dark Knight Professor Pomerance demonstrates an in-depth knowledge, engaging presence and fascinating insights on all things cinema.

Murray Pomerance is Professor in the Department of Sociology at Ryerson University, Toronto. His publications include Moment of Action: Riddles of Cinematic Performance (forthcoming), Marnie (BFI, 2014), Alfred Hitchcock's America (Polity, 2013), The Horse Who Drank the Sky: Film Experience Beyond Narrative and Theory (Rutgers 2008), and An Eye for Hitchcock (Rutgers 2004), among others.He has edited or co-edited numerous volumes, including The Last Laugh: Strange Humors of Cinema (Wayne State, 2013), Hollywood's Chosen People: The Jewish Experience in American Cinema (Wayne State, 2012), Shining in Shadows: Movie Stars of the 2000s (Rutgers 2011), and Cinema and Modernity (Rutgers 2006), among others. In August 2009, he appeared on Broadway in conjunction with a performance of The 39 Steps and in August 2013 his visual essay (co-authored with R. Barton Palmer) appeared on the Criterion DVD of John Frankenheimer's Seconds.

For further details and publications click here.

For this episode we are back at the Electric Palace in Hastings where Dario talks to Cornish filmmaker Mark Jenkin about his fascinating new film. In Bronco's House  a young man strives to provide a home for him, his pregnant girlfriend and their unborn child. The film is an aesthetic meditation on property, power and the future which is shot on a clockwork camera, using 16mm black and white negative stock, and process by hand through and instant coffee based developer. 

Bronco's House is available to download and stream. CLICK HERE.

Neil is joined by colleague Dr Victoria Byard to introduce and discuss Tony Scott's erotic vampire horror The Hunger. Staring Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon and, of course, the late David Bowie the film draws a range of different reactions from the audience at Falmouth's School of Film and Television. On the Episode Neil also interviews film making duo the Blaine Brothers about their recent British Horror release Nina Forever and Dario and Neil cover a range of subjects including cinema's ability to preserve star iconography.

Le Quai Des Brumes is a seminal of French director Marcel Carné. Starring the enigmatic Jean Gabin it epitomises Carné’s poetic realism, often seen as influential to Hollywood film noir, evocating the intense beauty and tragedy of wartime Europe. Capturing the romantic fatalism of the protagonists the film is often defined as critique of the moral and social state of the French nation during World War II.

Cinematologists contributor Kingsley Marshall picks Blue Steel to discuss his research on the work of director Kathryn Bigelow and Neil interviews British film director Kim Longinotto about her work. Dario and Neil also discuss whether films can have real social or political impact.

Kim Longinotto's Dreamcatcher, official site.

Kim Longinotto talks to fellow Cinematologists interviewee Jeanie Finlay for The Talkhouse. 

Dario is joined on-stage at the Electric Palace by two final year Digital Film students studying at the University of Brighton - Kathryn Bessant and James Calver - to discuss George Miller's 1979 Ozploitation action fest Mad Max. Mel Gibson takes the title role as Max Rockatanski, the fearless cop waging war with kill-crazy bikers who target his family. It is a road-scorching, neo-punk, take-no-prisoners combat set in the lawless Australian outback.

Neil and Dario expand on themes from the film and engage in a wider discussion covering topics including the future of the arts in higher education, neoliberal ideology, dystopian cinema, Sean Parker's Screening Room proposal and Louis CK's Horace and Pete.

Show Notes:

Times Higher article on graduate earnings

Requiem for the American Dream - Documentary on Noam Chomsky

Sean Parker's The Screening Room - Daily Beast article

Horace and Pete - Louis CK

WTF with Marc Maron - Interview with Louis CK

The Teacher's Soul and the Terrors of Performativity by Stephen J. Ball

London Review of Books article about H.G. Adler's The Wall

Neil and Dario meet up in Falmouth to discuss the Nick Cave music 'documentary' 20000 Days on Earth directed by Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth. Neil also interview British film director Kieran Evans about the fundamental relationship between music and film.

Dario returns to the School of Film and Television at Falmouth University to host a screening of Alex Garland's Sci-Fi drama Ex_Machina. He is joined on-stage by Dr Verena Von Eicken who selected the film and they discuss its potential to be read as a metaphorical critique of gendered power relations and the male gaze. Neil and Dario also discuss issues around the narrative structure of film, Alex Garland as a writer director and other recent examples of hard Sci-Fi such as Her (2013) and Under the Skin (2013).

Show Notes: 

Link to Laura Mulvey's seminal 1975 essay Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema

Link to Donna Haraway's 1983 essay The Cyborg Manifesto

In our penultimate episode of the season Dario is joined by film Scholar, writer and podcaster Alex Fitch to present a classic of the American new wave: The Last Detail (1973) directed by the under appreciated Hal Ashby and starring Jack Nicholson. Two hard-boiled petty officers, Buddusky and Mulhall, are detailed to take a young sailor, Meadows, to a Naval Prison to serve an eight-year sentence for a trivial offense, and they decide to show him a good time on the way. They narrowly escape a bar fight, tangle with some Marines, and visit a brothel for Meadows’ first sexual experience. After reluctantly turning him in, Buddusky and Mulhall realize they are as much prisoners of their own world as Meadows now is of his.

ario also interviews freelance film critic and journalist Christina Newland. They discuss studying film at university, writing process, feminist politics, and boxing movies along with this weeks overarching theme: the American new wave.

Christina Newland's article on Creed and the Legacy of the boxing film.

Molly Haskell (1987) From Reference to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies

Cinephilia and Beyond: ‘The Last Detail: Hal Ashby and Robert Town's Slice of the 70s America'

Dario is joined by Neil at the Electric Palace in Hastings once again to screen Kelly Reichardt's poetic road movie Old Joy. A rainy afternoon in a fern-carpeted forest. Two old friends, Mark and Kurt (Will Oldham), drive up into the mountains near Portland, and get lost trying to find the hot springs. Resounding with sustained images and sounds given the time to reverberate, unarticulated tensions course through the film like a hidden creek. Finally at the turn-off to the springs, we see the sky reflected in their windshield and the whole world turns on this moment.

The episode also feature's Neil's fascinating interview with all round cinematic mensch Mark Cousins about his new film I Am Belfast.

In this summer interlude Dario and Neil cover a large range of subjects including the state of cinema, Bret Easton Ellis' film podcast, fandom and online culture, the Cary Grant Festival in Bristol, the joys and ills of academic conferences, and various films they have seen. 

Show notes:

Bret Easton Ellis podcast

Death Foretold is not Death - Neil's article in Director's Notes

Creators, fans and death threats: Talking to Joss Whedon, Neil Gaiman and more on the Age of Entitlement - LA Times article by Todd Martens

Cinematologists screening of Broken Embraces: 

Our second summer episode is our London debut where we took the podcast to the Curzon Bloomsbury to screen Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces. Perhaps not his most highly lauded film Broken Embraces does however, offer an opportunity to discuss Almodovar's relationship to cinema itself through the film's meta-cinematic structure and constant allusions to how we see the world cinematically.

This episode also features an interview with Jose Arroyo from the University of Warwick who has written about and interviewed Almodovar.  

Dario's blog on Broken Embraces

Apologies for some poor quality sound on this episode.

We return with season 4 featuring a freshers week choice at Falmouth University with Christopher  Nolan's complex, existential neo-noir Memento getting the nod. Neil is joined on stage to introduce the film once again by Kingsley Marshall.

Neil and Dario also discuss how to engage to the fullest extent with all the possibilities of film culture that are out there. 

The first screening of season 4 at the University of Brighton, Hastings campus is Richard Linklater's romantic drama Before Sunrise starring Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. Dario is joined on-stage by screenwriter and lecturer Rob Greens (@robgreens) and by Digital Film alumnus James Calver (@jammycalver) who are both big fans of the film and Linklater's style of filmmaking. Dario also interview's freelance film reviewer Ren Zelen who gives her take on some of the main releases at the London Film Festival. If you want to read Ren's review follow her on twitter @RenZelen.

Knowing Sounds is an experimental podcast exploring the possibilities and outcomes of using the podcast medium as a creative practice underpinned by conceptual thought to produce and disseminate academic research. The podcast, which more specifically can be defined as an audio essay, is split into three sections. The first is an experimental collage of music, dialogue and sound effects from a selection of films interwoven with excerpts from audience members who attended The Cinematologists live screenings. It is designed to open up questions as to the potential for a sonic landscape to tap into the ‘cinematic imagination’ without the use of images. We thus play with aural engagement creating a space for the listener to actively negotiate the binary between the abstract emotions and intended rational meaning inferred through listening. The second section is a spoken analysis of the potential of podcasting as an academic form exploring how the mechanics sound production and dissemination in the digital age can challenge the powerful logocentric link between knowledge and writing. We also interrogate the structural formation that, paradoxically, has given rise to the ubiquity of podcasts in mainstream culture but has undermined its potential development. Furthermore, interweaving illustrative references, we analyse specific film podcasts and how they utilise a developing grammar of sonic writing to expand cultural discourse. The final section brings together other contributors to the journal of disrupted media practice commenting on their alternative methods of production and exhibition aimed at unsettling assumptions about the relationship between practice and theory.

In this bumper episode Dario is joined by writer, filmmaker and festival director Melody Bridges to discuss Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation starring Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray. The screening took place at the fabulous Kino Theatr in St. Leonard's and features some lively views as to the reading of the film. Also, Neil interview's Violet Lucca the digital editor of Film Comment and presenter of the Film Comment podcast.

In this week's episode Neil and Kingsley introduce Pennebaker and Hegedus' observational documentary The War Room. The film covers Bill Clinton's campaign against George H.W. Bush focusing on the role of campaign chiefs James Carville and George Stephanopoulos and, in the wake of the recent election, it remains an extreme prescient work. Neil also interview filmmaker George Amponsah about his recent documentary The Hard Stop. This hard hitting account of the death of Mark Duggan from the perspective of two of his closest friends.

Show Notes

Dario's blog on Maron and podcast/radio antagonism

Video Essay by Ian Garwood

George Amponsah

Waking up podcast with Sam Harris

Neil and Dario are joined by Cornish filmmaker Mark Jenkin at the Newlyn FilmHouse to discuss Joe Dante's riotous comedy-horror Gremlins. The experience of watching in the auditorium is a central topic of conversation as Gremlins seemed to provoke nostalgic feelings of cinema in the 80s. Chrismas films, good, bad and indifferent, are also discussed and Neil speaks to Art of the Title's Lola Landekic in a fascinating interview about the aesthetics and meaning of titles and title sequences. 

In this end of year special Neil and Dario ruminate on their highlights and lowlights of 2016s films. To all our listeners we wish you a happy holiday season and all the best for 2017.

For this episode, The Cinematologists were invited to cover the Arts Foundations Essay Film prize and an event they are hosting entitled Essay Film Now. Dario interviews the shortlisted filmmakers Charlie Lyne, Marianna Simnett, Samuel Stevens and Sarah Wood about their work and their thoughts on essay film as a cinematic and artistic practice. Dario also talks to the Art Foundation director Shelly Warren and with Sophie Mayer, a writer, poet and film critic about the history, political and philosophy underpinning the essay film as a form.

• For details of the Arts Foundation Prize visit their website

Interviews

• 6:30 - Sophie Mayer - Click here for Sophie's presentation at Essay Film Now.
• 26:30 - Shelley  Warren
• 33:40 - Charlie Lyne
• 56:01 - Marianna Simnett
• 01:15:29 - Samuel Stevens
• 01:36:16 - Sarah Wood

There's some soul searching in this episode as Neil and Dario try and figure out how and why to watch cinema with the world in such a state of flux. Thankfully, the film under focus is apt for this purpose. Down in Falmouth Neil and Kingsley screen and discuss a seminal childhood film for all involved, a film that seems more prescient that ever: Paul Verhoeven's 80s sci-fi classic Robocop.

