This special episode of The Cinematologists is a contribution to the Students on Screen  project convened by Dr Kay Calver and Dr Bethan Michael-Fox, to coincide with a special issue of Open Screens they have edited, which explores screen representations of students across a plethora of Global screen media forms.

On behalf of The Cinematologists, Neil contributed a paper - drawing from his decade-old doctoral work - on representations of film students in anglophone cinema, and put together this episode, which is both a dissemination of and critical artefact of, the special issue.

For this episode Neil talks to Kay and Beth about the Students on Screen project, as conveners and issue editors, as well as three contributors to the special collection. The contributors are Dr Sharon Coleclough, Dr Devaleena Kundu and Dr Oli Belas. The critical focus of all the conversations includes critical regard for the spaces where representations of students in fiction and non-fiction screen spaces can improve, address, or further address gaps in lived experience.

Elsewhere in the episode, Neil and Dario discuss representations of students on screen, Neil’s paper, and in an extended analysis, a film that Neil doesn’t cover in his piece, but is worthy of discussion, 2014’s The Rewrite, directed by Marc Lawrence and starring Hugh Grant and Marisa Tomei.

For more information on the Students on Screen project, click the link above, and for more information, on the journal Open Screens, click here.

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Visit our Patreon at www.patreon.com/cinematologists

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we’ll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast, so please do that if you enjoy the show.

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Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

For the final [main] episode of this season, the 21st, we are delighted to welcome writer and podcaster John Bleasdale (Writers on Film) to the show, to discuss his excellent book on Terrence Malick, The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick.

Neil talks to John about his approach to research and interview/archive given the glaring lack of a central subject's voice, Malick and John's own relationship to the big themes around philosophy and faith, the power of understanding Malick's later period work anew through the lens of [auto]biography, and the ways that Malick's early work truly shifted American film language.

Elsewhere Neil and Dario discuss Malick's work in thematic/aesthetic periods, how Malick used formal experimentation to explore biographical trauma and regret in his most divisive work, approaching famous people, and how books and podcasts provide valuable routes into engagement with film and cinema, to understanding wider contexts, particularly for challenging and envelope-pushing work.

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Visit our Patreon at www.patreon.com/cinematologists

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we’ll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast, so please do that if you enjoy the show.

———

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

It was an absolute joy to welcome actor, director, producer and writer Mario van Peebles to The Cinematologists Podcast. In London to show his new film Outlaw Posse as part of the Black Rodeo season at the BFI, I was able to talk with him and his son Mandela, who also stars in the film, about his lifelong interest in Westerns, particularly in the often cliched, often forgotten role of African American's in the Western mythos.

Outlaw Posse is more of a companion piece than a sequel to his 1993 film Posse; this new work mines similar territory with its generic rawness infused with social commentary but with a kinetic direction that embraces spectacle.

The conversation also covers the van Peebles' legacy; Mario's father Melvin one of the true blaxploitation pioneers, director of the now recognised classic Sweet Sweetback's Baadass Song; Mario's own journey in the industry, from his big break in Clint Eastwood's Heartbreak Ridge to his own seminal work as director of New Jack City.

Neil and I discuss how wonderfully open and insightful Mario and Mandela were in the interview and further explore his perhaps under-appreciated body of work. We discuss the influence of New Jack City thinking about how that film triggered the New Black Cinema movement and influenced the aesthetics of 80s and 90s filmmaking in its wake.
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For extra bonus content, including extended interviews, bonus podcast and our monthly newsletter consider joining our Patreon community: www.patreon.com/cinematoloigists

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

To coincide with the cinema release of the new drama County Lines, directed by one of today's guests Henry Blake, Neil and Dario discuss the form and legacies of that oft contested term 'social realism', asking if it has a place in today's British Cinema landscape and if recent releases such as Fyzal Boulifa's Lynn + Lucy and Mark Jenkin's Bait are evidence of a 'new wave'.

As well as Henry's interview with Neil, Dario talks with Sarah Gavron, director of one of the most acclaimed of the recent British 'social' dramas, Rocks, recently released in cinemas by Altitude Films and currently screening on Netflix.

Neil and Dario also wax lyrical on Steve McQueen's Lovers Rock and Neil confuses The Long Good Friday with The Long Goodbye.

Show Notes

Guy Lodge's Variety review of County Lines, mentioned by Dario on the show.

You can also subscribe to The Cinematologists on:

Apple Podcasts

Spotify 

Google Podcasts

Podchaser 

We produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/entended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

Music Credits

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

To coincide with the Blu Ray (Arrow Films) release of Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang's wonderful elegy to the cinema Goodbye Dragon Inn, we are reposting one of our earliest episodes. Associated with what has come to be known a slow cinema, Tsai's subtly observed visual storytelling utilising long shots, intricate framing and editing but with minimalist dialogue, demands an a deep level of  attention in the viewer. The empty, dilapidated movie palace at the centre of the story a metaphor for wider rejection of the auditorium experience. Recorded live at Falmouth University, the episode now feels like a bittersweet look back at a time when the status of cinema-going was undoubtedly a topic of lament, but not to the extent that it is now. 

The episode also features an interview with academic Sarah Atkinson about her book, Beyond The Screen: Emerging Cinema and Engaging Audience - which presents an expanded conceptualization of cinema which encompasses the myriad ways film can be experienced in a digitally networked society where the auditorium is now just one location amongst many in which audiences can encounter and engage with films.

Listening back to the audio was also a reminder to us as to how far the podcast has come in the 5 years since we started. There is definitely a rough and ready feel about the audio, but we hope you 'appreciate' that.

Goodbye Dragon Inn is released on Blu Ray with Arrow Films on 23rd of November.

You can also subscribe to The Cinematologists on:

Apple Podcasts

Spotify 

Google Podcasts

Podchaser 

We produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/entended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

On this episode, Dario and Neil delve into the career of Ang Lee. For this discussion, they are joined by writer Ellen Cheshire, a former guest on the show (Ep69, Jane Campion's The Piano), whose new book on Ang Lee prompted this episode. 

Find out more about Ellen's books (and more importantly buy them!) here.

In addition, Neil talks to one of his students, third year undergraduate Francesco Signorello, about the 2003 film Hulk, and its impact both negatively and positively on the now ubiquitous superhero movie landscape. 

To kick things off, Neil and Dario also touch on Dario's new article for Film-Philosophy, A Cinema for the Ears: Imagining the Audio-Cinematic through Podcasting, which is available to read, open source, here.

