The Film Comment Podcast

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Cannes 2019 Preview, Day 1 May 15, 2019

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Let the games begin! We’ve touched down in Cannes and, for our first of many podcasts from the festival, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold found a quiet corner with FC contributing editor Amy Taubin to talk over some of the titles—both big and small—that we’re most excited about. On this episode, we focus on the opening film, Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die, and chat about the expectations surrounding Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. We also touch on Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory, Mati Diop’s Atlantiques, Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life, and many others. Check back over the course of Cannes for a regular stream of new episodes diving into these and other films. And, in case you missed it, be sure to check out Taubin’s interview with Jim Jarmusch, posted yesterday: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/cannes-interview-jim-jarmusch/

Interview: Olivier Assayas May 08, 2019

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In our May-June issue (out now!), Aliza Ma writes about the new film Olivier Assayas’s Non-Fiction, a comedic portrait of a Paris literary set struggling to adapt to the digital age. Her essay begins, “In the cinema of Olivier Assayas, we find a laboratory of the world.” We had the good fortune to visit that laboratory in a new interview with the director. Film Comment contributor (and Curator of Film at the Museum of Moving Image) Eric Hynes sat down with Assayas for a conversation that expands on the ideas about technology and human relationships contained in Non-Fiction, and which bubble up throughout the director’s movies, such as Irma Vep, Personal Shopper, and Le destinées. Non-Fiction is in theaters now, including at Film at Lincoln Center.

The Rep Report #7: Black ’90s at BAM May 01, 2019

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The Rep Report is our regular roundup of current retrospectives and film series. This week, we're focusing on an important and fun series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music called Black ’90s: A Turning Point in American Cinema. It's a carefully curated look at major works by black filmmakers in the 1990s, such as the late John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood, Charles Burnett’s To Sleep With Anger, Kasi Lemmons’s Eve’s Bayou, Leslie Harris’s Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., and Hype Williams’s Belly, as well as lesser known works like Zeinabu Irene Davis’s Compensation and Haile Gerima’s Sankofa, among many others. The programmer of the series, Ashley Clark—who has written for Film Comment about Burnett and Ava Duvernay, among others—joined FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold for an in-depth conversation about Black ’90s and the riches on offer throughout the series.

Desire at the Movies Apr 24, 2019

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In our March-April issue, Michael Koresky writes about history of a movie magazine with a humble name: Films and Filming. Koresky writes about the importance of this long-defunct publication as both a classic movie journal and a cultural phenomenon for gay readers. He writes, “Our culture instills mighty shame in us for knowing what we want, and that shame has long been magnified to the point of obscenity even stigma, when that desire is gay. The shamelessness of the magazine’s appeal, and the way it so rudely bound sexual desires to movie love, felt like a rich, purposeful affront.” Jumping off from this feature, Koresky joins Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold for a wide-ranging discussion of the role of desire in our love of movies. We were delighted to also bring in Aliza Ma, programmer at Metrograph, and Andrew Chan, Web Editor at the Criterion Collection.

Claire Denis and Robert Pattinson Apr 17, 2019

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For our latest Film Comment Free Talk, Claire Denis and Robert Pattinson joined FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold to discuss their singular new film High Life, which graces the cover of Film Comment’s March-April issue. In his feature on the film, Nick Pinkerton writes that, “While High Life is the biggest and most expensive movie that Denis has ever made, it gives little indication of its scale having been bartered for at the sacrifice of freedom—or with the stymieing of the go-with-the-gut intuition that has produced a sui generis body of work, created with enormous craft but a total disdain for the rules of the ‘well-made’ film, elliptical in approach and full of jarring tonal shifts.” In this conversation, the filmmaker and actor discuss working together to bring High Life to the screen, as well as Denis’s remarkable eye for physicality, encountering the taboo, considerations of genre, and much more.