It seems the enduring relevance of Robocop is on other people's minds at the moment. Check out Abraham Riesman's recent piece for Vulture here.

Also, for more discussion about cinema in an age of repression and confusion and why film matters, check out this brilliant Film Quarterly panel hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Vital listening for these tumultuous times. 

Dario is joined by Film Theorist Emre Caglayan at the Electric Palace in Hastings to screen and discuss Georges Franju's classic surrealist inspired horror Eyes Without a Face. A truly influential film Eyes Without a Face is often placed alongside Psycho and Peeping Tom as examples of art-house director exploring the horror genre and the film still possesses a sense of unsettling eeriness. 

Dario also interview Matt Smith an academic from Georgia State University in Atlanta to discuss the influence of the Eyes Without A Face on new extremist cinema on France at the end of the 20th century. Neil and Dario expand on Franju's legacy as a filmmaker in the French canon.

You can watch Eyes Without a Face on Youtube.

Neil is joined at Falmouth University's School of Film & Television by Dr Sabina Stent (@SabinaStent) and Dr Felicity Gee (@fiandshoegaze) to discuss feminist surrealism and film. The event took place in front of students, staff and local filmmakers and artists and was a wide-ranging discussion that was invigorating and illuminating. Also, the talk of a personal politics of resistance was much needed in these troubling times.

This episode is presented in association with Mubi to coincide with their season dedicated to experimental and independent female filmmakers. Filmmakers whose work is screened as part of the season include Chantal Akerman and Agnes Varda, prominent figures in the podcast discussion. The season starts Friday March 3rd and in addition to those mentioned above showcases work by Anna Biller, Celine Sciamma, Lena Dunham, So Yong Kim and Cinematologists favourite Ida Lupino. We screened and discussed Lupino's The Hitch-hiker for an earlier episode. 

Mubi

Below you will find links to work that was screened as part of the event:

Backcomb by Sarah Pucill (1995)

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles by Chantal Akerman (1975)

Self Obliteration by Yayoi Kusama (1967)

Nadja a Paris by Eric Rohmer (1964)

The Seashell and the Clergyman by Germaine Dulac (1928)

Link to other clips discussed on the show

Lauren Elkin's Website

Dario is joined by film lecturer Douglas McNaughton at the Electric Palace to screen Basil Dearden's profound drama Victim (1961), starring the magnetic Dirk Bogarde and the superb Sylvia Sims. In many ways a film ahead of its time dealing with the social implications of homosexuality in a time when it was still illegal and a taboo subject. On its release in the United Kingdom it proved highly controversial to the British Board of Film Censors, and in the U.S. it was refused a seal of approval from the American Motion Picture Production Code. Dario also speaks to writer and podcaster David Blakeslee who has written about the film for his Criterion Cast blog.

Show Notes

The Eclipse Viewer Podcast: http://criterioncast.com/category/podcast/eclipse-viewer

David Blakeslee's contributor's page at Criterion Cast: http://criterioncast.com/author/davi  and Criterion Reflections blog (1921 through 1967): http://criterionreflections.blogspot.com/

Neil's piece on Victim for Hope Lies at 24 Frames Per Second: https://medium.com/hope-lies-at-24-frames-per-second/i-realise-everything-dirk-bogarde-in-as-victim-51b5634fa063

In this episode Neil talks to film director Ben Wheatley. In a fascinating and in-depth interview and Q&A, Ben discusses his filmmaking career and his most recent release Free Fire, giving analysis and nuggets of advice that will be of interest to both ardent fans and aspiring filmmakers alike. 

In the second of a long-form interview double bill, Dario talks to Professor Richard Dyer about is career and work. Professor Dyer's writing and scholarship has been extremely influential across Cultural Studies and Film Studies with recurring foci on the politics of representation, ideology and class, gender and sexuality, race, stardom to name just a few. His intellectual curiosity is infused with a identity politics that often centres around the difficult, contradictory relationship between cultural production and social reality. His work is hugely relevant to today's issues and in this interview Professor Dyer is generously self-reflexive in looking back, with a critical eye, over his long and distinguised career. 

For today's episode we team up with MUBI and Little White Lies to feature Cannes 'Un Certain Regard' prize winner The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki. Neil interviews the film's director Juho Kuosmanen about his subtle boxing love story and we also have a Q&A from a recent screening held and the ICA in London. Dario and Neil ruminate on some of the themes central to the film particularly the depictions of masculinity and struggle to find one's true self in the face of external pressures.

We return to the Kino Teatr in St. Leonards to screen and discuss one of the most iconic and celebrated films in movie history. Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, scripted by Paul Schrader, has become a touchstone depiction of the alienated American experience post-Vietnam centered around a scintillating performance by Robert De Niro. Dario is joined by guest presenter Alex Fitch as they discuss the film's legacy, Scorsese as a director and all the other elements that give the film its classic status. And Neil and Dario expand on may of the key themes that permeate the work of arguably the greatest living American filmmaker.

 Show notes:

Cinema is Gone

Film Comment Scorsese Interview

Close Up podcast Scorsese interview

Neil, Dario and guest presenter Mark Jenkin discuss the work of Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami particularly focusing on his 1990 'documentary' Close-Up. Having recently passed away the love and reverence for Kiarostami in the international film community was starkly apparent by the depth and breadth of tributes to him. Having watched many of his films we discuss his legacy, status and the vibrancy of filmmaking from Iran despite the hugely difficult social and political conditions.

This episode also features an interview with Iranian Filmmaker Mania Akbari. After collaborating with Kiarostami on Ten as an actress, along with her son, Akbari has gone on to a directorial career of her own, making provocative films (along with art exhibitions) that are expressly feminist in nature tackling issues such as memony, identity, the body and sexuality all with an uncompromising personal underpinning.   

Show Notes

The Most Fatal Attraction: Kiarostami's Close-up revisited - Coco Ferguson

Mania Akbari's Website

Dario and Neil visit the Curzon in Aldgate, London, to screen Aki Kaurismäki's latest release The Other Side of Hope. Exploring similar themes to his last film Le Harve, and effecting Kaurismäki's trademark sardonic, black humour, The Other Side of Hope tells the story of an asylum seeker who is faced with an impenetrable bureaucracy. He finds unlikely help from a local restaurant owner who is facing his own personal demons and struggles with Finnish society.

Neil discusses the career of Aki Kaurismäki with Jaakko Seppälä from the University of Helsinki. Jaakko suggests Finland’s most famous filmmaker occupies a paradoxical position in the country's national consciousness and defines his style in terms of ironic minimalism.

In this episode Dario is joined at the Kino Teatr in St. Leonards by film director Hope Dickson Leach (@hopedickle) who introduces and discusses her newly released first feature The Levelling. Ellie Kendrick plays Clover, a young vet who has to reluctantly return to her father's farm after the sudden death of her brother. Deeply buried family tensions are brought to surface in a painful journey of guilt and self-examination told with an aesthetic precision that belies a low-budget first feature status. Hope outlines the production background and creative process behind this poignant and beautifully rendered drama. 

The episode also features a interview with the founder of the Bechdel Test Fest Corrina Antrobus (@corrinacorrina). Corrina discusses the development of the organisation and ruminates on various themes related to the status of women in cinema.

Hope Dickson Leach

Watch The Levelling on the BFI Player

The Bechdel Test Fest

David Edelstein's Wonder Woman Review

Jezebel's response to the Edelstein's Wonder Woman Review

David Edelstein's response to the response to his Wonder Woman review

This episode of the podcast - produced in association with Club des Femmes and The Barbican - focuses on the recent retrospective and celebration of the American Film Critic, Scholar and Curator B. Ruby Rich (@brrich1) entitled Bring Ruby Rich. The centrepiece of the podcast is a wide ranging interview with Ruby herself covering, among many things, her initial entry into film criticism, her promotion of the cinema as a social space, the legacy of her concept of New Queer Cinema, and the possibility of a political cinema in the digital age. We also interview Sophie Mayer (@tr0ublemayer) and Selina Robertson (@Clubdesfemmes), from Club Des Femmes who organised the event. And there is an in-depth Q&A hosted by Ruby and featuring Yance Ford (@yford) who discusses his first feature, to be released on Netflix in September, entitled Strong Island.

An Introduction to B. Ruby Rich - Sophie Mayer - BFI Website

"I am draw to the fire" B.Ruby Rich interview by Sophie Mayer - The F Word

B Ruby Rich is one of America’s greatest contemporary film critics and academics. Currently working as a professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California: Santa Cruz, Rich has spent much of her career, both within academia and industry, supporting and celebrating the marginalised voices of moving image. Alongside her academic work, Rich has been International Curator for the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival; has served on juries at the Sundance, Toronto, San Francisco, Oberhausen, Havana, Sydney, and Guadalajara film festivals; and is a member of the advisory board of the Provincetown Film Festival and previously of the Sundance Selection Committee. Rich was also the Director of the Electronic Media and Film Program at the New York State Council on the Arts in charge of supporting non-profit film, video, digital, and radio activities in New York City and throughout New York State in 1981-91.

Yance Ford At 19 years old during his sophomore year at Hamilton University, Yance Ford’s life was unequivocally altered by the brutal murder of his older brother, William Ford Jr.  Originally working in photography, the devastating events surrounding his brother’s death and the refusal of a white jury to persecute William’s killer, galvanised Ford into becoming a filmmaker. Ford has spent most of his professional career, as a series producer for the PBS documentary programme P.O.V, deciding which submissions make it on to air.  After working as a producer for several years, Ford was incited by a conversation with a co-worker to start working on the film that would become Strong Island (2017).

Strong Island (Yance Ford, 2017)

Yance Ford’s debut feature is a deeply moving, complex film about a family murder, memory, injustice and the institutional racism that continues to pervade America’s legal, social and economic systems. Reminiscent of Errol Morris, Ford unforgettably delivers an investigation into resistant black masculinities, cis and trans, and meditations on raw personal grief.

Many thanks to The Barbican for their support in the production of this episode.

The podcast is 50 episodes old (kind of) and to celebrate, Neil and Dario invited questions from the podcast's loyal following. The episode is made up of a variety of questions from listeners new and old and cover a range of topics including opinions on specific films and filmmakers and ideas including 'separating the art from the artist', 'democratization and digital technology', 'the opportunities for actresses afforded by contemporary sci-fi' and 'directors who've made debuts in the last decade that are destined for the canon'.

It was really fun and humbling to record and we hope you like this mammoth dose of N&D before the podcast takes an extended summer break before returning in the autumn. 

As promised, below you can find scans of the (not very scientific or academic) research Neil did for Kieron Moore's question on debuts by filmmakers from the last ten years...

After an enjoyable summer hiatus, when Neil got married and Dario got tanned, we preview the new season episodes and bring news of bonus content, Merch and our new Patreon page.

Our first edition of the new season comes from the Shetland Arts Screenplay Film Festival. Dario speaks to a host of names including the festival curators Mark Kermode and Linda Ruth Williams who discuss their history with the festival and this years' programme; actor George Mackay discusses his career and we hear him introduce a sing-a-long screening of Sunshine on Leith, along with giving a poetry reading performed in the Shetland accent. Friend of the show Hope Dickson Leach talks about the family film strand of the festival programme and we have an excerpt from the Q&A with Bill Nighy who discusses his role in The Limehouse Golum. Also on the programme is Prof. Phil Scraton who wrote Hillsborough: The Truth and was the factual consultant to the Hillsborough Independent panel. His work underpinned the documentary Hillsborough which screened at the festival. Dario's cinematic highlight of the festival was Chico Pereira's Donkeyote, he speaks to the film's producer Sonja Henrici about the context of the project and contemporary documentary more broadly. Read Dario's blog on the film here. Finally, we were delighted to welcome the dulcet Shetland tones of poet, filmmaker and musician Roseanne Watt who discusses her festival highlights gives an impromptu poetry reading. Not to be missed.