You can also subscribe to The Cinematologists on:

Apple Podcasts

Spotify 

Google Podcasts

Podchaser 

We produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/entended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

Sports films hold formative relevance for both Dario and Neil, and the sports documentary as a sub-genre is the focus and inspiration for a wide-ranging discussion on our latest episode. How does cinema make sport cinematic and what is the difference, for filmmakers and audiences alike, between sports documentary films and watching sports on Television.

The episode is structured around an interview with Finlay Pretsell, a former cyclist and director of Time Trial: A Race to the End. On the surface, the film is a biographical account of the final year of cyclist David Millar, as he comes to terms with retirement after a successful but turbulent career. But more than that the film is an immersive experiment in bringing the audience into the physical and psychological experience of pro cycling. Time Trial is available on the BBC Iplayer and we highly recommend you check it out.

Discussion of Time Trial offers avenues through which to examine how cinema takes the sport out of the immediate yet reductive question of winners and losers. Dario outlines a taxonomy of sports documentaries but this is tricky as the most lauded examples of the genre transcend simple classification both in terms of form and content. The key question: how does cinema make sports cinematic is exemplified seminal films under discussion including Asif Kapadia's detailed archival biographies Senna (2010) and Diego Maradona (2019), the observational detail of Steve James' Hoop Dreams (1994) and Jørgen Leith's A Sunday in Hell (1977), and the transcendent charisma of the sports icon Muhammad Ali is captured with grand scope in When We Were Kings (Leon Gast, 1996) and through a more personal intimacy in I Am Ali (2014, Clare Lewins). Exposes of the darker side of sports are another strand with the multiple films on Lance Armstrong, the wider question of doping tackled in the Oscar-winning Icarus and the recent harrowing account of abuse in American gymnastics explored in Bonni Cohen and John Shenk's Athlete A (2019). 

Discussion of the intersection between cinema and sport on a conceptual level is no-where more apparent than in Julian Faraut's John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection (2018). Neil and Dario discuss how this film demonstrates that both cinema and sport push the boundaries of experience to reach the level of art. In this sense, what is essential about both art and cinema is not coherence or completeness, but moments of transcendence which offer a glimpse of something that expands human potential.

Neil also rounds up recent DVD releases from BFI and Masters of Cinema: Dementia (1955, John Parker), Sleepwalkers (1992, Mick Garris) & 976-Evil (1988, Robert Englund) and also analysed is the recent hard-hitting example of British social realism Lynn + Lucy (2019, Fyzal Boulifa)

You can subscribe to The Cinematologists on:

Apple Podcasts

Spotify 

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Podchaser 

We produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

Email: cinematologists@gmail.com

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

The occasion of Second Sight Film's wonderful 4K release of Nicolas Roeg's debut feature as sole director allowed for a chance to spend some time focusing on a favourite filmmaker of the podcast. 

Thanks to AIM Publicity we were offered the chance to talk to one of the film's actors, leading British film producer and son of the director, Luc Roeg. Neil spoke to him earlier in the year and that conversation forms the basis of this episode, alongside a chat Neil had with Melbourne based film critic Andrew Peirce on the legacy of the film in Australian film culture. 

Neil and Dario get into the slippery nature of the film's representational politics and stark, beautiful aesthetic and kick the episode off trying to remain positive in the face of an overwhelmingly bleak period for the global cinema industry.

You can also subscribe to The Cinematologists on:

Apple Podcasts

Spotify 

Google Podcasts

Podchaser 

We produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/entended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

For the second episode of Season 12, the Cinematologists take a customary left turn from the last episode and get into the weeds about what it's like to be embarking on a new academic year in cinema, for teachers and students, undergraduates and those doing PhDs.

Neil and Dario are joined by Freya Billington from UWE and Dr Catherine Wheatley from King's College London to talk about practice and theory and their intersections, the realities of life in a blended/online teaching world for users at both ends and the need for hope, reflection and kindness in addition to the usual curiosity and determination.

While focused on the teaching of film the episode includes reflections on the social and political moment that are wider than what's going on in film education or even film itself, encompassing as much of the moment we are all in as is possible in an hour-long film podcast chat.

There's also a preamble chat that takes in new Blu-ray releases of This Gun For Hire (Eureka/MoC) and After The Fox (BFI)

Links:

Freya on Twitter

Catherine on Twitter

Neil and Freya's conversation about teaching film production in the COVID era for the journal Digital Culture and Education.

The Chantal Akerman Foundation

10 Essential Akerman Films (BFI)

Information about The Hays Code [briefly mentioned by Catherine] (BFI)

You can also subscribe to The Cinematologists on:

Apple Podcasts

Spotify 

Google Podcasts

Podchaser 

or visit our website: www.cinematologists.com

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/entended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

Season 12 of the Cinematologists is here. And we start with a bang. Episode 106 features an interview with legendary filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich discussing with Dario and Neil his beautifully crafted celebration of one of silent cinema's brightest stars: Buster Keaton. The Great Buster (released on DVD and Blu-ray on Monday 21st) reminds of the genius of Keaton's comedic imagination, covering his early years in vaudeville, his entry into cinema with the string of early two-reeler "gag-fests", the classic feature period in the twenties, and onto his later career where his autonomy was curtailed by the increasingly formulaic nature of the studio system. Throughout, however, even in his later years working in commercials, television, on stage, and in many films that couldn't live up to his talent, flashes of the comedic imagination are apparent along with the incredible physicality and understanding of action in shaping humour. Peter discusses Keaton's legacy in-depth, his influence on film aesthetics and grammar, the legacy of his masterpieces in the twenties including The General, along with pointing out the virtuoso elements in his lesser-known films. He also talks about the process of putting the documentary together, his ideas for changing the chronology, interviews with star contributors, and his own voice-over performance. We hope you enjoy this opportunity to spend time in the company of one of the pivotal filmmakers of American cinema as he discusses an icon of his own.

Thanks to Tom Finney of Blue Dolphin Films for setting up the interview and if you want to see the film at the cinema there is a screening and Q&A at London's fabulous Genesis cinema on the 29th of September, hosted by friend of the show Pamela Hutchinson.

Alongside this, we are delighted to premiere our new theme music, written exclusively for the Cinematologists by Welsh singer-songwriter Gwenno. Both Neil and Dario have long been fans of her sound. We recommend that you download her latest album Le Kov.

