The Film Comment Podcast

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Sleepover, or, The Comfort of Movies Dec 20, 2017

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Sleepovers offer kids a special opportunity to hang out with their friends largely unsupervised, free to chat and dream way after bedtime. The types of films that can be discovered—and obsessively re-watched—during the wee small hours of the morning can frighten, enlighten, or amuse, which is why it’s a natural subject for this podcast. Film Comment Digital Producer Violet Lucca was joined by Nellie Killian, film programmer and FC Contributing Editor; Michael Koresky, Editorial Director at the Film Society of Lincoln Center; and Andrew Chan, Web Editor for the Criterion Collection. Pull up a pillow and listen!

Best Films of 2017 Dec 12, 2017

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As another year of moviegoing comes to a close, relax by your fire or space heater with the results of the annual Film Comment critics’ poll! The top ten theatrical releases of the year, in the humble opinion of FC contributors and editors, are unveiled on this week’s podcast by Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold, Film Society Editorial Director Michael Koresky, and Digital Producer Violet Lucca. In addition to discussing what stood out (or might have been flawed) about the top-voted films, each critic also shares a film they wish had made the cut—lists have their limits, so think of ours as a way of starting a conversation about the year in film. Visit filmcomment.com/best-of-2017 to see the full results.

Formative Filmmakers (Part Two) Dec 05, 2017

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Picking up where we left off last week, this week’s episode travels further down cinephilic memory lane…or should we say, further forward. We check back in with the panel from Formative Filmmakers Part One—Nick Davis, professor of film, literature, and gender studies at Northwestern; Girish Shambu, author of The New Cinephilia and the September/October FC feature on immigration cinema “A Double Life”; Michael Koresky, Director of Editorial and Creative Strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center; and Violet Lucca, Film Comment Digital Producer and podcast host—to dive deep into their memories of another early favorite filmmaker. This time, the critics move away from their earliest fascinations toward the directors they found later in life, especially ones who might have redefined their preconceived notions about the medium. Héctor Babenco, Brian De Palma, Oliver Stone, and Abbas Kiarostami all crop up in this half.

Formative Directors (Part One) Nov 28, 2017

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There’s nothing like first love, especially when it’s projected on the silver screen. This week’s episode of the podcast revisits formative cinematic fascinations—one director who kickstarted cinephilia at a young age, and another who reinvigorated and maybe even recontextualized the passion a bit later down the road. This week’s participants—Nick Davis, professor of film, literature, and gender studies at Northwestern; Girish Shambu, author of The New Cinephilia and the September/October FC feature on immigration cinema “A Double Life”; Michael Koresky, Director of Editorial and Creative Strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center; and Violet Lucca, Film Comment Digital Producer and podcast host—took a breather between TIFF screenings to discuss their favorites, as well as how their emotions have evolved with (or been challenged by) the passage of time. Jane Campion, Manmohan Desai, Ingmar Bergman, and Quentin Tarantino make this half!

Film Comment Podcast Tales From The Campus Film Society Nov 21, 2017

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Nick Pinkerton’s feature in the new issue, “The Golden Age of Campus Film Societies,” serves as a point of departure for a discussion on the role of campus film culture in shaping cinephilia. In this podcast, Dave Kehr, author and curator of film at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and film critic J. Hoberman talk to Pinkerton about their experiences in campus film culture. Campus film societies not only made international arthouse films available around the country, they also served as battlegrounds for competing ideas about film before the advent of academic cinema studies. In this way, campus film societies were formative for generations of cinephiles and film critics. Kehr, Hoberman, and Pinkerton join FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca to discuss the significance of campus film societies and the future of their impact.

David Bordwell’s Reinventing Hollywood Nov 14, 2017

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This week, The Film Comment Podcast welcomes back seminal critic David Bordwell to discuss his new book Reinventing Hollywood: How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie Storytelling. Instead of approaching the decade through the lens of one genre or auteur, Bordwell thinks about the stylistic hallmarks that distinguished the decade—for example, screenwriting conventions like flashbacks—and how they paved the way for the classical Hollywood form we might take for granted today. Bordwell joins Imogen Sara Smith, frequent FC and Criterion contributor, and Violet Lucca, FC Digital Producer and podcast moderator, for a journey into (and even Out of) the cinematic past.

101 Episodes + Ruben Östlund Nov 07, 2017

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Have we passed 100 episodes already? Apparently so! This week, we invite listeners to look back at some of the most memorable moments of The Film Comment Podcast, including choice blurts from Kent Jones, Amy Taubin, Maitland McDonagh, Molly Haskell, Nick Pinkerton, and other special guests. We also look forward with FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca’s interview with Ruben Östlund about The Square, what it means to be Swedish, and the power of YouTube.

Tobe Hooper Oct 31, 2017

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This Halloween, The Film Comment Podcast salutes a filmmaker whose work, according to the British Board of Film Classification, exemplified the “pornography of terror.” The panel—Ina Archer, media conservation and digitization assistant at the Smithsonian National African-American Museum of History and Culture; Margaret Barton-Fumo, longtime FC contributor and editor of Paul Verhoeven: Interviews; and Michael Koresky, Director of Editorial and Creative Strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center—convenes to remember the eclectic body of work of Tobe Hooper, who passed away earlier this year. Pick your poison, whether it’s television static, or carnivorous crocodiles, or Stephen King miniseries, or meat hooks… and don’t get us started on Lifeforce. As always, FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca moderates the conversation.

Lucrecia Martel’s Zama Oct 24, 2017

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Premiered in Venice and recently screened in the New York Film Festival, Zama marks not only the long-awaited return of Lucrecia Martel, but also her first literary adaptation. Martel expanded on the first-person fever dream of the original 1956 novel by Antonio Di Benedetto, whose fans included Roberto Bolaño and Julio Cortázar. This week’s episode of The Film Comment Podcast ruminates on Zama’s novelistic origins with the help of literary translator and CUNY professor Esther Allen, who produced the first English translation of Zama in 2016, for which she won the 2017 National Translation Award in Prose. Allen is joined by Dennis Lim, Director of Programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and Violet Lucca, FC Digital Producer and podcast host, to discuss the subconscious presences Martel might imply beyond the edges of her frames.

Armando Iannucci Oct 20, 2017

Show notes

Armando Iannucci has long had a genius for the absurdity of global politics, from his work on the satirical news program On the Hour in the 1990s, to the British ministry antics of The Thick of It, to his HBO series Veep. But his new film, The Death of Stalin, set amidst the immediate and ridiculous aftermath of the Soviet leader’s death in 1953, comes at a time when the political situation in America and abroad has become all too absurd. Iannucci discusses the current presidential administration, as well as the way in which humor can naturally arise from terror, in this bonus episode of The Film Comment Podcast. The Death of Stalin opens today in the U.K. and will be released in the U.S. early next year by IFC Films.

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