George Mackay, Kathy Hubbard, Dario and Hope Dickson Leach

Show notes

Mark Kermode and Linda Ruth Williams - 10:55

Hope Dickson Leach - 21:05

George Mackay - 33:25

Sunshine on Leith Sing-a-Long intro - 43:55

Bill Nighy Q&A - 01:02:50

Prof. Phil Scraton - 01:09:20

Sonia Henrici - 01:20:47

Roseanne Watt - 01:38:20

In honour of the passing of the great Harry Dean Stanton we are reposting our first ever Cinematologists episode which focused on Alex Cox' 1984 cult classic Repo Man.

Andrew Pulver's obituary of Harry Dean Stanton 

In the first of what will be a regular feature, free for now but soon to be exclusive to Patreon subscribers, Neil and Dario hold a discussion about something cinematic that sits outside the regular programming. In this instance the pair chat about British social realism and in particular the work of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh as the BFI releases some of their seminal titles on Blu-ray.

The discussion covers Leigh's Life Is Sweet (1990) and Loach's Riff-Raff (1991), Raining Stones (1993) and Ladybird Ladybird (1994) - and the recent I, Daniel Blake (2016), which is not in the Loach set - asd well as getting into a more general chat about the spectre of social realism in British film history. 

Neil writes about Raining Stones in his chapter on Manchester Movies in the Directory of World Cinema: Britain 2. 

EDITOR'S NOTE: I know there's a lot of erms, you knows, stutters, and ands, but buts and what sounds like we are doing Hannibal Lecter liver bean impressions. I assure you in future Neil edited episodes this will be resolved and you'll be back to listening to the smooth sounds of the Cinematologists in no time. Thanks for your patience while I learn this new skill. NF.

Episode 52 finds Neil and Dario discussing the ICA and School of Film & Television season Crossings, a programme of films, talks and events focused on the theme of migration. The season took place from June to September and looked at how cinema represents the stories of those who seek to leave their homeland for a new land, through choice or through necessity. Full details of the project can be found here.

Two films coming under the Cinematologists spotlight in this episode. The 2016 documentary Fire At Sea directed by Gianfranco Rosi and set on the Italian island of Lampedusa and John Akomfrah’s provocative and poetic essay doc The Nine Muses, from 2010. These films were screened at the Newlyn Filmhouse and The Poly in Falmouth respectively.

The focus of the chat between Neil and Dario looks at the representation of migration and migrants and refugees in cinema and whether these films are ‘preaching to the converted’, amongst other topics.

Thanks to Dr. Laura Canning (SoFT) and Nico Marzano (ICA) for inviting us to do this episode. Thanks also to Kingsley Marshall and Mark Jenkin for helping host the Newylyn event with Neil.

Links:

http://newlynfilmhouse.com/

http://thepoly.org/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3652526/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706701/?ref_=nv_sr_1

https://www.crossings2017.co.uk/

https://www.ica.art/

https://www.falmouth.ac.uk/school-of-film-television

AUDIO NOTE: Please excuse some of the peaking issues in the inserts, and some of the low volume audio in the post film Q&A sections. Still on the learning curve as a recorder and editor. NF.

With the original Blade Runner being a formative film for both Dario and Neil, they take the time to discuss the 2017 sequel directed by Denis Villeneuve: Blade Runner 2049. A lot has been said and written about this new incarnation, directly about the aesthetics, philosophical themes and narrative, but also regarding the wider ideological readings related to gender, race and class. We hope you enjoy our contribution to the discourse around a film which, if nothing else, reminds us of cinema's ability to provoke thought and exercise passion.

References

Are audiences to Lazy to appreciate Blade Runner - Wired

Male Stars Get to Age, While Women Live On in Digital Re-creations of Their Younger Selves - Nate Jones Vulture

‘Blade Runner 2049’ is about learning that you’re not the main character in your own story - Alyssa Rosenburg - The Washington Post

Blade Runner 2049 is an uneasy feminist parable about controlling the means of reproduction - Helen Lewis - The New Statesman

In the new episode, Number 53, Neil and Dario screen and discuss Elaine May’s hilarious and acerbic 1971 comedy masterpiece A New Leaf, co-starring Walter Matthau. Neil screened the film at Falmouth University’s School of Film & Television with his colleague Kingsley before a live audience of staff and students.

Discussions in the episode cover writer/director/performers in Hollywood, the belatedly secured reputations of women in film, what comedy should be used for and when, and the genius of Walter Matthau.

The second of those topics is pertinent to the interview for this episode, which Neil conducted with Rob Curry and Tim Plester, the filmmakers behind the new documentary The Ballad Of Shirley Collins. The film is a wonderfully lyrical film and it’s now on general release - http://www.shirleycollinsmovie.com/

Key Moments:

10Mins            A New Leaf Screening Intro

34Mins            The Ballad of Shirley Collins (Interview & Chat)

1hr 5Mins        A New Leaf Post-Film Discussion

Links to articles on A New Leaf:

BFI

RogerEbert.com

NY Times (Original Release)

New Yorker (DVD Release)

Brighton Film Festival (CineCity) 2017 begins Friday 10th of November. In this bonus episode Dario talks to co-director Tim Brown about the history of the festival, its position and status in UK Film Culture and the partnerships with venues around the city. Dario and Tim then pick out their highlights from a packed and diverse programme.

For information and to book tickets go to: http://www.cine-city.co.uk/

London Symphony is the latest feature film from director Alex Barrett. This bonus episode features a short interview with Alex and a post screening Q&A both recorded when Alex visited the School of Film & Television at Falmouth University recently. 

Below are links to the film and where to see it. 

London Symphony (Official Site)

London Symphony on BFI Player (with Mark Kermode intro)

London Symphony at Flicker Alley (Worldwide DVD)

Michelangelo Antonioni is generally recognised as one of the seminal directors of the European Art House tradition. In this week’s episode, The Cinematologists return to the Electric Palace Cinema to screen his 1961 film La Notte. The central film in his classic trilogy of modern alienation – L’avventura and L’eclisse being the other two - La Notte features three of the most iconic European stars - Jeanne Moreau Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitti - in a tale of strained relationships set in the abstract architectural spaces of Milan and the rarefied yet superficial circles of Italian high society.

This episode also features an interview with the renowned film critic Robert Koehler who discuss his love and admiration of Antonioni's film particular focusing on the film that he sees as the filmmaker's masterpiece L'avventura.

Show notes

Senses of Cinema review of La Notte

LA Times article on La Notte restoration

Robert Koehler's Sight and Sound article on L'avventura

Dear Antonioni documentary

The fallout from the Harvey Weinstein revelations has been seismic, dramatically exposing the well-known but largely silent culture of sexism in the film industry. Various high profile names have followed in being accused of historic and recent abuses in what could prove to be a watershed moment, not only for Hollywood but Western culture more broadly. In this episode, Dario and Neil discuss the possible dynamics of the post-Weinstein era with a contribution from Dr Tamsyn Dent (@tamsyn_dent), a lecturer in Media Production at the University of Bournemouth. Tamsyn has worked with the Raising Films organisation in producing the #Rasingourgame industry report,  a framework of accountability to ensure that diversity and inclusion are widely adopted in the Film and TV industry.

Show notes

Raising Films

Salma Hayek on Weinstein

What do we do with the art of monstrous men? by Claire Dederer

Interview in Variety with Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor on how they broke the Weinstein story

We’ve been compiling this episode for about 6 months now and we’ve conducted interviews in New York, Bristol, The Shetland Islands and via Skype. We hope our delve into film criticism is worth the wait. Thank you firstly to our participants, so generous with their time and thoughts. A huge thank you also to our roving reporter Charlotte Crofts for the amazing interview with Tara Judah featured in the episode, and others we couldn’t manage to get in. Thank you finally to our listeners who suggested this episode.

The wealth of material we got was overwhelming so look out for all the interviews being uploaded in January while we are on our winter break. That should keep you going in the cold winter months.

Participants

Tara Judah https://tarajudah.com/ @midnightmovies

Sam Fragoso http://talkeasypod.com/ @SamFragoso

Simran Hans https://www.theguardian.com/profile/simran-hans @heavier_things

Ashley Clark http://www.bfi.org.uk/people/ashley-clark  @_Ash_Clark

Violet Lucca https://www.filmcomment.com/author/vlucca/ @unbuttonmyeyes

Mark Kermode https://www.theguardian.com/profile/markkermode @KermodeMovie

Prof. Linda Ruth Williams https://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/film/staff/lwilliams/ @lindaruth1

Tom Shone http://tomshone.blogspot.co.uk/ @Tom_Shone

Roll of Honour

All the critics given shout outs across our interviews...

Sophie Mayer, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Cerise Howard, Emma Westwood, Thomas Caldwell, Josh Nelson, Jack Sargeant, Dana Linssen, Kees Driessen, Rüdiger Suchsland, Adrian Martin, Catherine Grant, Cristina Alvarez Lopez, Kevin B. Lee, Michael Wood, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Robin Wood, Victor Perkins, David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, Hadley Freeman, Marina Hyde, Ren Zelen, Christina Newland, Molly Haskell, Ashley Clark, James Baldwin, Graham Greene, Cahiers Critics, Bogdanovich & Schrader, Toby Hazlet, Violet Lucca, Doreen St. Felix, Jia Tolentino, Vinson Cunningham, Hilton Als, Wendy Ide, Simran Hans, Guy Lodge, Pauline Kael, Kim Newman, Roger Ebert, Andrew Sarris, Alan Jones, J Hoberman, Anne Billson, Kate Muir, Kay Austin Collins, Ira Madison, Alyssa Wilkinson, Scott Tobias, Keith Phipps, Tasha Robertson, Tim Grierson, Anjelica Jade, Nathan Heller, Jeremy O’Harris, Hunter Harris, Wesley Morris, Nick Pinkerton, Eric Hynes, Badlands Film Collective, AO Scott, Anthony Lane, David Edelstein, Elvis Mitchell, Amy Taubin,  Christian Lorentzen, Senses of Cinema, Four Columns and Reverse Shot.

The incidental music for this episode is from Giorgio Gaslini's score for Antonioni's La Notte.

The recent release of Paul Thomas Anderson's eighth narrative feature film Phantom Thread has the film world abuzz. No one is more excited than us here at The Cinematologists as it gives us a long-awaited chance to go deep on one of our favourite filmmakers and someone we believe to be one of, if not the greatest American filmmakers currently working.

This first episode of the new season sees Neil and Dario discuss Anderson's place in the pantheon, his unique talents and style, and the immediate impact of his latest work - so different and yet so in line with his previous films. It also precedes a forthcoming bonus episode on Inherent Vice that has been gathering dust in the Cinematologists vault awaiting the right time to see the light of day. 

For now though, here's the episode:

The release of Phantom Thread has seen some great writing and discussion emerge on the film and Anderson's career and films. Here are some of our favourites on the film and his work:

The Film Comment Podcast - Violet Lucca and Sheila O'Malley discuss Phantom Thread

Melissa Anderson on Phantom Thread for 4Columns

The Curzon Film Podcast - Jake Cunningham, Josh Slater-Williams and Dr. Irene Musemeci on Phantom Thread

The arrival of a new film by Clio Barnard promises an in-depth and uncompromising study of character and place; Dark River, her new film set in the harsh and beautiful Yorkshire farming landscape, is no exception. The northern locale links to her previous films The Arbor and The Self Giant, as does the bleak and brutal tragedy of the human stories. However, this rural tale, based on the Rose Tremain novel Trespass, is somewhat of a departure from the urban working-class focus of those previous films. 

In this Q&A, presented in association with Cinecity, Clio talks about the film with long-time friend Andrew Kötting, touching on the development of the script from the book, the casting, her minimalist aesthetic, the P.J. Harvey soundtrack and the challenges of the rural locations.