You can also subscribe to The Cinematologists on:

Apple Podcasts

Spotify 

Podchaser 

or visit our website: www.cinematologists.com

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/entended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

The first of our collaborations with the BFI Japan season focuses on what is generally regarded as a masterpiece of cinema: Yasujirö Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953). In many ways, a simple story of grandparents visiting their children in the city, but one that gradually builds on the resentments and disappointments of intergenerational alienation. Dario and Neil discuss the film in terms of its status in 'the canon', its reverence as Ozu's finest work in a prolific career, and as arguably the purest distillation of the auteur's thematic and formal concerns. A masterclass in directorial precision and visual composition that both registers as a distinct piece of cinematic art but equally, immerses the viewer into its film world where situations and character relations play out in subtle but profound ways. 

Dario and Neil also discuss some of the other films they have watched in the BFI Japan season so far, including Mikio Naruse's Floating Clouds (1955) and When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960). Again, these are films that are painted on the canvas of post-war Japan but focus on the uncertain status and role of women with both featuring the superb Hideko Takamine in the leading role. Very different are Takeshi Kitano's violent, Nihilistic thrillers Violent Cop (1989), Boiling Point (1990) and Sonatine (1993). Visceral gripping, and bleak they are riveting examples of Japanese cinema made with an American B-movie sensibility. And for some trashy fun look no further than 'king of the monster movies' Ishiro Honda: Mothra (1961), Dogora (1964) & Godzilla v King Kong (1962) can all be found on Amazon Prime.

Neil also reviews a new series of Bela Lugosi films based on the work of Edgar Allen Poe and released by Masters of Cinema: Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935).

This is our final episode of Season 11, we thank you for the continued support and hope you rejoin us back in the autumn.

You can also subscribe to The Cinematologists on:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/the-cinematologists-podcast/id981479854

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0RjNz8XDkLdbKZuj9Pktyh

Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/users/thecinematologists

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/entended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

Katie Bryer is a freelance film editor whose brilliant work on Bruce Lee and the Outlaw, Maiden, and Virunga demonstrates the diverse possibilities of documentary storytelling. In this episode, Katie discusses the development of her craft, working through student shorts, children's television, and for the BBC on Holby City. The gaining of confidence and building of skills and experience in a role, clearly underpins the idea that doing the work, having a complete commitment to one's passion, is the key to 'getting good'. Katie discusses with Dario some of the key elements of editing as fundamental to the filmmaking process: cutting between different types of footage, focusing on character, how to define time and space, and whether one truly finds the film in the edit. Dario and Neil discuss editing in a broader sense, including highlights of some of their favourite films from an editing perspective. 

The episode also features chat about recently viewed films both new and old including The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot), The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson), Interview with the Vampire (Neil Jordan), The Lost Boys (Joel Schumacher), A Foreign Affair (Billy Wilder), Mr Vampire (Ricky Lau), Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak), Little Joe (Jessica Hauser), Fanny Lye Deliver'd (Thomas Clay).

Show Notes

Katie Bryer's Website

Bruce Lee and the Outlaw

Maiden

Mark Kermode's Review of The Vast of Night

You can also subscribe to The Cinematologists on:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/the-cinematologists-podcast/id981479854

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0RjNz8XDkLdbKZuj9Pktyh

Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/users/thecinematologists

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/entended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

Sometimes Always Never is the debut feature film from Liverpool filmmaker, musician and designer Carl Hunter. It marks the latest stage in a collaboration with screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce and stars Bill Nighy, Sam Riley, Alice Lowe, Jenny Agutter and Tim McInerny.

The film was released digitally in March, following a successful festival run over the past couple of years, and tells the story of Nighy searching for his long missing son, with Riley as the brother left behind. It’s a moving story, beautifully told and as lockdown got underway, Neil talked with Carl about the film, his filmmaking process and that slippery question ‘what is British cinema?’.

Prior to their chat, Carl sent Neil some images - his scrapbook of ideas and some polaroids - that informed the filmmaking process. He has kindly agreed for us to post a couple here, including the one that sold Bill Nighy on the project as discussed on this episode.

The conversation is framed by Neil and Dario’s discussion of the film and how it engages with ideas of Britishness and masculinity, the subtleties that mark the film out from other similarly themed films and the thrill of finding work to champion that sits on the fringes of the mainstream glut.

Sometimes Always Never can be rented on iTunes, Amazon, YouTube and pretty much anywhere you get your streaming rental fix.

Two of Carl and Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s previous collaborations, the brilliant Shakespeare inspired short A Winter’s Tale and the Beatles inspired short A Day In Life: Twenty Four Zero Hours can be found on YouTube here and here. They are superb shorts in their own right, but also provide a wonderful road map to their debut feature together.

You can also subscribe to The Cinematologists on:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/the-cinematologists-podcast/id981479854

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Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/users/thecinematologists

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/entended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

We are really excited to be collaborating with the BFI once again, particularly for an episode on Belgian auteur filmmaker Chantal Akerman as they begin an in-depth retrospective of her work.

In the autumn of 2022, Akerman's masterpiece Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, was voted the greatest film of all time in Sight and Sound Magazine's once-a-decade poll. We covered that moment with a double episode - which would be a fantastic primer for this show if you haven't listened to it yet.

The episode features a conversation in which Dario speaks to Céline Brouwez, the co-ordinator of the Fondation Chantal Akerman at CINEMATEK, and season curator Isabel Stevens. The discourse surrounding the Sight and Sound poll result and its aftermath as a cultural moment frames the chat. Céline discusses the incredible impact of the poll result on her organisation, and Isabel relives the night of the big announcement and the immediate shockwaves that ran through not only cinephile circles but the broader media.

We talk about how the moment caused a something revaluation of what constitutes "great" cinema, not to mention great art, and provoked something of a minor crisis in cultural gatekeeping, particularly with regard to lists.

One of the things that this BFI retrospective - entitled Adventures in Perception - is keen to address is Akerman's body of work beyond Jeanne Dielman. We go into this in detail, talking through the elements of archiving, restoration and presentation. We think through the breadth of her oeuvre, which has few generic boundaries. And, of course, we explore Akerman herself: her formative experience, the influence of her mother, and her rigorous form borne of a commitment to artistic commitment and morality.

Neil and I then reflect further on the notion of a feminist/female cinematic perspective and the philosophical conundrum: can there be an objective definition of art?

