The Film Comment Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Cannes 2023 #2, with Beatrice Loayza, Inney Prakash, and James Wham May 19, 2023

Show notes

Cannes 2023 is here—and as news of standing ovations and walkouts, throwaway raves and pans, spit takes and hot takes flood the feed, we’ll be reporting on all the cinematic goings-on, with our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors ready to cut through the noise with a series of thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and podcasts. For our second episode from the Riviera, critics Beatrice Loayza and James Wham and programmer and critic Inney Prakash join FC co-deputy editor Devika Girish discuss some recently screened high-, low-, and in-between–lights, including Sean Price Williams’s The Sweet East, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster, Wim Wenders’s Anselm, and Wang Bing’s epic Youth (Spring). Subscribe to the Film Comment Letter today for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2023 edition: www.filmcomment.com/newsletter-sign-up/

Cannes 2023 #1, with Jordan Cronk and Jessica Kiang May 17, 2023

Show notes

Cannes 2023 is here—and as news of standing ovations and walkouts, throwaway raves and pans, spit takes and hot takes flood the feed, we’ll be reporting on all the cinematic goings-on, with our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors ready to cut through the noise with a series of thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and podcasts. First up, critics and frequent FC contributors Jordan Cronk and Jessica Kiang join FC co-deputy editor Devika Girish to open the proceedings with some lively discussion of early festival films—including Maïwenn's Jeanne du Barry, Steve McQueen's Occupied City, Marie Amachoukeli's Ama Gloria, and Cédric Kahn's The Goldman Case—before previewing this year’s lineup. Subscribe to the Film Comment Letter today for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2023 edition: https://www.filmcomment.com/newsletter-sign-up/

Remembering Safi Faye May 09, 2023

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The 30th edition of the New York African Film Festival runs May 10 to 16 at Film at Lincoln Center, with a showcase that spans the historic past and the vital present of cinema from Africa. Last weekend, the festival hosted a special conversation in tribute to the great filmmaker Safi Faye, who passed away in February. Faye is best known as the first woman from Sub-Saharan Africa to ever direct a commercial feature film—1976’s Kaddu Beykat—but the Senegalese pioneer’s accomplishments and groundbreaking influence extend far beyond that landmark. Introduced to the world of cinema via an acting role in Jean Rouch’s Petit à petit (1971), Faye went on to create a monumental body of work that includes award-winning shorts and features, including Selbe: One Among Many (1983), and Mossane, which won the Un Certain Regard award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997. Through both documentary and fiction modes, Faye sought to capture the agency, subjectivity, and beauty of African women, and bring to vivid life the everyday realities of rural Senegal. To explore Faye’s legacy and lasting influence on African women’s cinema today, NYAFF brought together the filmmakers Nuotama Bodomo, Jessica Beshir, Akosua Adoma Owusu, and Johanna Makabi for a roundtable led by the scholar and critic Yasmina Price. Film Comment is thrilled to share the conversation on today’s episode in collaboration with the festival. Find out more about the NYAFF30 lineup here: https://www.filmlinc.org/festivals/new-york-african-film-festival/#films

Silicon Valley Movies, with Malcolm Harris Apr 25, 2023

Show notes

Writer Malcolm Harris has a new book out called Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World. It’s as sweeping as the title suggests: a lively biography of the author’s hometown that covers nearly two centuries. In the book, Harris traces the connections between the settling of California and the advent of the railroad, the establishment of Stanford University, the technological boom of the long 20th century, and own data-driven present. What you may not expect is that the book is also, in many ways, a history of the cinema: as Malcolm details, Eadweard Muybridge developed his pioneering equine motion studies under the patronage of railroad baron Leland Stanford, who wanted to figure out how to raise better race horses. So on today’s episode, Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute invited Malcolm to join them for a conversation about his new book and California’s decades-spanning nexus of technology, capital, and the moving image. From Muybridge, they moved to several other movies that Malcolm cites in the book, including Justin Lin’s Better Luck Tomorrow, Wayne Wang’s Chan Is Missing, the dot-com era thriller Antitrust, and more.

In Conversation with Viola Davis Apr 21, 2023

Show notes

This week we’re celebrating the recipient of Film at Lincoln Center’s 48th Chaplin Award, one of America’s preeminent actresses: Viola Davis, who has dazzled us for over three decades on the stage and the screen, and whose life story is as inspirational as her craft. A couple of days ago, I sat down with Davis to dig into some of the most memorable on-screen moments from her career, and how she shapes her formidable performances by being a keen observer of life. We discussed her iconic turns in Denzel Washington’s Fences, Steve McQueen’s Widows, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King, and some deeper cuts, like her early role in Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight.