Show notes

Clio Barnard interview in The Independent with Jacob Stolworthy

Arrow Film Dark River Press Release

Interview with Clio Barnard on The Selfish Giant

Dark River: Why British Films Have Gone Back To The Land - Nick Hasted in The Guardian

If you enjoy the podcast please consider supporting us on Patreon. You will get access to all our bonus content, the full podcast archive, our monthly newsletter, and further perks as and when we think of them.

The career of Nicolas Ray boasts many films that are part of the cinematic canon, but it was his 1950 Film Noir In a Lonely Place that cemented his directorial sensibility and his appreciation of the fragile human condition. Starring an ageing Humphrey Bogart, in one of his most complex roles, and Gloria Grahame, who perhaps even surpasses Bogey in a performance that has the wit of Bacall, the emotion of Bergman and the sexiness of Hayworth. Screened in front of a full house in Hastings' Electric Palace In a Lonely Place provokes many interesting questions around sexual politics, representation, the dark side of Hollywood and how we understand cinema through the problematic structure of genre.

For this episode, Dario interviews Professor Julie Grossman, director of Film Studies at Le Moyne College, upstate New York. Prof Grossman's book Rethinking the Femme Fatale contests the critical discourses that simplistically posit the female icon of Noir as an object of male fantasy and anxiety.

There's also an accompanying blog by audience member and film teacher Peter Blundell for you to check out, should an hour and forty minutes not be enough for you.

Prof. Julie Grossman, Le Moyne College, Syracuse, NY. 

Library of America entry on In a Lonely Place

Ed Gonzalez Review in Slant 

Serena Bramble in Senses of Cinema

Gaby Wood on In A Lonely Place for LRB

*We apologise for the poor sound quality of the live segments of this episode. We are still working out the optimum way to record the live events for the show. Please stick with it as there are some great interviewees and some really great discussion on this ep.*

For our 60th episode we have teamed up with the Right Now Film Festival and one of our Cornwall partner venues The Poly in Falmouth for a screening of Timothy George Kelly's documentary Brexitannia.

The discussion tries to stay rooted in the cinematic but the overwhelming anxiety, confusion and uncertainty of Brexit in the UK means this is maybe our most political chat to date. The event ended up being a chance for audience members to share in the collective anxiety and confusion with us, aided by the excellent documentary that brought everyone together. 

Neil talked to Right Now FF coordinator Amy Hepton about their touring documentary festival venture.

Also on the episode Neil talks to filmmaker and convenor of documentary at Goldsmiths Daisy Asquith about her latest film Queerama, a stunning archive documentary about British queer screen representation, released through the BFI.

Clips from Brexitannia and Queerama, as well as the latter's core musical figure John Grant are featured in the episode alongside the discussions. 

Thanks to Right Now FF and The Poly for inviting us to get involved. And thanks to Luke Smith for coming down to take some photos, including the image below.

We are joined for this extended conversation about the work of filmmaker Claire Denis by Dr. Felicity Gee. Felicity, a previous guest of the show, provides some wonderful insight into and thoughts on the work of the French filmmaker whose new film Let The Sunshine In is released by Curzon/Artificial Eye this Friday, April 20th.

The episode covers a range of topics including aesthetics and feminism, the canonisation of Beau Travail, as well as the new film and how it fits into her body of work. Music in the episode comes from some of the collaborations Denis has undertaken with the band Tindersticks.

Music:

Opening (from 35 Rhums) / The Black Mountain (from L’intrus) / Children’s Theme (from White Material) / Train Montage (from 35 Rhums) / Trouble Every Day (from Trouble Every Day).

Click here to stream the album Claire Denis Film Scores 1996-2009 by Tindersticks on Spotify

References:

Dario mention's Judith Mayne's research on Claire Denis

Ryan Gilbey's interview with Claire Denis for the New Statesman (mentioned on a previous Patreon bonus epsiode by Ryan)

Postscript 1:

I watched 35 Shots of Rum again and it is as exquisite as Dario and Felicity discuss on the episode. NF.

Postscript 2: 

I apologise for all the rummaging you hear on the episode. Due to Dario and Felicity being in the same room we couldn't record using headphones over Skype so their mic picked up my fidgeting. NF.

The focus of this episode is Ernest Dickerson's still underrated 1992 drama Juice, featuring a young (pre-fame/pre-legendary) Tupac Shakur. The live portion of the show was recorded a little while back at Falmouth University's School of Film & Television but is being released now due to the episode not being based around release schedules, as the previous Claire Denis episode was.

The timing though is fortuitous, with Childish Gambino's This is America song and music video being released earlier this week and bringing to the fore again questions around black identity, gun violence and black male bodies. 

In the episode Neil and Dario discuss the term 'black cinema', the evolution and status of black filmmaking in American and British cinema and how complex such a discussion is from an acknowledged white standpoint. 

The episode also features a clip of Dario's deep discussion about film criticism and contemporary film culture with friend of the podcast Simran Hans, which can be found in full over on our Patreon site for subscribers, as well as Neil's chat with film critic and podcaster Leslie Byron Pitt about representation in filmmaking and film criticism alongside as Basic Instinct and erotic thrillers as Leslie is one quarter of the excellent Fatal Attractions podcast. 

Links:

Ernest Dickerson on The Treatment podcast

Angelica Bastien on Odds Against Tomorrow, a brilliant film noir about racism

Wakanda Forever: Black Panther and the power of representation, by Leslie Byron Pitt (for Media Diversified)

The environment has always been a staple theme for filmmakers as it lends itself to spectacularly cinematic aesthetics, profound statements regarding humanity and nature, and often apocalyptic narratives. Mike Day's new film The Islands and the Whales certainly doesn't lack visual impressiveness but it also carries a combination of subtle storytelling and brutal honestly in its depiction of the complexities of environmental socio-politics which has local and global dimensions. 

The Faroese whale hunters have had a lot of publicity regarding their traditions which seem out of step with environmental sensibilities but The Islands and the Whales both lays bare the contradictions of Western liberal assumptions regarding how to talk about and even be an environmental activist, while also depicting the islanders' own struggles in coming to terms with how pollution is causing what seems like an inevitable end to their traditional way of life.

Dario and Neil discuss environmentalism in cinema, lament the seeming futility of individual and collective responses to climate change, and Dario speaks the the director of the film himself about the challenges of its making and the inadequate media coverage of the environmental crisis that is upon us.

Review in The Guardian

Review in The Ecologist

In this episode, we focus on research from a special themed edition of the Participations journal of audience research looking at the notion of unsocial audiences and non-traditional, extended and disruptive forms of spectatorship. Dario's contribution to the journal was an article on a project examining the potential of second screening as a tool for film analysis and this podcast features his interviews with three of the other contributors. He speaks to the editors of the edition Steve Gaunson and Tessa Dwyer about the background and development of the issue and their own articles on disruptive cinema in Silent Era and the phenomenon of Japanese bullet screenings. Dario then discusses the phenomena of Second Screening directly with James Blake how outlines its uses for new forms of transmedia storytelling. Finally, Dario talks to Helen Kennedy who has researched extensively on extended, live, and theatrical possibility of the cinematic specifically here in terms of Secret Cinema.

Show Notes

Dwyer, Tessa & Steve Gaunson: 'Un/social cinema – audience decorum revisited

Blake, James: 'Second Screen interaction in the cinema: Experimenting with transmedia narratives and commercialising user participation'

Llinares, Dario: '"Please turn your phone on": Analysing outcomes of second-screen spectatorship using Social Media in the cinema space'

Dwyer, Tessa: 'Hecklevision, Barrage Cinema and Bullet Screens: An intercultural analysis'

Gaunson, Steve: 'The 'Picture' habit: Bad decorum and delinquents at the Silent Cinema'

Kennedy, Helen: '"Join a cast of 1000s, to sing and dance in the Revolution": the Secret Cinema "Activist" brand and the commodification of affect within "experience communities"'

The rest of the articles from this themed section can be found here: http://www.participations.org/Volume%2014/Issue%202/contents.htm

Andrew Kötting is a unique voice in British Audio-Visual culture and after seeing and admiring much of his work it was a great pleasure to welcome him onto the podcast to introduce his enigmatic new film Lek and the Dogs. Loosely based Hattie Naylor's play Ivan and the Dogs, itself the true story of a Russian child abandoned to Moscow streets to be 'raised' by the cities stray dogs, the film is both intensely personal but perhaps more concerned with grand social and philosophical questions that his previous work. The third in his 'Earthworks' trilogy, Lek brings Kötting's trademark eclecticism in both visual and aural style and in terms of the cinematic, artistic and literary references he mines. Samuel Beckett, Montaigne, Tarkovsky, Margaret Atwood, Plato, Nicolas Roeg, John Berger, Dziga Vertov, among many others, are all points of reference in this unique cinematic essay.

Dario is joined by Andrew Kötting at his local cinema, The Electric Palace in Hastings, for a very special screening and a wide ranging discussion about the film and his creative work.

The film can be viewed on MUBI until the 7th of July. 

Show notes

Ben Nicholson's review of Lek and the Dogs in Sight and Sound

Kermode Uncut: The Kotting Club

*This episode contains strong language.

To coincide with his exhibition at CAST Cornwall as part of the Groundwork programme, we teamed up with Groundwork and CAST, and the Thomas Dane Gallery in London to record artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen in conversation with Nicholas Serota at the WTW Plaza Cinema in Truro and are honoured to share that conversation with our listeners.  

The episode is based around the conversation between McQueen and Serota, and Dario and Neil’s discussion of McQueen as a filmmaker and visual artist. Steve’s work in cinema arguably makes him one of the most vital, fascinating and important working British filmmakers but as the conversation elucidates it is merely a different form of aesthetic expression for a visual artist who has created a unique, formidable and exhilarating body of work since emerging on to the British art scene in the early 1990s.

The episode also includes Josie Cockram from Groundwork discussing the programme and the work of CAST Cornwall. More information on Rachael Jones’s film Tracing Granite that is discussed in the episode as well as links to other pieces and reflections related to the programme can be found in the RECORD section of the Groundwork website.

Information on the artworks discussed by Steve McQueen on the episode:

Unexploded (2007)

Gravesend (2007)

Bear (1993)

Deadpan (1997)

Drumroll (1998)

7th Nov. (2001)

Charlotte (2004)

Western Deep / Carib’s Leap (2002)

Queen and Country (2007 – 2009)

Hunger (2008)

Static (2009)

Shame (2011)

12 Years a Slave (2013)

End Credits (2012 – Ongoing)

Ashes (2015)

*This episode contains strong language

To coincide with the cinema release of the new drama County Lines, directed by one of today's guests Henry Blake, Neil and Dario discuss the form and legacies of that oft contested term 'social realism', asking if it has a place in today's British Cinema landscape and if recent releases such as Fyzal Boulifa's Lynn + Lucy and Mark Jenkin's Bait are evidence of a 'new wave'.

As well as Henry's interview with Neil, Dario talks with Sarah Gavron, director of one of the most acclaimed of the recent British 'social' dramas, Rocks, recently released in cinemas by Altitude Films and currently screening on Netflix.

Neil and Dario also wax lyrical on Steve McQueen's Lovers Rock and Neil confuses The Long Good Friday with The Long Goodbye.

Show Notes

Guy Lodge's Variety review of County Lines, mentioned by Dario on the show.

You can also subscribe to The Cinematologists on:

Apple Podcasts

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Google Podcasts

Podchaser 

We produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/entended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

Music Credits

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

This is a very special episode where we were invited, by friend of the podcast So Mayer to discuss a new film screening series and project. In 2022 and 2023, a series of trans-focused film events took place across the UK as part of Inclusive Cinema’s T.L.C (aka Tender Loving Care for Trans-Led/Trans-Loved Cinema) project. 