As part of the collaboration, we have four copies of the Akerman Auteur series of Sight and Sound to give to 4 sign-ups for our popcorn-level membership (which is £6 per month). So, if you want to grab one of these, sign up or upgrade ASAP. As part of the popcorn tier you will also get a physical postcard from either myself or Neil.

Visit our Patreon at www.patreon.com/cinematologists

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

The Uncertain Kingdom is “an anthology of twenty short films for our uncertain times”. The brainchild of producers Isabel Feeer, Georgia Goggin and John Jencks, the anthology is released digitally on June 1st with the hope that the films will “inspire, support and encourage new conversations about our interesting times’. 10 filmmakers were invited to make work for the project, with the other 10 shorts selected from an open submission call that saw over 1000 entries and work curated under narrative, documentary and experimental banners. The aim of the project was to create a snapshot of Britain in 2020, coming from an awareness on the behalf of the producing team that these post-Brexit vote times, were interesting across the political and social spectrum (and all this before a little something called Coronavirus).

For this episode, Neil talked to one of the project’s producers John Jencks as well as narrative filmmaker John Wingard (Pavement), documentary filmmakers Alison Hargreaves (Camelot) and Stroma Cairns (Sauna), and director Antonia Campbell-Hughes (Acre Fall Between). Apologies to Iggy LDN (Sucka Punch) and Sophie King (Swan) whose interviews were recorded but whose files were found to be corrupted at editing stage.

In the episode, Dario and Neil discuss the project, the films and the short film form more broadly. They also pay tribute to filmmaker Lynn Shelton and say happy birthday to the marvellous organisation Raising Films, who celebrated five years of activism on behalf of parents and carers in the film industry recently.

The website, with more information on all the films and filmmakers and where to watch them, can be found here.

This is a link to Neil’s Longform interview with Lynn Shelton for the journal Mai: Feminism and Visual Culture, from May 2019, shared here so listeners can enjoy spending time in the company of a great filmmaker sharing so much intimate wisdom about her career and craft. Her death is a real loss to our beloved art form.

You can also subscribe to The Cinematologists on:

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Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/users/thecinematologists

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/entended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

For the first episode of a new century (of Cinematologists episodes) we are proud to present a conversation with esteemed filmmaker and cineaste Mark Cousins to celebrate the release of his mammoth, 14hr, poetic documentary project, and cinephile treasure trove, Women Make Film.

Recorded during lockdown in 2020, the conversation features Neil and Dario talking to Mark about his process and approach as well as the discoveries and rediscoveries contained within this love letter to cinema and foregrounding of forgotten, undervalued and sidelined directorial voices.

The film is released on Blu-ray by the BFI on Monday 18th May, with the BFI Player also streaming the film in 5 parts over the coming 5 weeks from the same date.

Thanks to Jill Reading at the BFI for helping set up the conversation with Mark. Also, for sending us the review copy of Ozu’s Flavour Of Green Tea and Rice, which gets discussed on this episode alongside two releases from Eureka/Masters of Cinema - The Specialists (Sergio Corbucci) and Throw Down (Johnnie To). Thanks to Steve Hills at Eureka for furnishing review copies of the latter titles.

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We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/entended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

In this special episode, marking 100 episodes and five years of The Cinematologists podcast, Neil and Dario take a breath. With the help of friends and supporters of the podcast they discuss the history and evolution of the show, their formative experiences of cinemas, meaningful film viewing experiences, critics and academics that helped shaped their understanding of talking about cinema on the page and elsewhere, and what they think and hope the future of cinema(s) and the podcast might look like.

This episode, like the previous 99 and the show in general, would not be possible without the engagement of the listeners and the willingness of participants to give up their time and knowledge to help make the podcast what it is.

Thank you to everyone who has listened, come to a taping, recorded an interview, provided feedback, bought a t-shirt or just said ‘nice one’.

For episode 100 Neil and Dario especially want to thank Ellen Cheshire, Ryan Gilbey, Gwenno, Mark Jenkin, James Maitre, Marbelle, Kingsley Marshall, Andrew Peirce, Lottie Smith, Tessa and Ren Zelen for their contributions.

A wonderful time was had thinking about the comments and questions that were supplied and talking them through on the recording. Here’s hoping you the listener feel the same.

Thanks for listening.

The music for episode 100 is ‘Open Again Eventually’ by Leah Kardos, which can be heard in full here. In title and tone it felt like the right music for now, for this episode. Thanks Leah for letting us use it. To buy Leah’s latest EP ‘Bird Rib’, where this song is taken from, go to her Bandcamp page. Leah is a doctor of philosophy and senior lecturer in music at Kingston University where she co-founded the Visconti Studio with legendary music producer Tony Visconti.

You can also subscribe to The Cinematologists on:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/the-cinematologists-podcast/id981479854

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We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/entended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only $2.50.

We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

Perhaps the most in-depth analysis possible is focused on an entire film minute by minute. This week's guest Blake Howard has patented that very idea in the format of his highly popular podcast One Heat Minute. Interviewing a guest every week and assigning them a minute from the film, this deep-dive podcast represents a synergy between obsessional fandom, close textual analysis, and explorations of what film means to those who see the form as part of their very identity. The first film that was the subject of this was Heat, and it was a testament to the success of the show that the director, Michael Mann was the final guest of that series. Since then Blake has done series: The Last (12 minutes) of the Mohican's, All the President's Minutes (his current podcast on which Dario recently appeared) and two spin-off shows which he produces: Increment Vice and the upcoming Josie and the Podcats. He has also recently start con-TEN-gen, the film critic's response to the impact of the coronavirus on his colleagues and friends.

In this episode, Dario and Blake realise they have a parallel history in their film education and their taste in films. They discuss Blake's history as a film journalist at the beginnings of the digital age, the challenges and rewards of the 'one-minute' format, film podcasts as a genre, and the possibility of a cinematic experience without images.

In this episode, Neil also reviews three reissues from Eureka/Masters of Cinema: Syncopation (William Dieterle, 1942) Buster Keaton's MGM Boxset, Long Day's Journey into Night (Sidney Lumet, 1962).

Links

Blake Howard is on Twitter as @OneBlakeMinute

Link here for One Heat Minute Productions

Contributor to www.flicks.com.au/ & Dark Horizons

Blake's Article for Vague Visages - Why Criticism: Not Quite the Apocalypse

The voice in cinema is a phenomenon that is in many ways taken for granted. Since the advent of the talkies, the speaking voice synchronised to the human body on-screen is the ingrained process for narrative exposition and character development. However, this accepted synchronisation is one of sound cinema’s fundamental illusions.