Peter Greenaway on Drowning by Numbers Apr 11, 2023

Show notes

The last few years have seen several new restorations of the films of Peter Greenaway, the British director known for classics like The Draughtsman’s Contract and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. His films are formally exacting and erudite, yet full of play and perversion, and are as provocative today as they were upon release. The latest Greenaway film to receive a restoration is Drowning by Numbers, which has just been re-released by Severin Films on Blu-Ray. Made in 1988, the film is a metaphysical puzzle, equal parts fairy tale and process piece. The story follows three women—a mother, her daughter, and her niece—all named Cissie Colpitts, as they drown their husbands one by one. They cover up their crimes with the help of local coroner Madgett and his son Smut, both of whom are obsessed with games of all stripes—moral, athletic, mathematical. Shot by Greenaway’s frequent collaborator Sacha Vierny, Drowning by Numbers is one of the best of the director’s 80s features, as clinical as it is maximalist. A couple weeks ago, FC Co-Deputy Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute called up Greenaway on Zoom for a freewheeling conversation about his memories of making the film, his long career, and his thoughts on mortality and art.

Kelly Reichardt on Showing Up Apr 04, 2023

Show notes

Kelly Reichardt’s latest feature, Showing Up, is a delicate, witty, yet deeply profound film about the messy ways in which living and surviving can get in the way of art-making. The film follows a ceramics artist, Lizzy (Michelle Williams), who prepares for an upcoming gallery show while wrangling family issues, the interpersonal politics of her day job at an art school, and problems with her landlord, who happens to be none other than her more successful colleague, Jo (Hong Chau). Not to mention the injured pigeon that Lizzy is suddenly forced to care for... It’s a new riff on themes familiar from Reichardt’s work, like friendship and the ways in which precarity impinges upon community, but it’s also the director's funniest film yet, one that finds joy and comedy in its milieu of eccentric, sometimes petty, yet infectiously passionate artists. With Showing Up arriving in theaters this week, Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish interviewed Reichardt about the making of the film, the casting of Williams and Chau, the work of Cynthia Lahti, Michelle Segre, and the various other artists who are featured in the film, and much more.

New Directors/New Films 2023, with Beatrice Loayza and Vadim Rizov Mar 28, 2023

Show notes

Every spring the New Directors/New Films festival at Film at Lincoln Center and MoMA puts on an exciting showcase of movies by the best emerging filmmakers around the world. It’s always a reliable sign of the trends to come and the talents to look out for—past editions have featured early films by Spike Lee, Christopher Nolan, Kelly Reichardt, and others. Over the past few years, Film Comment has established our own annual tradition of previewing the best movies in the New Directors/New Films lineup with local critics. This time around, editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute were joined by Vadim Rizov and Beatrice Loayza for a rundown of some of the gems in the 2023 edition, including Earth Mama, Arnold Is a Model Student, Safe Place, The Face of the Jellyfish, and more.

Louis Garrel on The Innocent and The Plough Mar 14, 2023

Show notes

This year’s Rendezvous with French Cinema festival (March 2-12), Film at Lincoln Center’s annual showcase of contemporary French filmmaking, was something of a Louis Garrel convention—the French actor and director appeared in three movies in the lineup. He directed and stars in The Innocent, a comedy inspired by his own life, about a young man whose mother marries a heist robber newly released from prison. He also stars along with his sisters, Esther and Lena Garrel, in their father Philippe Garrel’s Silver Bear–winning new feature, The Plough, a melancholic, understated drama about a family of puppeteers grappling with the decline of their patriarch and their traditions. And Louis appears as the theater director Patrice Chéreau in Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s Forever Young, about a group of young initiates at Les Amandiers, a famous acting school in Paris. Last week, FC Co-Deputy Editor called up Louis on Zoom—while he was in the middle of a shoot for a film about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince—for a conversation about the autobiographical inspirations of all three films, the differences between his and his father’s directing styles, their collaboration with the legendary screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere, and more.

The Politics of the Personal, with Milithusando Bongela, Burak Çevik, & Jonathan Ali Mar 07, 2023

Show notes

Last weekend, Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish was at the True/False Film Festival: an annual documentary festival in Columbia, Missouri that has, over the years, become an exciting site to discover the latest developments in nonfiction cinema. This year, a prominent trend in the lineup was personal filmmaking—films in which directors drew upon on their memories, families, and relationships to craft something universal or even political. Two films in particular exemplified this trend, though in different ways. Forms of Forgetting, by the filmmaker Burak Çevik, turns conversations between two of the filmmaker's friends about their memories of their relationship into a broader reflection on the link between remembrance and one's sense of place, the city, and the nation. In Milisuthando, the artist Milisuthando Bongela combines archival footage, recollections, and interviews with friends and family to reflect on her childhood in the Transkei, which was an all-Black, segregationist South African state sanctioned by the apartheid regime. On today's podcast, Burak, Milisuthando, and Jonathan Ali, a programmer for True/False, joined to delve into the making of these films and the ethics, aesthetics, and politics of personal filmmaking.

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