Integrated into indie cinema and festival programmes, films were screened with Q&As and panels on diverse topics related to trans visibility in cinema, thanks to support from the BFI Film Audience Network (BFI FAN) awarding National Lottery funding. These events were recorded live and have been made into a podcast series.

Alongside these podcasts, there is a guide to Good Practice Examples for Tricky Questions also on the project's website, linked to above. These questions and answers were created alongside, and refer to, the three T.L.C. podcasts and discussions around screenings.

For this special episode of the podcast, Dario (he/him) spoke to So (they/them), along with Film Critic and podcaster Lillian Crawford (she/her), who introduced the first film of the series - screened at the Lexi Cinema - the extraordinary Japanese film Funeral Parade of Roses, in July 2022. 

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

The latest episode is another first for the podcast as this episode marks the first time we have gone back to talk about a filmmaker we’ve already dedicated an episode to. The reason for this landmark is Hannah Strong’s new book on Sofia Coppola for Abrams Books, Sofia Coppola: Forever Young. The book is the first in the Abrams series to see a female filmmaker given such lavish treatment.

Neil talks to Hannah about her approach to writing the book, Hannah’s personal and cinephilic connection to Coppola’s work and the trajectory her career has taken, and how she’s wrestled with and managed emerging from such an auspicious family shadow to her position as one America’s leading filmmakers in her own right.

Elsewhere, Neil and Dario talk about Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr, recently released on Blu-ray in a beautiful edition by Eureka Video/Masters of Cinema, and Sofia Coppola’s position in American film culture and the demands and expectations this position comes with.

———

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

In this episode, Neil and Dario go deep on a couple of favourite titles each from this year's excellent London Film Festival. Neil eulogises Pat Collins' That They May Face The Rising Sun and Shujun Wei's Only The River Flows, while Dario waxes lyrical on Hirokazu Koreeda's Monster and Tran Anh Hung's The Taste of Things. 

Elsewhere they briefly discuss some of their honourable mentions including Catherine Breillat's Last Summer and Moin Hussain's Sky Peals. Neil also mentions a not so honourable title. They compare the experiences of seeing films in the cinema, at press and public screenings, versus the online platform and Dario shares an experience of encountering a bad faith audience member following a screening of Andrew Haigh's lauded All of us Strangers, which Dario loved.

To listen to Neil's bonus episodes on LFF2023, find them collected here on The Cinematologists' Patreon page, available free for anyone to listen to.

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

This is part two of our interview with the seminal film scholar, critic, and composer Michel Chion. From the late 70s onwards Chion has been one of the leading voices at the intersection of film scholarship and cinephilic criticism. His work spans a huge roster of filmmakers and subjects, but it's his work on film sound with which he is arguably most identified. Books such as The Voice in Cinema (1982), Audio/Vision (1993), Music in Cinema (1995) & Film, A Sound Art in many ways defined the sub-field of film sound criticism. Chion also wrote for Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1980s and has written books on the work of Jacques Tati, Andrei Tarkovsky, Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch.

Before turning to cinema, Chion was part of the experimental school of Music Concrete under the mentorship of Pierre Schaeffer, the "godfather" of avant-garde electronic music in France. He continues to compose to this day.

Chion asked that he give his answers in French so I enlisted the help of a colleague from the University of Brighton, the sound artist, composer, and performer Johanna Bramli (check out her work here), to help with the translation. This is another interesting first for the podcast.

At the end of part 2 of this double episode, Neil and Dario discuss many aspects of the interview and Chion's approach to film scholarship. We hope you enjoy what we think is a fantastic start to the new season.

Shownotes

Chion biography (Experimental music): https://electrocd.com/en/artiste/chion_mi/Michel_Chion/biographie

Pierre Schaeffer and Music Concrete - https://www.frieze.com/article/music-22

Ercan Bouliase - https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/arts/music/pierre-boulez-french-composer-dies-90.html

GRM: Group Recherché Musical https://www.musicainformatica.org/topics/groupe-de-recherches-musicales.php

Luciano Berio - https://www.universaledition.com/luciano-berio-54

Transition music for this episode taken from Michel Chion’s

La vie on Prose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK3xqAv65r0

Requiem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4XfD3yrYHI

La Grand Nettoyage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUUkA8wqlxQ

Johanna Bramil: http://www.johannabramli.com/

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

To kick off season 13 of the podcast, Neil and Dario get into the wonder of Talking Heads' and Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense (1984) and concert films in general. They touch on the performativity of music documentaries and what makes Sense such a seminal work. They also talk about its spiritual successor, David Byrne and Spike Lee's American Utopia from 2020.

Elsewhere there is a chat about Richard Fleischer's lean and nasty Mob pulp movie The Don Is Dead (1973), recently released by Masters of Cinema, our first ever release partnership with MUBI for Dea Kulumbegasvhvili's Beginning (2020) and the pair are joined by a fabulous mystery guest to talk about live performance, Brexit, the pandemic and 1988's My Neighbor Totoro. 

Please excuse the odd electroglitch on our Mystery Guest's recording.

Show Notes

Pauline Kael on Stop Making Sense

Neil on Stop Making Sense for the Quietus

Devika Girish on Beginning

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We produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

Music Credits

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

Sports films hold formative relevance for both Dario and Neil, and the sports documentary as a sub-genre is the focus and inspiration for a wide-ranging discussion on our latest episode. How does cinema make sport cinematic and what is the difference, for filmmakers and audiences alike, between sports documentary films and watching sports on Television.

The episode is structured around an interview with Finlay Pretsell, a former cyclist and director of Time Trial: A Race to the End. On the surface, the film is a biographical account of the final year of cyclist David Millar, as he comes to terms with retirement after a successful but turbulent career. But more than that the film is an immersive experiment in bringing the audience into the physical and psychological experience of pro cycling. Time Trial is available on the BBC Iplayer and we highly recommend you check it out.

Discussion of Time Trial offers avenues through which to examine how cinema takes the sport out of the immediate yet reductive question of winners and losers. Dario outlines a taxonomy of sports documentaries but this is tricky as the most lauded examples of the genre transcend simple classification both in terms of form and content. The key question: how does cinema make sports cinematic is exemplified seminal films under discussion including Asif Kapadia's detailed archival biographies Senna (2010) and Diego Maradona (2019), the observational detail of Steve James' Hoop Dreams (1994) and Jørgen Leith's A Sunday in Hell (1977), and the transcendent charisma of the sports icon Muhammad Ali is captured with grand scope in When We Were Kings (Leon Gast, 1996) and through a more personal intimacy in I Am Ali (2014, Clare Lewins). Exposes of the darker side of sports are another strand with the multiple films on Lance Armstrong, the wider question of doping tackled in the Oscar-winning Icarus and the recent harrowing account of abuse in American gymnastics explored in Bonni Cohen and John Shenk's Athlete A (2019). 

Discussion of the intersection between cinema and sport on a conceptual level is no-where more apparent than in Julian Faraut's John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection (2018). Neil and Dario discuss how this film demonstrates that both cinema and sport push the boundaries of experience to reach the level of art. In this sense, what is essential about both art and cinema is not coherence or completeness, but moments of transcendence which offer a glimpse of something that expands human potential.

Neil also rounds up recent DVD releases from BFI and Masters of Cinema: Dementia (1955, John Parker), Sleepwalkers (1992, Mick Garris) & 976-Evil (1988, Robert Englund) and also analysed is the recent hard-hitting example of British social realism Lynn + Lucy (2019, Fyzal Boulifa)

You can subscribe to The Cinematologists on:

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We produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

Email: cinematologists@gmail.com

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

A Tale of Two Sisters, 2003, Editor Lee Hyeon-mi

In this episode, Neil talks to one of Horror Cinema’s leading scholars and all-round creative force of nature, Dr. Alison Peirse. Alison teaches film at Leeds (and is an old colleague of Dario’s!) where she is an associate professor. She writes a brilliant newsletter called The Losers Club and is finding success on the film festival circuit with her debut video essay Three Ways to Dine Well.

Alongside monographs on 1930s and Korean horror, Alison is the editor of the recent publication Women Make Horror which is a groundbreaking piece of scholarship in form and focus, and she contributes an intellectually provocative and exhilarating piece that explodes the previous limits of not only Horror scholarship but cinema scholarship more broadly. It’s a great book.

It was a pleasure to welcome Alison to the podcast and you can learn more about her work (and sign up for her newsletter) on her terrific website here.

Elsewhere on the show Neil and Dario discuss their evolving and crystallised thoughts on academic practice growing out of the conversation with Alison and also extol the virtues of Alexandre Rockwell’s new film Sweet Thing (Neil) and the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune (Dario).

It’s also worth hanging around and signing up for the bonus episode where Neil and Dario get deeper into questions about film academia and purge some negative feelings that have built up over time.

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Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

The new episode of the podcast sees Alison Peirse, now Professor of Film Studies at University of Leeds, return to the show to update us on her work in videographic scholarship and Global Women's Horror Film studies. The episode follows the recent release of a stunning special issue of the vital MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture Journal, edited by Alison, featuring a trove of video essays looking at the role of women in Global Horror filmmaking, which serves as an output of a larger-funded project. 

The conversation covers some of the essays in detail, but more depth is paid to the process of making creative academic practice work that is inclusive, radical and disruptive, to feminist anti-patriarchal practices, the wonder of Sara Ahmed and the intricacies of being a newly minted Prof!

Talk also covers Alison's much-missed newsletter The Losers' Club (which she promises will be back soon) and the feminist practice collective space Ways of Doing.

Thanks to Alison for coming back to the show and for such an engaging and enlightening conversation.

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it), and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

----

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

In the first episode of season 19 Neil takes the reins solo, with Dario on sabbatical, for a conversation with one of the UK’s leading filmmakers Jeanie Finlay, ahead of her popular and powerful new documentary Your Fat Friend, released in UK cinemas on Feb 9, 2024.

Jeanie returns to the podcast having recorded a live conversation about her career to date and previous release, Seahorse (2019), at the film festival Neil co-directed in Luton, Filmstock. This conversation is wide-ranging. It covers her craft and cinematic process, her evolution and growth as a filmmaker, her commitment to creating more visibility for key emerging filmmaking roles around mental health and wellbeing, Fatness, the Internet, bias, being tender to yourself, embodiment and ethics. There is also moment where talk turns to her great friend Tom Butchart, the owner and star of Sound It Out [the shop and the film].

Your Fat Friend tells the story of Aubrey Gordon following her emergence as a writer on medium [here’s a link to her first post as YrFatFriend, which Jeanie mentions in the conversation), through publishing her first book and becoming a hugely successful podcaster. It provides a profound, moving and challenging insight into a life lived online in a body that society takes umbrage with, showcasing Aubrey’s courage to keep having a vital conversation about Fatness in the face of vitriolic hate and violence and the real cultural change she is at the vanguard of as a result. Like all of Jeanie’s films, this is a film about those who are looked at but not seen and, like Seahorse, is a film about coming into being in a fuller way than was previously imagined by an incredible human being.

For more information on the film and where to see it. Visit https://www.yrfatfriendfilm.com/

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it), and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

----

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

It's Berlinale time. Our annual sojourn to our favorite European Film Festival is one of the highlights of the year and the programme looks intriguing with a host of big names in art-house cinema showing their latest work. This is the first of a two-part episode in which we bring our thoughts to bear on the big competition entries and fiction and documentary films from other sections of Berlin's extensive programme. We also interview various critics also in the city no only on their festival picks but on any emergent themes of this year's event. Wild mushroom picking, toxic masculinity and signature central sequences were just some of the obvious motifs. 

Dario and Neil see a film together (Hang Songsoo's wonderful The Woman Who Ran) at the festival for the first time and they ruminate, as usual, on all aspects of the experience. Please enjoy.