This major production for The Cinematologists features the analysis from leading film scholars and critics, each focusing on uses and interpretations of cinematic voice, using a plethora of filmic examples. Many aspects of the cinematic voice are explored including star voices, script and performance, sonic aesthetics of the voice, voice-overs, the singing voice, voices in animation, the disembodied voice, and politics of who has a voice and who listens. We draw upon many of the key thinkers on film sound including the seminal work of Michel Chion. Chion developed concepts like Audio-Vision, to explore how sound shapes how the screened image can be understood, and acousmetré, meaning the cinema’s use of disembodied off-screen voice. Using these ideas he forwards the argument that sound is not a secondary addendum to image in the cinematic experience, but fundamentally structures how we see and understand film.

Unlike our usual conversational format, this episode is an audio-essay; recorded interviews cut together with indicative clips in a sonic collage which is hopefully an immersive experience transversing the boundaries between creativity and criticism. We recommend that you listen to this episode on headphones to get the full effect. As always Dario and Neil discuss the themes of the podcast but also engage with the production and formal approach in the context of film podcasts more broadly.

Contributors to this episode are (in order of appearance are):

Dario Llinares - Website - Twitter

Clive Frayne (11:03-19:18)  - Website - Twitter

Neil Fox - (19:56-29:30) Website - Twitter

Laura Tunbridge - (32:08-37:08) Website - Twitter

Catherine Wheatley - (41:46-47:33) Website - Twitter

Ian Garwood  (48:56-55:00) - Website - Twitter

Farshid Kazemi (55:51-1:01:50) - Website

Jennifer O’Meara - (1:06:14-1:14:24) Website - Twitter

Mark Kermode (1:15:40-1:23:22) - Website - Twitter

William Brown (1:23:56-1:36:14) - Website - Twitter

My profound thanks for their time, labour and critical insight which has made this episode possible.

A full transcript of this episode is available at www.cinematologists.com

Film clips (in broadcast order)

The Jazz Singer (1927, Alan Crosland)

Blackmail (1929, Alfred Hitchcock)

Dead of Night [The Ventriloquist’s Dummy (1945, Alberto Cavalcanti)

To Have and Have Not (1944, Howard Hawks)

The Trial (1962, Orson Welles)

Dirty Harry (1972 Don Siegel)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)

In the Heat of the Night (1967, Norman Jewison)

Inherent Vice (2014, Paul Thomas Anderson)

Dick Tracy (1990, Warren Beatty)

The Shawshank Redemption (1995, Frank Darabont)

Only Lovers Left Alive (2014, Jim Jarmusch)

White Men Can’t Jump (1992, Ron Shelton)

Daughters of the Dust (1991, Julie Dash)

Félicité (2017, Alain Gomis)

Mary Poppins (1964, Robert Stevenson)

Magnolia (1999) Paul Thomas Anderson

The Wind Will Carry Us (1999, Abbas Kiarostami)

All the President’s Men (Alan J. Pakula)

Her (2014, Spike Jonze)

Toy Story (1995, John Lassiter)

Puss in Boots [Antonio Banderas Voice Session]

Frozen (2013, Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck)

Anomalisa (2016, Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson)

Star Wars (1977, George Lucas)

The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin)

The Exorcist Original Voice Recordings

The Exorcist documentary

Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979, Terry Jones)

The Dark Knight Rises (2012, Christopher Nolan)

The Great Dictator (1940, Charlie Chaplin)

Valkyrie (2008, Bryan Singer)

The Wizard of Oz (1939, Victor Flemming)

Some Like it Hot (1959, Billy Wilder)

References (in order of mention):

Altman, Rick. 1980. Moving Lips: Cinema as Ventriloquism. Yale French Studies, 60 Cinema/Sound: pp. 67-79 - https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2930005.pdf?seq=1

Chion, Michel. 1999. The Voice in Cinema. Columbia University Press.

 Barthes, Roland. 1978. The Grain of the Voice. In Image, Music, Text. New York: Wang and Hill. pp.179-189.

Whittaker, Tom and Wright, Sarah. 2017. Locating the Voice in Film: Critical Approaches and Global Perspectives. Oxford University Press.

Kozlov, Sarah. 1992. Invisible Storytellers: Voice-Over Narration in American Fiction Film. University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. 1994. A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises. Harvard University Press.

Clements, Catherine. 1989. Opera, Or The Undoing Of Women. Virago.

Cavarero, Adrianna. 2005. For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression. Stanford University Press.

Kiarostami, Abbas. 2015. Lessons with Kiarostami. Sticking Place Books.

Dolar, Mladen. 2006. A Voice and Nothing More. Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Sobchak, Vivien. 2005. When the Ear Dreams: Dolby Digital and the Imagination of Sound. Film Quarterly, 58(4), pp. 2-15.

Adorno, Theodor., & Horkheimer, Max. 1944. The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.

Chow, Rey. 2017 ‘The Writing Voice in Cinema’. In Whittaker, Tom and Wright, Sarah. Eds. Locating the Voice in Film: Critical Approaches and Global Perspectives. Oxford University Press.

Please consider sharing the show on your social networks and reviewing on your app of choice. If you would like to support us with our running cost please consider subscribing to our membership on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists)

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Part Two of our Berlinale 2020 special is here. You’d think that after 5 years doing this podcast I’d get a little thing like the audio right, but alas, a couple of my solo recordings here are of a very poor quality - lots of peaking and distortion, which I have tried hard to reduce. Apologies.

The content is still pretty good though methinks. Lots of chat with Dario about films including the award-winning The Woman Who Ran [Hong Sangsoo] and Never Rarely Sometimes Always [Eliza Hittman], Siberia [Abel Ferrara], Entre Perro Y Lobo - plus an interview with that film’s director Irene Gutierrez - Rizi (Days) [Tsai Ming-Liang], Nightshift (Police) [Anne Fontaine], Maggie’s Farm [James Benning], White Riot [Rubika Shah] and from the retrospective, King Vidor’s The Sky Pilot. Plus nestled in amongst my ruminations is a chat with friend of the podcast Neil Young and a few choice clips from some of the films mentioned. In the spirit of the master Tsai Ming-Liang they are intentionally un-subtitled. Enjoy. NF.

