The Film Comment Podcast

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Sundance 2020 #3 Jan 27, 2020

Show notes

Welcome back to our podcasts from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival! We’ll be bringing you daily updates from Park City, covering all the great films and festive (film-related) goings-on. For today’s podcast, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sat down with Abby Sun, programmer and FC contributor, and Devika Girish, assistant editor at FC, for a discussion of Shirley, Time, Yalda, małni—towards the ocean, towards the shore, and more.

Sundance Interview: Dee Rees on The Last Thing He Wanted Jan 26, 2020

Show notes

This week we are at the Sundance film festival in Park City, Utah, sending regular dispatches about the highlights in its independent film lineup. One of the most highly anticipated movies here is called The Last Thing He Wanted, from filmmaker Dee Rees, who previously directed Mudbound and Pariah. The Last Thing He Wanted is an adaptation of the Joan Didion novel, which centers on a journalist who gets caught up in shady international business when her ageing father gets sick. The time period is the high-Reagan 1980s, and the story involves malfeasance in Central America, gun running, family challenges, and the CIA. Anne Hathaway plays the journalist, Willem Dafoe is her father, Rosie Perez is a fellow journalist. Rees takes a kaleidoscopic approach to adapting Didion’s typically complex narration, FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sat down with the director at Sundance to discuss her process as well as pick her brain about the movie’s ideas about modernity and identity. The Last Thing He Wanted premieres here on January 27 and will be available through Netflix in February.

Sundance 2020 #2 Jan 25, 2020

Show notes

Welcome back to our series of podcasts from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival! We’ll be bringing you daily updates from Park City, covering all the great films and festive (film-related) goings-on. For today’s podcast, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Sam Adams, senior editor at Slate and editor of Slate’s culture blog Brow Beat, and FC Assistant Editor (and podcast regular) Devika Girish. Films discussed include Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Zola, Boys State, Into the Deep, and Jumbo.

Sundance 2020 #1 Jan 24, 2020

Show notes

We’re back, reporting from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Where others may have balked, we brave the dangerously crowded, ice-packed streets of Park City, Utah to bring you critical conversations about all the highlights from the festival. Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined for this episode by Assistant Editor Devika Girish and podcast regular Eric Hynes, Curator of Film, Museum of the Moving Image, to discuss the films Crip Camp, Bad Hair, Miss Americana, and This Is Not a Burial, It Is a Resurrection.

Sundance 2020 Preview Jan 22, 2020

Show notes

It’s January, which means it’s time once again to see some movies in the snowy wilderness of the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Once again, the Film Comment Podcast will be on the scene, recording regular episodes, with the latest on the festival, the movies, and the filmmakers. We’re kicking things off with a preview of the 2020 edition’s offerings, talking about the movies we’re most looking forward to, and providing some context to the festival and what’s changed over the years. FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined for this discussion by Amy Taubin, contributing editor, and Devika Girish, Assistant Editor.

The Decade Project #4: The 2010s, or, What Just Happened? Jan 17, 2020

Show notes

For the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about the 2010s and asking some questions as part of our Decade Project. What were the key movies of the decade, which filmmakers were doing innovative work, and what were the major shifts and big issues in the artform and the industry? We brought our discussion of the decade to our latest Film Comment Talk at Film at Lincoln Center. Joining Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold for our discussion were Ashley Clark, Director of Film Programming at BAM; Devika Girish, Assistant Editor of Film Comment; Eric Hynes, Curator of Film at Museum of the Moving Image; and Alissa Wilkinson, Film Critic at Vox.

Interview: Pedro Costa on Vitalina Varela Jan 15, 2020

Show notes

Vitalina Varela, the beautiful new film from Pedro Costa, is the cover of our January-February issue. Jordan Cronk spoke with Costa about the film’s story of a Cape Verdean woman named Vitalina who comes back to Lisbon for the funeral of her estranged husband. As Cronk put it in his feature: “Costa has been developing his approach into a new kind of dramatic portraiture . . . He has become a touchstone for an entire movement of contemporary art cinema ranging from documentary to the avant-garde.” Vitalina Varela next screens in the Sundance film festival, followed by an exclusive theatrical run at Film at Lincoln Center, where it showed in the main slate of the New York Film Festival. Last fall, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold spoke with Pedro Costa at Film at Lincoln Center about crafting his deeply moving and technically virtuosic film.

Filmmakers on Varda Jan 10, 2020

Show notes

Throughout her pioneering career, Agnès Varda has inspired countless filmmakers with her work and her groundbreaking career and style. At Film Comment, we leapt at the opportunity to put her on the cover when Faces Places was released. More recently, to celebrate the final weekend of the Varda retrospective at Film at Lincoln Center, Film Comment presented a conversation with another generation of filmmakers in honor of Varda. They talked about what Varda has meant to them and which movies from her oeuvre influenced them. For this discussion, Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold was pleased to be joined by Ashley Connor (cinematographer, Madeline’s Madeline and Feast of the Epiphany), Anna Rose Holmer (director, The Fits, ND/NF 2015), and Akosua Adoma Owusu (Pelourinho: They Don’t Really Care About Us, NYFF; 2020 recipient of the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists.

Interview: Josh and Benny Safdie on Uncut Gems and New York Movies Jan 08, 2020

Show notes

Uncut Gems, directed by Josh and Benny Safdie, and starring Adam Sandler, is a full-throttle portrait of a diamond dealer in New York’s Diamond District. It’s been a wild success since it opened in December, and in our November-December issue, Michael Koresky wrote about the movie, praising how the Safdie brothers “capture the bustle and pace of rapid-fire economic exchange, filtering it through an increasingly panicky wild ride.” The neighborhoods of New York are central to the energy of Uncut Gems (as well as their previous films like Good Time). So we decided to invite Josh and Benny Safdie to chat about New York movies. Film Comment contributor Nick Pinkerton sat down with the filmmakers at Film at Lincoln Center, to talk about New York on screen and which particular movies influenced their vision of their hometown.

Greta Gerwig and Little Women Jan 02, 2020

Show notes

Little Women is without question one of the best movies of the recently-ended year, and it’s a wonderful triumph for director Greta Gerwig. That’s why we put it on the cover of our November-December issue, featuring Gerwig’s delightful interview by Devika Girish. But there’s even more to say about the movie and its intelligent, complex, and visually rich adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s novel. So Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sat down with Devika and Amy Taubin, contributing editor to FC, to talk about what makes Little Women a great and important movie that shouldn’t be missed in the hustle of the new year.

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