Thanks so much to the following critics for giving up their time. Please check out their writing and share/support it on your networks:

Joseph Owen - https://www.theupcoming.co.uk/2020/02/24/berlin-film-festival-2020-first-cow-review/

Savina Petkova - https://savinapetkova.contently.com/

Alex Billington - https://www.firstshowing.net/

Serena Scateni - https://vaguevisages.com/2020/02/25/berlinale-2020-review-hong-sang-soos-the-woman-who-ran/

The films discussed in this episode are:

First Cow - Kelly Reichardt

The Salt of Tears - Philippe Garrel

Undine Christian - Petzold

Never Really Sometimes Always - Eliza Hittman

Pinocchio - Matteo Garrone

Little Girl - Sébastien Lifshitz

Malkkrog - Cristi Puiu

Shirley - Josephine Decker

The Assistant - Kitty Green

Mogul Mowgli - Bassam Tariq

The Woman Who Ran - Hong SangSoo

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The first of our collaborations with the BFI Japan season focuses on what is generally regarded as a masterpiece of cinema: Yasujirö Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953). In many ways, a simple story of grandparents visiting their children in the city, but one that gradually builds on the resentments and disappointments of intergenerational alienation. Dario and Neil discuss the film in terms of its status in 'the canon', its reverence as Ozu's finest work in a prolific career, and as arguably the purest distillation of the auteur's thematic and formal concerns. A masterclass in directorial precision and visual composition that both registers as a distinct piece of cinematic art but equally, immerses the viewer into its film world where situations and character relations play out in subtle but profound ways. 

Dario and Neil also discuss some of the other films they have watched in the BFI Japan season so far, including Mikio Naruse's Floating Clouds (1955) and When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960). Again, these are films that are painted on the canvas of post-war Japan but focus on the uncertain status and role of women with both featuring the superb Hideko Takamine in the leading role. Very different are Takeshi Kitano's violent, Nihilistic thrillers Violent Cop (1989), Boiling Point (1990) and Sonatine (1993). Visceral gripping, and bleak they are riveting examples of Japanese cinema made with an American B-movie sensibility. And for some trashy fun look no further than 'king of the monster movies' Ishiro Honda: Mothra (1961), Dogora (1964) & Godzilla v King Kong (1962) can all be found on Amazon Prime.

Neil also reviews a new series of Bela Lugosi films based on the work of Edgar Allen Poe and released by Masters of Cinema: Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935).

This is our final episode of Season 11, we thank you for the continued support and hope you rejoin us back in the autumn.

You can also subscribe to The Cinematologists on:

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We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/entended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

In this episode Neil and Dario discuss two fairly recent films that were both prize winners at Cannes 2022: Lukas Dhont's Close and Hlynur Pálmason's Godland. In terms of setting and story the films seem very different, however there is connecting tissue in the ways that the social fabric in each film defines the experience of the male characters, their sense of self, relation to others and the world. It's this context that provides a jumping off point for a wide ranging conversation that examines how films can deal with men in cinema without defaulting to "just another film" that superficially idealises maleness or didactically critiques the discourse of toxic masculinity. The impressive intersections of form and content in both films is explored with neither wandering down easy generic territory.

Close follows the story of two close friends Leo and Remi who, after a blissful summer, start a new middle school and soon have to negotiate the playground hierarchies that seem to examine and define them. In Godland, Danish Priest Lukas is sent on a perilous journey to Iceland to set up a church in a remote community, taking with him all the paraphernalia of an early camera. Guided by "man of the Earth" Ragnar, the extreme conditions take a physical, psychological and spiritual toll which tests the priest's concept of faith.

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

Both films are available to stream and the conversation does contain spoilers.

So, after much hype, critique and discussion, the Sight and Sound Greatest films of all-time poll has been published and we have an extensive 2-part episode of The Cinematologists to cover it. Neil and Dario were both invited to contribute a top ten list to the poll, which was an unexpected honour in itself. Not only that, Sight and Sound kindly gave us access to the results early so we could record and release the episode to coincide with the publication of the list. Furthermore, Dario got to speak to Isabel Stevens, Managing Editor of Sight and Sound before the list came out (which comes in part 2).

AND, for part 1 of this double feature, Neil is back. Yes, he interrupts his hiatus to lend his astute critical savvy to the results of the poll and to speak about both his own and Dario’s choices. In the past, we have critiqued the problems of list culture and its potential negative effects on film appreciation and criticism. But in a move, particularly on Dario’s part, to ameliorate any hypocrisy of rejecting lists while gleefully contributing to “the big one”, we also discuss the positive value of list making as an access point in a chaotic cultural milieu. Of course, we also talk about the expansion of the critics invited to participate in a move towards a greater diversity and the implications this has for the film canon.

And, of course, we talk about some of the major headlines from this year's poll. First and foremost the new number 1 slot taken by Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. We discuss the dynamics around this change, how it relates to other shifts (such as the higher recognition of other female filmmakers such as Claire Denis and Agnès Varda) and how they might be received: is it both a long overdue boost for female filmmaking and feminist criticism of under-representation in processes of institutionalisation & canonisation. Or does this reflect a narrow kind of diversity, the promotion of a high-modernist cinema which is open to cries of elitism and inaccessibility? We get into these issues in typical Cinematologists depth along with analysing the other big moves and trends. Finally, we reveal our own lists and deconstruct the contrasting "methodologies" for choosing them. Please enjoy.

Shownotes

Link to the Sight and Sound List Online

Quentin Tarantino’s video archives podcast

Silver Screen Video Podcast - with David Thompson

Film Comment podcast on movie list culture and documentary.

Against Lists by Elena Gorfinkel

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

The voice in cinema is a phenomenon that is in many ways taken for granted. Since the advent of the talkies, the speaking voice synchronised to the human body on-screen is the ingrained process for narrative exposition and character development. However, this accepted synchronisation is one of sound cinema’s fundamental illusions.

This major production for The Cinematologists features the analysis from leading film scholars and critics, each focusing on uses and interpretations of cinematic voice, using a plethora of filmic examples. Many aspects of the cinematic voice are explored including star voices, script and performance, sonic aesthetics of the voice, voice-overs, the singing voice, voices in animation, the disembodied voice, and politics of who has a voice and who listens. We draw upon many of the key thinkers on film sound including the seminal work of Michel Chion. Chion developed concepts like Audio-Vision, to explore how sound shapes how the screened image can be understood, and acousmetré, meaning the cinema’s use of disembodied off-screen voice. Using these ideas he forwards the argument that sound is not a secondary addendum to image in the cinematic experience, but fundamentally structures how we see and understand film.

Unlike our usual conversational format, this episode is an audio-essay; recorded interviews cut together with indicative clips in a sonic collage which is hopefully an immersive experience transversing the boundaries between creativity and criticism. We recommend that you listen to this episode on headphones to get the full effect. As always Dario and Neil discuss the themes of the podcast but also engage with the production and formal approach in the context of film podcasts more broadly.

Contributors to this episode are (in order of appearance are):

Dario Llinares - Website - Twitter

Clive Frayne (11:03-19:18)  - Website - Twitter

Neil Fox - (19:56-29:30) Website - Twitter

Laura Tunbridge - (32:08-37:08) Website - Twitter

Catherine Wheatley - (41:46-47:33) Website - Twitter

Ian Garwood  (48:56-55:00) - Website - Twitter

Farshid Kazemi (55:51-1:01:50) - Website

Jennifer O’Meara - (1:06:14-1:14:24) Website - Twitter

Mark Kermode (1:15:40-1:23:22) - Website - Twitter

William Brown (1:23:56-1:36:14) - Website - Twitter

My profound thanks for their time, labour and critical insight which has made this episode possible.

A full transcript of this episode is available at www.cinematologists.com

Film clips (in broadcast order)

The Jazz Singer (1927, Alan Crosland)

Blackmail (1929, Alfred Hitchcock)

Dead of Night [The Ventriloquist’s Dummy (1945, Alberto Cavalcanti)

To Have and Have Not (1944, Howard Hawks)

The Trial (1962, Orson Welles)

Dirty Harry (1972 Don Siegel)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)

In the Heat of the Night (1967, Norman Jewison)

Inherent Vice (2014, Paul Thomas Anderson)

Dick Tracy (1990, Warren Beatty)

The Shawshank Redemption (1995, Frank Darabont)

Only Lovers Left Alive (2014, Jim Jarmusch)

White Men Can’t Jump (1992, Ron Shelton)

Daughters of the Dust (1991, Julie Dash)

Félicité (2017, Alain Gomis)

Mary Poppins (1964, Robert Stevenson)

Magnolia (1999) Paul Thomas Anderson

The Wind Will Carry Us (1999, Abbas Kiarostami)

All the President’s Men (Alan J. Pakula)

Her (2014, Spike Jonze)

Toy Story (1995, John Lassiter)

Puss in Boots [Antonio Banderas Voice Session]

Frozen (2013, Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck)

Anomalisa (2016, Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson)

Star Wars (1977, George Lucas)

The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin)

The Exorcist Original Voice Recordings

The Exorcist documentary

Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979, Terry Jones)

The Dark Knight Rises (2012, Christopher Nolan)

The Great Dictator (1940, Charlie Chaplin)

Valkyrie (2008, Bryan Singer)

The Wizard of Oz (1939, Victor Flemming)

Some Like it Hot (1959, Billy Wilder)

References (in order of mention):

Altman, Rick. 1980. Moving Lips: Cinema as Ventriloquism. Yale French Studies, 60 Cinema/Sound: pp. 67-79 - https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2930005.pdf?seq=1

Chion, Michel. 1999. The Voice in Cinema. Columbia University Press.

 Barthes, Roland. 1978. The Grain of the Voice. In Image, Music, Text. New York: Wang and Hill. pp.179-189.

Whittaker, Tom and Wright, Sarah. 2017. Locating the Voice in Film: Critical Approaches and Global Perspectives. Oxford University Press.

Kozlov, Sarah. 1992. Invisible Storytellers: Voice-Over Narration in American Fiction Film. University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. 1994. A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises. Harvard University Press.

Clements, Catherine. 1989. Opera, Or The Undoing Of Women. Virago.

Cavarero, Adrianna. 2005. For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression. Stanford University Press.

Kiarostami, Abbas. 2015. Lessons with Kiarostami. Sticking Place Books.

Dolar, Mladen. 2006. A Voice and Nothing More. Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Sobchak, Vivien. 2005. When the Ear Dreams: Dolby Digital and the Imagination of Sound. Film Quarterly, 58(4), pp. 2-15.

Adorno, Theodor., & Horkheimer, Max. 1944. The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.

Chow, Rey. 2017 ‘The Writing Voice in Cinema’. In Whittaker, Tom and Wright, Sarah. Eds. Locating the Voice in Film: Critical Approaches and Global Perspectives. Oxford University Press.

Please consider sharing the show on your social networks and reviewing on your app of choice. If you would like to support us with our running cost please consider subscribing to our membership on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists)

You can subscribe to the show on:

Apple Podcasts

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PlayerFM

Or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode, Neil sits with emergent American filmmaker Tyler Taormina about his new, deeply strange and affecting feature Happer’s Comet, which premiered at Berlinale earlier this year. The conversation covers Tyler’s family, his approach to filmmaking, the nagging themes he can’t shake and the filmmakers his work is in dialogue with.

Additionally, Dario and Neil spend time really thinking about the theme of alienation in Tyler’s film and work, and what it says so beautifully about this moment in our time.

Thanks to Tyler for his time and Adam Kersh for introducing us to his client.

To kick things off Neil and Dario catch up on recent watches including The Batman and the folk horror documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched.

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

In the latest episode, Neil and Dario are drawn back to one of their favourite topics to talk about, Sci-Fi, albeit in a slightly different context. Neil talks to author and screenwriter Simon Stephenson about his acclaimed debut novel Set My Heart To Five, which tells the story of Jared - a bot who develops feelings. Simon is also adapting his book into a screenplay, with Edgar Wright attached to direct.