New Directors/New Films 2019 Apr 10, 2019

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New Directors/New Films has always been a vital for, well, new directors and new films. Over the course of its nearly 50 years, the festival has introduced audiences to filmmakers like Spike Lee, Chantal Akerman, Bi Gan, Valerie Massadian, Gabriel Mascaro, RaMell Ross, and Kelly Reichardt. The 2019 edition continued in this tradition, bringing a bracing selection of films, many still without distribution, to screens in New York. This week, we take a closer look at ND/NF 2019, paying particular attention to a few of our favorites this year, including Clemency, Joy, Genesis, and Fausto, among others. Film Comment Editor in Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Rosa Morales, development and membership coordinator at SFFILM, Sebastian Rea, founder of the 30UNDER30 Film Festival, and Abby Sun, FC contributor and programmer at True/False Film Fest to reflect on this year's festival, and to dig a little deeper into some standout selections.

This Is What Democracy Looks Like Apr 03, 2019

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They say that "democracy dies in darkness," but a handful of new films, including Mike Leigh's Peterloo and Jordan Peele's Us, argue otherwise, providing evidence that the subject is alive and well in darkened theaters across the country. This week, we discuss how these films—along with the work of Agnès Varda, Agnieszka Holland, and Frederick Wiseman—portray democracy on screen. Film Comment Editor in Chief Nicolas Rapold, contributing editor Amy Taubin, and FC contributor Shonni Enelow convene a committee to explore how these filmmakers and films approach the often messy, non-linear, and multi-faceted process of collective governance.

The Rep Report #6 Mar 28, 2019

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The Rep Report returns with an in-depth conversation about the upcoming Nelly Kaplan retrospective at the Quad Cinema, along with other rep highlights. This week, Film Comment Editor in Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by FC contributing editor Nellie Killian and first-time guest Chris Wells, director of repertory programming at Quad Cinema for a look at an underappreciated filmmaker whose work is primed for reappraisal. The fascinating Nelly Kaplan was something of a polymath, variously a journalist, documentary filmmaker, writer of surrealist fiction, screenwriter, and film critic and theorist (and occasional contributor to Film Comment). Under discussion here is the series of politically probing, playful, and ferociously feminist features which the Paris-based Kaplan began making in the late ’60s. In addition to the Kaplan series, which opens April 12 at the Quad, we also touch on Film Forum's upcoming Fay Wray and Robert Riskin series and pay tribute to the Nitrate Picture Show at the George Eastman Museum.

High Life and Beyond Mar 20, 2019

Show notes

High Life, the new movie from Claire Denis, comes to theaters on April 5. With a cast featuring Film Comment cover subject Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, and André Benjamin as members of a group of death-row convicts trapped on an experimental, interstellar journey, High Life tells a story of intimacy, isolation, and taboo. Though it touches on themes of family and group identity that may be familiar to fans of Denis, the film’s setting and nods to science fiction make it a both a continuation and a complication of many of the ideas, feelings, and sensations that she’s explored before. For the occasion, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold welcomed FC contributing writer Nick Pinkerton (author of the March-April issue’s High Life cover story) and Madeline Whittle of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, to discuss both High Life and one other Denis film chosen by each guest. Denis and Pattinson will sit down for a Film Comment Free Talk on Thursday, April 4, at 5:30pm. The seating will be first-come, first-served, and doors will open at 4:30pm. Don’t miss what’s sure to be an enlightening, exciting conversation. For more information, visit filmlinc.org.

László Nemes Mar 14, 2019

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For our latest Film Comment talk, Academy Award-winning director László Nemes sat down to discuss his latest film, which opened Film Comment Selects last month. The film, Sunset, tells the story of an orphaned young woman, Irisz, searching for her mysterious brother in the nightmarishly labyrinth of pre-World War I Budapest. Sunset opens in theaters on March 22. Nemes joined Film Comment editor Nicolas Rapold for a conversation following on Saturday, February 9 to discuss Sunset and the director's work more broadly.

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