The Film Comment Podcast

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Cannes 2022 Preview with Jonathan Romney and Jessica Kiang May 17, 2022

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Cannes 2022 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, we welcome FC contributing editor Jonathan Romney and frequent FC contributor Jessica Kiang on the podcast to preview this year’s lineup. We talk about the history of the festival—and how it’s changed over the years—before discussing some of the films we’re most excited to see, including David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, Claire Denis’s The Stars at Noon, Jerzy Skolimowski’s Eo, Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up, and others. Subscribe to the Film Comment Letter today at filmcomment.com for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2022 edition.

The Hong Show with Dennis Lim May 10, 2022

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Everything you always wanted to know about Hong Sangsoo… but were afraid to ask! To celebrate Film at Lincoln Center’s two-part retrospective of the films of Hong, we hosted a special live conversation with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim about the playful, profound, and soju-soaked filmography of one of world cinema’s most influential and ingenious artists. Dennis, the author of a forthcoming monograph on Hong’s Tale of Cinema from Fireflies Press, had his expertise put to the test with a series of preselected questions from Film Comment contributors about the South Korean auteur’s elliptical, endlessly generative body of work. And of course, in keeping with the spirit of the films, drinks were be served before and during the conversation. Read an exclusive excerpt from Dennis’s book here: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/tale-of-cinema-dennis-lim-excerpt/

Forgotten Filmmakers of the French New Wave & Prismatic Ground May 03, 2022

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This week's special two-parter episode spotlights a pair of upcoming must-see programs in New York City. In the first half, FC co-editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute chat with the critic, scholar, and former Cahiers du Cinema editor Jean-Michel Frodon, who has curated a revelatory series for the Museum of Modern Art, “Forgotten Filmmakers of the French New Wave.” In an enlightening conversation, Jean-Michel tells us about the origins and mutations of the term nouvelle vague, the influence of the Algerian War and anti-colonial movements in that period, the intermixing of documentary and fiction in New Wave practice, and more. In the second part of the episode, Devika and Clint interview Inney Prakash, the founder of Prismatic Ground, a new festival for experimental documentary. Inney began Prismatic Ground last year amid the upheavals of the pandemic as an attempt to reimagine film festivals from a more radical, ethical, and global perspective. Inney discusses his curatorial philosophy, why it was important for him to have the festival stream online all over the world for free, and some highlights from this year’s program, including The Afterlight by Charlie Shackleton, Declarations of Love by Tiff Rekem, Squish! by Tulapop Saenjaroen, and more. For links to films and more, check out the show notes at filmcomment.com

Céline Sciamma on Petite Maman Apr 26, 2022

Show notes

After 2019’s Portrait of a Lady of Fire, we were eagerly awaiting Céline Sciamma’s next feature. Her new film, Petite Maman, is now finally in theaters, and it’s something of a surprise: a sweet, magical-realist story about a little girl who meets and befriends a younger version of her grieving mother. It’s a more modest film than the swooning period romance of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, but Petite Maman is just as profound in its play with gender roles and women’s inner worlds. As Amy Taubin writes in an essay in this week’s Film Comment Letter, “All of Sciamma’s films contain autobiographical elements, but none are as revealing as Petite Maman’s portrait of the filmmaker as a fledgling tomboy writer/director, already eager to claim all roles on-screen and off that only have been bestowed on men.” FC Editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish sat down with the director over Zoom to dig into those autobiographical elements, the film’s deceptive simplicity, Sciamma’s love of classic children’s films, and much more.

In Conversation with Cate Blanchett Apr 25, 2022

Show notes

Every year, Film at Lincoln Center honors a luminary of the film industry with the Chaplin Award. This year’s recipient, the 47th, is an actress who has essayed some of the most iconic performances of the last quarter-century, and whose nearly superhuman versatility is matched by the consistency of her craft: Cate Blanchett. In an in-depth tribute essay, the scholar Amy Herzog writes that “Blanchett’s almost otherworldly range has generated certain tropes in reviews of her work: she is often described as ‘chameleonic,’ or said to ‘disappear into the character. But these takes, which suggest an innate and natural ability for imitation, or even an erasure of the self, don’t capture the careful calibrations of Blanchett’s craft.” A couple of weeks ago, I sat down with Blanchett to dig into those calibrations and the process behind some of the most interesting performances of her career. We discussed her iconic turns in Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There, Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok, and some deeper cuts, like her early roles in the Australian miniseries Bordertown and Tom Tykwer’s Heaven (which was written by Krystof Kieslowski).