Around this conversation, Neil and Dario talk about a host of topics including the legacy of classic Sci-Fi cinema and in particular representations of artificial life/intelligence, Hollywood cinema of the 80s and 90s as a classic era, the differences between reading and watching Sci-Fi, the adaptation process and why Kevin Costner is great. Though for a full Costner love-in you will need to subscribe to the Patreon bonus episode that accompanies this main episode. (www.patreon.com/cinematologists)

Also as part of the episode, the hosts wax lyrical about their love for MUBI to coincide with their partnership for the release of Dea Kulumbegashvili’s Beginning - https://mubi.com/promos/thecinematologists - and on the occasion of MUBI’s 14th birthday, for which they are giving away a free day of movies on February 14th - https://mubi.com/ - a gesture you’ve just got to love.

Thank you to Simon for a wonderful chat. Buy his brilliant novel here (or wherever ethical that you buy your books), it’s out now in paperback.

Links to other material discussed in episode 115:

Into the Blue: Transposing the Frame in Derek Jarman’s Blue by Edwin Miles for Bright Wall/Dark Room.

The video essays of Ian Garwood on Vimeo

You can also subscribe to The Cinematologists on:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify 
• Google Podcasts
• Podchaser 

We produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

Just a quick trailer for our Berlinale Dispatches minisodes which you can listen to Dario's daily missives from the festival, over at our Patreon feed: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists.

In episode 144, Neil and Dario discuss a few recent films viewed with a critical eye with regards to how they fit into film culture and more broadly how they reflect (or don't) current political attitudes. 

Dario wrote in detail about the star persona of Tom Cruise in the most recent Patreon newsletter, and both Neil and Dario reflect on the experiential pleasures and reductive nostalgia of Tom Gun: Maverick along with the obvious ideological criticism around its propagandistic militarism.

Sports movies are a recurring focus of the podcast and the recent Netflix production Hustle starring Adam Sandler and half the roster of the NBA is under discussion. 

Lastly, we focus on Lingui, The Sacred Bonds by Chadian filmmaker Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, a lyrical, gripping story of a mother trying to arrange an abortion for her daughter in the face of patriarchal theocracy.   

This is our penultimate episode. For our end-of-season finale, we are recording a live podcast at The Garden Cinema in Covent Garden, London, on the 5th of July, 6pm. Tickets are available from The Garden Cinema Website. We are really looking forward to catching up with an audience IRL.

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

Eight prophets of the everyday struggle for love, justice, political autonomy, dignity, and in the end survival, in Alain Tanner's incredibly powerful, moving, emotionally and intellectually complex film: Jonah who will be 25 in the Year 2000. In our return episode for season sixteen of the podcast, we are delighted to be joined by the director, producer and actor Caroline Catz who selected this film as one of her all time favourites and joined us in Manchester's Home cinema for this very rare screening. Alain Tanner had passed away only three days before the screening which gave a bittersweet context to proceedings, but perhaps even amplified the prescience that the film possesses. Caroline also notes that the film is co-written by John Berger, an influence to so many artists and critics. "Jonah's" themes are incredibly wide-ranging: the oppression of the working-class, education and it's methods and aims, state oppression, the concept of family, hierarchy of the sexes, and, fundamentally, why a socialist utopia is so hard to create in practice. 

As you will hear the Q&A resonated with emotion. Several of the audience members had a personal connection to the film which they discuss in beautifully elegiac ways. And indeed the conversation returned back to the radical nature of hope. Dario was also joined by the producer James Dean who came to the screening and recorded his thoughts on the film and the Q&A. 

Shownotes:

Caroline Catz on Twitter

James Dean on Twitter

Manchester Home Cinema

A version of the film is available on YouTube (no English Subs however)

Alain Tanner Obituary

Future Perfect: The Class Struggle Of "Jonah who will be 25 in the Year 2000" by Ray Pride

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

In the final episode of the latest season – Neil’s solo adventure – Neil talks to filmmaker, writer and comedian Scott Tanner Jones about collecting physical media. In an episode with a similar approach to the previous one with Kat Flint-Nicol, Neil brings to the podcast a conversation about themes and ideas that permeate his thinking around a particular area of film, and wider popular culture. In this episode Neil and Scott discuss their approaches to collecting films (and records) in physical form.

The conversation takes in areas such as curating what you watch, interest in particular physical media boutique labels, how physical media isn’t the be all and end all, cataloguing the year in film in different ways, studio interest and care in their back catalogues, Scott’s favourite places in his adopted hometown of LA to watch movies, the demand on our eyeballs and they answer the question, is David Lynch quirky?

Films discussed in this episode include Cocoon, Something Wild, Midnight Cowboy, E.T., Midnight Run, MaXXXine, La Chimera, Evil Does Not Exist and Hit Man.

To close out the episode and season, Neil shares some of his thoughts on his favourite releases of 2024 so far, and his first half of the year in film watching more broadly.

—

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists

You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we’ll mention it), and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

—

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

In part 2 of our Sight and Sound special, Dario talks to the managing editor of Sight and Sound Magazine Isabel Stevens about the collation and publication of this list. With over 1600 hundred critics contributing their top tens (up from 800 in 2012), the move towards greater diversity is clear. Dario drills down into that with Isabel, along with unpacking some of the other key trends that have emerged. Isabel also takes us through her selections. 

Also on the show, we welcome back Savina Petkova for her take on being invited to contribute, the issues with lists in general, and compiling a set of 10 films that complement each other. She also addresses the inherent performativity of creating a "best-of" for public scrutiny; how one cannot help but consider the cultural reaction, even in the abstract. And of course we and take wonderful meander through her choices. It’s a great list that is based on a single theme: Love. 

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We hope you have enjoyed this double episode, it is complemented by a bonus podcast that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2. #SupportIndieMedia

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

In this episode, Dario talks MA student in Film Curation Chris Cassingham about his graduation film series: Beyond Interpretation. Screening at the ICA in London in January, the series that explores the connections between paranoia, conspiracy, anxiety, and the precarious realities of artistic creation at the margins of the American film industry. At a time when it is increasingly difficult to make and distribute films that defy simple categorisation, resist commercial expectations of narrative and form, and whose concerns are often out of step with capitalist ideals of profit, it is important to seize every available opportunity to present them to new audiences.

Dario discusses with Chris his course at NFTS and the film curation itself as discipline, reflecting on the challenging times for exhibitors and the film industry as a whole in getting audiences to come to theatres. Dario contextualises this in his opening remarks, thinking about cinema-going as a recurring theme of the podcast, even before the pandemic. The impact of streaming has obviously had a major influence on film audiences, along with shifting criteria in what types of films mainstream audiences deem worthy to see at the cinema.

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

It was an absolute joy to welcome actor, director, producer and writer Mario van Peebles to The Cinematologists Podcast. In London to show his new film Outlaw Posse as part of the Black Rodeo season at the BFI, I was able to talk with him and his son Mandela, who also stars in the film, about his lifelong interest in Westerns, particularly in the often cliched, often forgotten role of African American's in the Western mythos.

Outlaw Posse is more of a companion piece than a sequel to his 1993 film Posse; this new work mines similar territory with its generic rawness infused with social commentary but with a kinetic direction that embraces spectacle. The conversation also covers the van Peebles' legacy; Mario's father Melvin one of the true blaxploitation pioneers, director of the now recognised classic Sweet Sweetback's Baadass Song; Mario's own journey in the industry, from his big break in Clint Eastwood's Heartbreak Ridge to his own seminal work as director of New Jack City. Neil and I discuss how wonderfully open and insightful Mario and Mandela were in the interview and further explore his perhaps under-appreciated body of work. We discuss the influence of New Jack City thinking about how that film triggered the New Black Cinema movement and influenced the aesthetics of 80s and 90s filmmaking in its wake. _________

For extra bonus content, including extended interviews, bonus podcast and our monthly newsletter consider joining our Patreon community: www.patreon.com/cinematoloigists

_________

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

Valeska Grisebach's Western (2017) transposes many of the iconographies and thematics of the western genre to the setting of a contemporary border town between Bulgaria and Greece, where a group of German construction workers build a hydro-electric plant. Their presence stirs up contemporary and historically layered tensions which are exacerbated by the communication barriers between the groups. This leads to a familiar, male driven tribalism, which one of the Germans, the stoic Meinhard (played by first time actor Meinhard Neumann), looks to navigate.

In this episode, we are joined by Dr Hannah Paveck whose article in Film-Philosophy Journal - Taciturn Masculinities: Radical Quiet and Sounding Linguistic Difference in Valeska Grisebach's Western - considers the relationship between film sound, gender and settler colonialism. We talk about her use of Jean-Luc Nancy and Eugenie Brinkema to explore how the film undermines the codings of silence associated with the heroic male hero. Furthermore, she discusses the film in the context of geopolitics and the aesthetics of art-cinema particularly the Berlin School, to which Grisebach is associated along with filmmakers such as Angela Schanelec and Christian Petzold.

Neil and Dario also talk about the writing processes they are currently involved in, their processes of work, how they approach different styles and the difficulties of moving between academic writing, journalism and blogging, particularly when the expectations from publishers and reviewers for each, can be very different.

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

In the latest episode, Neil talks at length to critic, editor and podcaster Nicolas Rapold about his podcast The Last Thing I Saw, as well as podcasting in general, the benefits of direct-to-subscriber content via Substack and, a favourite topic of Neil and Dario's, film culture in 2021 in general.

Elsewhere, Neil and Dario ponder ideas around conversation and podcasting, inclusivity and good faith and share war stories of near-middle-age ailments based around tennis and a visit to the barber.

The Last Thing I Saw is available wherever you get your pods, but the best way to learn more about it, and Nicolas's work, is to subscribe to his Substack here.

Thanks to Nicolas for taking time out to talk to Neil for the podcast.

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow. 

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

———

Show Notes:

Link to the Gunda piece for Reverse Shot, Nicolas mentions in the show.

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Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

It's our season finale and we were delighted to get back into a cinema for a live screening and podcast recording, our first one since Covid. The venue was the spectacular Garden cinema in Covent Garden, a beautiful art-deco retro venue where we hope to be holding regular screenings in the autumn.

As part of their celebrating Film Noir season, we screened and discussed the 1962 psychological noir Cape Fear directed J. Lee Thompson. The film features what is considered one of the most powerfully chilling performances in cinema history: Robert Mitchum as Max Cady. Also starring Gregory Peck, Polly Bergen Lori Martin, Martin Balsam and Telly Savalas, and featuring a Bernard Herrmann score, it's a film that tested social attitudes and the censors with its subject matter.

Dario presented the screening with guest Mary Wild (@psycstar on Twitter), the co-host of the Projections Podcast (@ProjectionsPod). As an expert in psychoanalytic film theory it was fantastic to have Mary's critical insight on a film and genre that really does lend itself to psychological reading. 

Dario and Neil continue the conversation and also reflect on the 15th season of the podcast. Something we can hardly believe. We thank you for your continued support of the show and look forward to season 16 beginning in September 2022.

Show Notes

The Garden Cinema, Covent Garden.

The new season of Mary's Projections Podcast which she co-hosts with Sarah Cleaver.

The Making of Cape Fear.

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

We’re back for season 18 and we’re kicking off with an in-depth look at new feature documentary A Year in a Field, a quiet film by Christopher Morris that is currently on tour around UK cinemas, distributed by Anti-Worlds. Produced by Bosena (Enys Men) in partnership with Stone Club and Falmouth University’s Sound/Image Cinema Lab, the film tells the story of Chris’s relationship with a 4,000 year old menhir (standing stone) in West Penwith, Kernow, and the slow burn political awakening around the climate crisis that spending time with the stone brought out of the filmmaker.