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It's Berlinale time. Our annual sojourn to our favourite European Film Festival is one of the highlights of the year, and the programme looks intriguing with a host of big names in arthouse cinema showing their latest work. This is the first of a two-part episode in which we bring our thoughts to bear on the big competition entries, as well as fiction and documentary films from other sections of Berlin's extensive programme. We also interview various critics in the city, not only about their festival picks but also about any emergent themes of this year's event. Wild mushroom picking, toxic masculinity and signature central sequences were just some of the obvious motifs. 

Dario and Neil see a film together (Hang Songsoo's wonderful The Woman Who Ran) at the festival for the first time, and they ruminate, as usual, on all aspects of the experience. Please enjoy.

Thanks so much to the following critics for giving up their time. Please check out their writing and share/support it on your networks:

Joseph Owen - https://www.theupcoming.co.uk/2020/02/24/berlin-film-festival-2020-first-cow-review/

Savina Petkova - https://savinapetkova.contently.com/

Alex Billington - https://www.firstshowing.net/

Serena Scateni - https://vaguevisages.com/2020/02/25/berlinale-2020-review-hong-sang-soos-the-woman-who-ran/

The films discussed in this episode are:

First Cow - Kelly Reichardt

The Salt of Tears - Philippe Garrel

Undine - Christian Petzold

Never Rarely Sometimes Always - Eliza Hittman

Pinocchio - Matteo Garrone

Little Girl - Sébastien Lifshitz

Malkkrog - Cristi Puiu

Shirley - Josephine Decker

The Assistant - Kitty Green

Mogul Mowgli - Bassam Tariq

The Woman Who Ran - Hong SangSoo

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Adam Mars-Jones is an award-winning novelist and critic. His most recent novel, Box Hill, won the 2019 Fitzcarraldo novel prize. An apt award for someone who is also one of Britain’s most erudite and singular voices in film criticism. In late 2019 a collection of his film criticism, Second Sight, was published. It collects a significant portion of his reviews from his days as The Independent’s film critic (the paper’s first) as well as work for outlets including the Spectator.

In this, the first episode of season 11 proper, Neil sits down in Adam’s kitchen for a chat that takes in art, reappraisal, Kubrick, Altman, music, Galaxy Quest, masterpieces and Don Siegel.

Thanks to Adam for his time and to Reaktion Books for sending out a copy to us and facilitating this conversation.

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Recorded at Luton’s Filmstock Film Festival (co-directed by Neil) in November 2019, this series features long-form conversations with filmmakers recorded specially for the podcast.

Thanks to The School of Film & Television at Falmouth University for sponsoring this strand of Filmstock to enable these conversations to take place.

The series features conversations with directors Jeanie Finlay and Kieran Evans and screenwriter M.R. Carey.

Finally, it’s Neil’s conversation with director Kieran Evans. Clips screened at the talk came from Kieran’s works Be Pure. Be Vigilant. Behave., The Outer Edges, Kelly + Victor and his music video for Edwyn Collins’ I Guess We Were Young.

Filmstock screened Kieran’s film Truth & Memory, prior to the recording of this conversation.

Follow him on Twitter here.

Thanks to Mark Wooldridge for event photos.

You can also listen to The Cinematologists here:

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Recorded at Luton’s Filmstock Film Festival (co-directed by Neil) in November 2019, this series features long-form conversations with filmmakers recorded specially for the podcast.

Thanks to The School of Film & Television at Falmouth University for sponsoring this strand of Filmstock to enable these conversations to take place.

The series features conversations with directors Jeanie Finlay and Kieran Evans and screenwriter M.R. Carey.

Next up, it’s Neil’s conversation with comics, novel and screenwriter M.R. Carey. The conversation covers his work in on legendary comics such as Lucifer, his YA novel and subsequent screenplay adaptation of The Girl With All The Gifts (screened at the festival) and his writing process in depth.

For more on Mike (M.R.) go here, or follow him on Twitter here.

Thanks to Mark Wooldridge for event photos.

You can also listen to The Cinematologists here:

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We kick off season 21 and the tenth year of The Cinematologists with a special conversation with Belgian filmmaker Tim Mielants about his work on recent release, Small Things Like These, written by Enda Walsh (Hunger) and starring and produced by Cillian Murphy.

In the conversation, Neil and Tim discuss film form and style, particularly the use of close-up, space and the Gothic, masculinity, grief and how being an outsider can provide a unique take on the material and experiences of people from a place that is not one's own.

Elsewhere, Neil and Dario dig down into this idea of who gets to tell whose stories, the role of audience and character perception in understanding a film's perspective, and they discuss the upcoming season, which marks a decade since the podcast started and features the usual broad range of topics, guests and points of entry, with a big name surprise early on!

Thanks to Alex Morris from Alternate Current PR for setting this up.

Small Things Like These is on digital platforms now and Blu-ray and DVD 3 February

—

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £3 per month.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we’ll mention it), and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

—

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

Recorded at Luton’s Filmstock Film Festival (co-directed by Neil) in November 2019, this series features long-form conversations with filmmakers recorded specially for the podcast.

Thanks to The School of Film & Television at Falmouth University for sponsoring this strand of Filmstock to enable these conversations to take place.

The series features conversations with directors Jeanie Finlay and Kieran Evans and screenwriter M.R. Carey.

First up, it’s Neil’s career-spanning conversation with documentary filmmaker Jeanie Finlay. Clips screened at the talk came from Jeanie’s films Goth Cruise, Orion: The Man Who Would Be King, Game of Thrones: The Last Watch and Seahorse.

Filmstock screened Jeanie’s film Sound It Out, prior to the recording of this conversation.

For more on Jeanie, go here, or follow her on Twitter here.

Thanks to Mark Wooldridge for event photos.

You can also listen to The Cinematologists here:

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In the final episode of season 10, we look back over 2019 with film highlights we wanted to discuss again. This is not a ranking or a best of, merely a celebration of the year in film and our personal choices of the work we think should be seen and discussed. Here's a list of all the films on our agenda:

Ad Astra; Amazing Grace; Apollo 13; Atlantics; Bait; Burning; Capernaum; Dolemite is My Name; Hale County This Morning, This Evening; Happy as Lazzaro; Her Smell; High Flying Bird; High Life; If Beale Street Could Talk; The Irishman; Knife and Heart; Madeline's Madeline; Rolling Thunder Review; Three Faces; Transit.