Stewart Bird and Deborah Shaffer on The Wobblies Apr 12, 2022

Show notes

For this week’s podcast, Film Comment co-deputy editor Clinton Krute sat down with filmmakers Stewart Bird and Deborah Shaffer, the duo behind the 1979 documentary The Wobblies. The film tells the story of the Industrial Workers of the World, the radical labor union that nearly brought American industry to its knees in the early years of the 20th century. With The Wobblies, Stewart and Deborah painted a moving, and eye-opening portrait of a movement. Weaving together remarkable oral histories with stunning archival material, the film stands out as much for its subtle formal innovations as for the history it details—much of which still retains the power to shock. With a new restoration coming to theaters on May 1, or International Workers’ Day, and the film’s recent induction into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, The Wobblies is once again in the public eye, and the story it tells remains as relevant as ever.

The Art of the Real 2022 with Chris Boeckmann and Leo Goldsmith Mar 29, 2022

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We look forward to the Art of the Real festival every year, and 2022 is no exception. In fact, a spotlight on the work of French filmmaker Alice Diop makes this year’s roundup of groundbreaking nonfiction and hybrid filmmaking especially exciting. Diop’s We (2021), a perceptive and beautifully wrought exploration of national identity, was a highlight of last year’s festival circuit. Her previous films, screening as part of the spotlight, are no less revelatory. For today’s podcast, Film Comment editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish invited critics Leo Goldsmith and Chris Boeckmann to join us for an overview this year’s Art of the Real, opening March 31 at Film at Lincoln Center. We kicked off the conversation with Diop’s early films Towards Tenderness and The Death of Danton, before turning to other standouts including Jacquelyn Mills’s Geographies of Solitude, Sharlene Bamboat’s If from Every Tongue It Drips, David Easteal’s The Plains, Peter Tscherkassky’s Train Again, and more.

Cinema and the State with Nadav Lapid and Jamsheed Akrami Mar 22, 2022

Show notes

With Ahed’s Knee, the rawest, most autobiographical entry in Nadav Lapid’s blistering filmography (The Kindergarten Teacher; Synonyms), the director crafts a stylized and self-lacerating portrait of an Israeli filmmaker railing at the censorship, hypocrisy, and violence of his government. Last week, we welcomed Lapid for a Film Comment Live Talk exploring Ahed’s Knee and the questions it raises about state censorship of cinema, the politics of self-critique, and the political role and responsibility of the artist. We were also joined by Jamsheed Akrami, scholar of Iranian cinema and director of several documentaries, including A Cinema of Discontent. Listen all the way to the end for Jamsheed’s translation of a recent viral video in which the legendary Iranian filmmaker Dariush Mehrjui excoriates government censorship.

Ukrainian Cinema with Anastasiya Osipova and Lukas Brasiskis Mar 15, 2022

Show notes

The ongoing horrors of war in Ukraine have raised questions for art communities around the world: How can we meaningfully respond to this crisis? How can we support and defend artists and art in the face of cultural and material destruction? And how can art, and cinema in particular, help us grapple with our collective past and present? To delve into these questions, Film Comment editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish invited two scholars, Anastasiya Osipova and Lukas Brasiskis, to the podcast. Lukas, a curator at e-flux, recently programmed films by the contemporary Ukrainian artists Piotr Armianovski and Mykola Ridnyi as a fundraiser event. With these two films as a starting point, Osipova and Brasiskis describe the cinema of Ukraine—from the archival documentaries and searing fictions of Sergei Loznitsa, to the work of Sergei Parajanov, Larisa Shepitko, and many more—and its relevance to the current moment. The two also discuss ongoing efforts by the Dovzhenko Film Center to protect the material culture of Ukraine, and much more. For a list of resources, links, and suggestions for donations, visit: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/the-film-comment-podcast-ukrainian-cinema

Points of View, with Reid Davenport and Joe Hunting Mar 08, 2022

Show notes

A common term in nonfiction filmmaking and criticism, “point of view” connotes a number of different meanings: a perspective on the world, a camera position, an assertion of subjectivity. Last week, at the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri, FC co-editor Devika Girish led a special Film Comment Live Talk with filmmakers Reid Davenport (I Didn't See You There) and Joe Hunting (We Met in Virtual Reality) to explore the material, aesthetic, and political implications of a cinematic point of view, and how documentaries make and unmake our ways of seeing.

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