Ahead of the theatrical release Chris and Denzil joined Neil for an on-stage conversation at Falmouth venue, The Poly (a place that should be familiar to Cinematologists listeners) following a preview screening of the film for incoming school of film & television students at Falmouth University. Around the live conversation, Neil and Dario discuss the upcoming season of podcast highlights and regards A Year in a Field, discuss the potential for a political cinema and individualist versus collective responses to structural inequalities and the climate crisis. Yep, it’s a political one, right out the gate.

Welcome back to the show, it’s nice to be back with you for another season.

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing 

In this final episode of 2023 (and season 18), we (Neil and Dario) ruminate on a year spent thinking cinematically and engaging with cinema in the unique way that has become the hallmark of The Cinematologists; thoughtful, personal, searching for meaning and meaningful experiences across the movie spectrum.

We both share brief discussions of two films that stuck with us from different points of the year, Neil talking about Mark Jenkin’s short A Dog Called Discord and Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s The Future Tense, while Dario ponders Patricio Guzman’s My Imaginary Country and Samsara, directed by Lois Patiño.

Then, we spend more time discussing three films each at greater length in what could be seen as their top 3 films of the year, if we were so inclined to frame them that way (and we go to great pains in the episode to make sure that they don’t come across as ‘ranked’). Dario shares his thoughts on and fondness for Laura Poitras’s All The Beauty and the Bloodshed, Celine Song’s Past Lives and Todd Haynes’s May December. While Neil decides to go deep on Cyril Schäublin’s Unrest (which he shamefully claims is set in the 1920s when it’s clearly late 19th Century!), Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s The Eight Mountains and Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves.

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Thank you to all our guests this season and to our listeners, we thank you for your continued support of The Cinematologists, and hope you join us for season 19, which commences in February 2024.

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

For our first episode of 2023, Dario speaks to a great friend of the podcast Mark Jenkin about his new Cornish "folk horror", Enys Men. Starring Mary Woodvine as a volunteer isolated on a Cornish island seemingly with the task of observing and recording the local wildlife. This sets the stage for a disquieting, time-bending, psycho-ecological fable, forged through Jenkin's singular audio-visual sensibility. 

In a wide-ranging conversation, Mark goes deep into the artistic process underpinning the film, thinks through questions the work throws up about loneliness, isolation, time and memory. The notion of genre is another topic of discussion, with the renaissance in cinematic folk horror. But Dario forward his thesis that Enys Men is a "last woman on Earth" sci-fi.      

It's also great have Neil returning to the show after his hiatus. He reviews another potential entry to the international folk horror canon Yanuari (January). From Bulgarian director Andrey Paounov and co-written by former Cinematologists guest Alex Barrett.

Shownotes

ENYS MEN is in cinemas now. 

The Cinematic DNA of ENYS MEN season [curated by director Mark Jenkin] runs at BFI Southbank until 31 January with selected films and Jenkin’s shorts collection available on BFI Player now.

ENYS MEN will be released on Blu-ray/DVD and BFI Player on 1 May. The ENYS MEN Original Score by Mark Jenkin is out now digitally via Invada Records and released on vinyl on 24 February.

Documentary mention by Mark and Neil on Folk Horror is Woodlands Dark, Days Bewitched

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

In a bumper episode, the penultimate one of the year, Dario interviews Jessica Hausner about her new film Club Zero and Guy Maddin, Evan, and Galen Johnson about Rumours. Both films have limited UK releases this week (Friday, December 6th), and, interestingly, though they are very different films, they have thematic connections, particularly in relation to contemporary crises, social critique, and satirical modes.

Club Zero stars a very well-cast Mia Wasikowska as Ms. Novak, a girlish teacher whose radical ideas about diet lead a group of students down a dangerous path. Dario's conversation with Jessica and composer Marcus Binder explores influence, seduction, and the complexities of societal expectations through the lens of her film. They discuss the dangers of eating disorders, the pressures of social responsibility placed on children, the alienating dynamics of the school environment, and how misinformation can so easily be spread.

Rumours boasts a stacked cast led by Cate Blanchett, who represents the leaders of the G7. Dario talked to director-writer team Guy Maddin, Galen Johnson, and Evan Johnson about the film at the London Film Festival. The conversation navigates the complexities of creative expression in film, touching on themes of self-perception, audience expectations, character development, and the balance between artistic freedom and commercial viability. They discuss the challenges of navigating genre conventions, the significance of casting choices, and the implications of stereotypes in representing national identities.

Neil and Dario then reflect on both the interviews and films, examining their artistic choices, character development, and how well the themes capture contemporary anxieties around authority, ideology, and ambivalence. They also discuss the aesthetics of symbolism and the emotional distance created through cinematography, as well as the broader implications of anxiety and manipulation in youth culture. This leads to a reflection on how artists address the current socio-political moment, how crisis is influencing many film works in an implicit way, and whether a political cinema is possible while maintaining a unique voice in an uncertain, changing cultural landscape.

Thanks to Tom Finney at Blue Dolphin Films

Thanks to Chris Lawrence at Film Publicity

Thanks to George Crostwait and the team at The Garden Cinema

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £3 per month.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it), and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

----

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

In this final episode of Season 12 Neil and Dario chat, casually, about some of their favourite films of the past year. They chose five each to give a special focus to and elsewhere in the episode there are some honourable mentions and also shout out to the pair's favourite film podcasts of the last 12 months.

It's been a helluva year. No need to go over it again. But, The Cinematologists hope you are doing ok and thank you for your continued support of this podcast. Without the listeners and the community around the show that you have helped build, Neil and Dario's 2020 would have been much worse. 

You can also subscribe to The Cinematologists on:

Apple Podcasts

Spotify 

Google Podcasts

Podchaser 

We produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/entended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

Music Credits

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

Brett (writer/director/editor) and Simon (producer) Harvey, are stalwarts of contemporary Cornish cinema and 2022 saw the release of their third feature film Long Way Back, which has just hit streaming platforms. 

Supported by Falmouth University's Sound/Image Cinema Lab, which has also supported the work of Mark Jenkin and for which Neil is the research and strategy lead, Long Way Back marks a departure in style and ambition for the filmmaking brothers and their company o-region.

Neil talks to them about their process and influences, the role of music in both those aspects, the Cornish film community and the challenges of the UK indie film landscape. From there, Neil and Dario discuss regional UK filmmaking, the role of film festivals, independent ambition and london-centricism as both a concept and reality. 

Elsewhere, Neil recommends new Chilean cinema release The Cow Who Sang A Song Into The Future, directed by Francisca Alegria and featuring a favourite actor of the hosts, Pablo Larrain regular Alfredo Castro, which prompts a chat about eco-sophical cinema.

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

In this episode, Neil records an audio diary from the 2022 International Festival de Cannes. He reflects on being part of the team presenting Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men to the world, the weirdness of Cannes, and some of the films he saw while there. Titles discussed are Patricio Guzmán’s My Imaginary Country, Mia Hansen' Løve’s One Fine Morning, the 1972 anthology film about the Munich Olympics Visions of Eight and De Humani Corporis Fabrica by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel (who directed the experimental fishing documentary Leviathan). Guests include critic and podcaster John Bleasdale, academic and producer Kingsley Marshall and some of the team behind Enys Men, director Mark Jenkin and actor Mary Woodvine.

Elsewhere Neil and Dario discuss Patricio Guzmán, the film festival bubble and some recent positive comments from listeners, as well as Neil’s reflection on the final film he saw in Cannes, Annie Ernaux and David Ernaux-Briot’s The Super 8 Years.

Although, Neil forgot to tell his Louis Garrel story, so that will have to wait until the next episode.

Also, some of the diary entries are a bit peaky due to mediterranean winds, so please bear with some of the audio segments of the diary.

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

Pat Kelman, born in Essex but raised in Cornwall, has been an actor, filmmaker, theatre-maker and programmer. Presently, he finds himself releasing independent and arthouse cinema that other distributors deem too niche or challenging via his inspirational 606 Distribution company, as well as programming a wild collection of formative films and beloved double bills through his Pat's Film Club screenings that are hosted at Truro's wonderful WTW Plaza Cinema. 

Neil has been a regular at the film club and has known Pat for a numhers of years and he wanted to sit down with Pat to talk about his life in cinema and the current state of independent film releasing as well as what informs the decisions he makes regarding what to screen at his film club.

The conversation covers his formative years and the early film experiences that shaped him as a person - horror cinema and seeing certain films so/too young, the influence of filmmakers including Mike Leigh and Atom Egoyan, his time visiting London's infamous Scala cinema, the power of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (Forman, 1975), his experiences making improvised feature films and BFI funded shorts, by committee. 

What defines Pat's career is how he invests in people, and trusts people, loves cinema and is a true cinephile. Towards the end he talks about his move into horror programming and re-releasing cult films as part of 606's evolution. It was a joy to spend time talking to cinema whose work is underpinned by perpetual enthusiasm for and belief in filmmakers and audiences, and cinema as an art form.

—

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we’ll mention it), and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

—

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing. 

In this latest episode, Neil takes listeners inside the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum at the University of Exeter with the help of lead curator Phil Wickham.

Phil guides Neil around the museum's different exhibits that stretch from pre-cinema to the present day, they take an amble round the archive stacks and Neil reflects on the spaces of museums, archives and libraries as place of tactile proximity to history, art and knowledge.

Elsewhere Neil and Dario discuss the role of libraries and museums in contemporary education and society.

Thanks to Phil for the invitation and tour. Thanks to Dr. Helen Hanson for lunch, Pamela Hutchinson for the nudge, and Scott Barley for the use of his track Fugue (available on his Bandcamp here) to guide the journey.

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

For this episode we are honoured to be joined by the wonderful filmmaker Caroline Catz to discuss her brilliant debut feature film Delia Derbyshire: the Myths and Legendary Tapes, which Catz wrote, directed and stars in, as Derbyshire. It’s a unique music doc/drama hybrid that is well worth the time and is currently on the BBC iPlayer in the UK.

The conversation covers Caroline’s process for the film, her relationship to Derbyshire’s music and that of the Radiophonic Workshop, as well as venturing into women as artists in relation to Derbyshire, one of the film’s collaborators Cosey Fanni Tutti and Catz herself.

We are grateful that Caroline took time out to talk to us and we really like this conversation. Please excuse Neil’s cold but as the intro makes clear, this was not our usual day at the Cinematologists office.

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

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Show Notes:

In the bonus episode, we discuss the music of the following artists [spiritual heirs of Derbyshire and the Radiophonic Workshop] - Kelly Lee Owens, Jane Weaver and Broadcast, who are all amazing and who you should all check out. And of course, the composer of our own theme tune, the mighty Gwenno.

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Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

As part of this year's Kinoteka Polish Film Festival, currently running in London, Michael Brooke has curated a complete retrospective of the criminally under-known Polish director Wojciech Has. The retrospective, starting from the 1st April 2025 and featuring screenings at the BFI and the ICA, contains Has's short and feature film work in gorgeous restorations. There are talks and events around the films, and the ICA has an exhibition of Polish film posters which is unmissable if you're in the vicinity.

For this episode, Neil talks to curator Michael Brooke about Has's life and work, and legacy both within Poland and to a certain extent more widely. They also discuss the limitations of legacy due to decisions made by Has to stay in Poland. The conversation also covers Has's work as a film educator, Polish cinema more broadly and Michael's route to becoming an expert in the field, shedding light on how sometimes, things just happen that way. 

Elsewhere in the episode Neil and Dario discuss the impact of Has's work on them, at a time when both are particularly invested in the idea of the cinematic, where it can be found contemporarily and the need to engage with form intentionally as audiences, critics and filmmakers and not get drawn into the anodyne world of content that dominates screen culture generally. They discuss Has's work as a formal master, his approach to adaptation and the idea of filmmakers being in dialogue with each other despite the limitations of visibility of work, physical and political borders.

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Visit our Patreon at www.patreon.com/cinematologists

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we’ll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

———

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.