We very much appreciate the loyalty of our audience throughout the year. It is one of the key motivators for doing on the show the way we do as we continue to grow. As you probably know, one of the issues for independent podcasts, which don't have 'stars' and the automatic audience that brings, is visibility and discoverability. We hope you continue to find value in the show and we really appreciate it when you share and recommend our episodes on social media:

Twitter: @Cinematologists;

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cinematologists/?ref=bookmarks;

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecinematologists/

If you ever have time to review the podcast on your podcast player of choice, this also helps with expanding the audience. For those who want to go a stage further please consider signing up for our Patreon membership: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. It is only $2.50 per month and you get our monthly newsletter along with bonus content and extended interviews with our guests. We are committed to keeping the show ad-free and this small support really helps with running costs and production improvements that we are always looking to make.

All the best for 2020 and thank you for your continued support. Lots of love, Dario and Neil.

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The second of instalment of our BFI Musicals two-parter sees Neil and Dario take a deep dive into the glorious world of Barbra Streisand. Neil was invited to Plymouth Arts Centre to take part in the Reclaim The Frame screening of Funny Girl (a film neither Neil nor Dario had seen), hosted by Mia Bays and the brilliant Birds Eye View organisation.

This episode sees Neil and Dario discuss the stardom and career of Streisand, alongside an interview between Neil and Mia, Mia’s introduction to the screening and the post-screening panel featuring Neil, director and music video legend Andrew ‘Wiz’ Whiston and Professor of Performance Studies at the University of Plymouth, Prof. Roberta Mock.

Thanks to Annabel Grundy and the team at BFI National Seasons for the opportunity and support.

You can also listen to The Cinematologists here:

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The first of our episodes in partnership with the BFI’s Blockbuster season on Musicals finds us discussing our relationship to the genre and its descendants as well as responding to a series of interviews conducted by Neil over the last couple of months. Guests on this special episode are the critic/historian Pamela Hutchinson who gives a brilliant overview of the musical form and suggests some gems to look out for, writer Tom MacRae who talks about the process of adapting his own West End smash Everybody’s Talking About Jamie for the screen, and Justine Waddell from Kino Klassika, an amazing organisation bringing Russian and Soviet Cinema to the screen, talks about their stunning programme of Soviet Musicals touring cinemas from January 2020.

To really celebrate the Movie Musical, this episode features a plethora of musical delights. You will be hearing (in order) – Leonard Bernstein’s overture from West Side Story, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas sung by Judy Garland, from Meet Me In St. Louis, Elvis Presley singing Trouble, from King Creole, the official trailer for the West End musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, the title song from Leto (Summer), Bradley Cooper & Lady Gaga singing Shallow, from A Star Is Born, and Science Fiction Double Feature from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, sung by Richard O’Brien. 

Thanks to Annabel Grundy and the team at BFI National Seasons for the opportunity and support.

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Today's episode features a raft of interviews recorded a Filmstock12, the Luton film festival organised by Neil with his long-time collaborator Justin Doherty, which returned this year after a 10-year hiatus. Fiercely proud of his Luton roots, Neil talks to Dario about the origins of the festival, the programming ethos, why it came back this year, and what it represents as a cultural marker for Luton.

While Neil and Justin were organising and presenting the festival Dario acted as roving interviewer at large, speaking to 5 of the filmmakers who were screening films:

1. Dan Schneidkraut, a Minneapolis based filmmaker with a provocative and unique filmmaking sensibility who actually had 3 films playing at the festival: Wish You Were Here; Shooting at the O.K. Corral & Father's Day.

2: Christine Franz the Producer and director of Bunch of Kunst the documentary about British Punk duo The Sleaford Mods.

3: Toby Matthews won the youth jury award for his Tati inspired comedy Holiday!, set in Cornish coastal town of Mousehole.

4. Lutonian Gillian Harker the actor turned writer/director talks about her intimate debut short Cross.

5. Edwin Miles screened a poignant film about the relationship he has with his Grandma, the subject of his short Rose. 

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In another first for the Cinematologists, we are hugely excited to present The Lobster with a live score from the classical group the Solem Quartet and in association with Picturehouses cinemas. Live cinema events featuring musical accompaniments are becoming more prevalent as part of the auditorium experience; they echo cinema's past but also a look to the future as audiences seek out material experiences that go beyond or add onto traditional screenings, and perhaps look for a break from the digital. This event took place at the beautiful Gate Cinema in Notting Hill, to a packed house, with Dario introducing the event and discussing the production with the musicians in a post-screening Q&A.

Devised, arranged and performed by The Solem Quartet the screening included classic pieces including Beethoven op. 18/1, Shostakovich Quartet no. 8, Schnittke Quartet no. 2, Schnittke Quintet for Piano and Strings, Stravinsky 3 Pieces for String Quartet, Britten Quartet no. 1, Strauss Don Quixote. The music underscores beautifully the dark humour and surrealist milieu of Lanthimos' social satire. 

Winner of the 2014 Royal Over-Seas League Ensemble Competition, the Solem Quartet was formed in 2011 at the University of Manchester. The Quartet takes its name from the university's motto "arduus ad solem", meaning "striving towards the sun". The quartet enjoys a busy concert schedule performing at venues both across the UK – including Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Bridgewater Hall and Holywell Music Room – and internationally. In keeping with its name, the Solem Quartet’s first project was to play the Haydn Op. 20 “Sun” Quartets. Their repertoire is extensive, spanning the period from early Haydn to a broad spectrum of living composers including Larry Goves, Anna Meredith, John Luther Adams and Emily Howard, whose quartet ‘Afference’ they performed in a BBC Proms Extra broadcast, live on BBC Radio 3.

 There are still dates available for upcoming live scorings of The Lobster. Click here for details 

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Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists

In our first episode from Filmstock 12 - the Luton based film festival organised by Neil in collaboration with Justin Doherty - we are delighted to welcome back on the podcast director Mark Jenkin. In this live Q&A Mark talks to Dario about his incredible year and the success of Bait, which has been met with universal critical acclaim and considerable box office success. That a black and white hand-processed experimental film about Cornish fisherman has become the stories of the year in film, is a testament to a filmmaker who has never compromised on his politics and artistic sensibility. Mark also discusses his career including his first feature Golden Burn and his recent diary film Vertical Shapes on a Horizontal Landscape, along with inspirations such as Robert Bresson, Nick Darke and Andrew Kötting. It's great to have Mark back to his spiritual podcast home. 

Shownotes

Watch Golden Burn Here.

Peter Bradshaw's Review from Berlinale

Mark's interview with Philip Concannon in Sight and Sound

You can also listen to The Cinematologists here:

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Our Website: www.cinematologists.com

PlayerFM: https://player.fm/series/series-2416725

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0RjNz8XDkLdbKZuj9Pktyh

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists

For episode 90 Dario and Neil go old school for the film and the format. In this classically structured episode the focus of attention is on the 1994 action classic Speed, screened for the Film at Falmouth 2019 Freshers audience at The Poly in Falmouth.

The discussion ranges across contemporary and classic action movies and stars including Harrison Ford, Arnie, The Stath, Cruise, Aliens, Dredd and much more, as well as the film as in service of pure spectacle, the uniqueness of Keanu and the special chemistry he shares in this film with co-star Sandra Bullock.

Thanks to The Poly, and Dr Verena Von Eicken for co-hosting the live event.

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Here's a link to Neil's piece on Doc 'n Roll Fest for the Quietus that he discusses early on this episode.

You can also listen to The Cinematologists here:

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Our Website: www.cinematologists.com

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Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists

When we heard that a documentary about the art of film sound was being released we simply had to check it out. Fortuitously, the film was playing at this year's London Film Festival and we were lucky enough to be able to interview the film's director Midge Costin. Midge has an unbelievable C.V. herself as a sound editor working on many of the big action movies of the 80s and 90s including The Rock, Armageddon, Days of Thunder and Crimson Tide. As a graduate of the University of Southern California, she shares the history of American film sound development with the likes of Walter Murch, Ben Burtt & Gary Rydstrom. Her film tracks the experimental developments of sound design and explores the importance of sound to the very DNA of cinema. Neil and Dario discuss some of the questions and examples that the film raises in terms of the symbiosis of sound and image and, in keeping with this subject matter, Dario has created an edit utilising the aural examples that are cited throughout. 

(Thanks to Debbie Murray of Aim Publicity)

Shownotes

Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound

Fuller at Fox Boxset (reviewed by Neil at the beginning)

Crimson Tide - I Do Not Concur

Terminator 2: Parents

Tomita - Snowflakes are Dancing

A Star is Born - Barbara Streisand

Punch Drunk Love - Crash

Punch Drunk Love - Harmonium

The Sounds of Clarie Denis

The Apartment - Champagne 

Throne of Blood - Arrows

Gravity - Explorer's been hit

The Conversation - First recordings

All the President's Men - Phonecalls

Under the Skin - First victim

The Outlaw Josey Wales - Pistols

Jaws - You're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

You Were Never Really Here - Fight

You can also listen to The Cinematologists here:

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While the London Film Festival is fresh in the mind, The Cinematologists bring you this round-up of some of the best films in this year's event. In order to help with this task, we have enlisted two smart and articulate young film critics to give their in-depth, considered opinions. Dario talks to Savina Petkova (MubiNotebook, Electric Ghost Magazine, Girls on Tops Tees) and James Maitre (Director's Notes, Albums in the Attic) about their festival highlights.

Before that Dario also talks to London Film Festival senior programmers Kate Taylor and Michael Blyth about the organisation, judging and the context of the festival (You can hear the full interview via our Patreon Page).

(Apologies for the somewhat echoey recording in certain parts of the show)

Shownotes

The Other Lamb (Malgorzata Szumowska)

Monos (Alejandro Landes)

The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers)

The Last Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot)

The Lodge (Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala)

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Celine Sciamma) 

Nocturnal (Nathalie Biancheri)

Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov)

Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach)

Nimic (Yorgos Lanthimos)

The Report (Scott Z. Burns) 

Mr Jones (Agnieszka Holland) 

Rose Plays Julie (Joe Lawler & Christine Molloy)

James also mentions the Podcast The Evolution of Horror

You can also listen to The Cinematologists here:

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This is part 2 of our end of year review show in which we countdown from 5 to 1. As requested from our Patreon members and several other long time listeners, we've gone back to a top ten countdown, which was great fun to compile. Although Neil and I did not agree on our top choice, we did share several films that made both our lists. There was also one major disagreement, and it was fascinating to spend some time hashing that out.

We also give some honourable mentions of which there were a few in a year where there was a lot to like, if not vintage, particularly in mainstream cinema. Interestingly, I feel like Neil and I have been somewhat outside the general critical consensus with our picks and, as always, throughout the episode we ruminate on where cinema is culturally.

If you haven't already, I recommend listening to part 1 of the 2024 countdown first (this is for patreon members). We give some context to the entire list offering potential themes that define our lists, and discuss the cinematic year as a whole.

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £3 per month.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it), and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

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Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

We’re back with the second of our double bill of episodes from the Film-Philosophy Conference held at the University of Brighton in July. Hosted by our very own Dario Llinares the event boasted an internationally renowned line-up of keynotes and delegates. 

Both episodes are made up of interviews we managed to grab as the conference progressed and, we hope gives you a sense of the eclectic mix of themes, methodologies and films that were discussed. As with part one, Neil and Dario are joined on interviewing duties by Kat Zabecka, from the University of Edinburgh.

Show Notes

0.0 Introduction – Dario, Neil and Kat welcome Kat to the Cinematologists fold.

10:06 Evy Varsamopoulou (with Neil) - Neil talks to Evy about how Ridley Scott's Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017) introduced a philosophical problematic into a cluster of interrelated and (still) topical issues and debates concerning the origin of humanity, procreation and posthuman futures.

22:30 Mark Cauchi (with Dario) - Mark tells Dario how Jarmusch’s Paterson is an effort to counteract Trumpism and the chauvinistic secularism it embodies, not merely by negatively criticizing it, as Richard Rorty lamented the Left usually does but by drawing upon and revamping a tradition of American thought and culture in order to re-envision positively what a distinctly American secularity could and should be.

42:26 Dionysios Kapsaskis (with Neil) - Neil and Dionysios get into about language and translation in the films of Jim Jarmusch, drawn from Dionysio’s paper exploring representations of translation in Jim Jarmusch’s films. Drawing on recent scholarship on the relationship between film and translation, and on critical writings on translation by Derrida and Benjamin among others, the paper focused on several scenes from Jarmusch’s films in which translation is represented or referred to.

56:26 Jenelle Troxell (with Neil) - Jenelle tells Neil how, with its emphasis on political activism, aesthetic experimentation, and psychoanalysis, the film journal Close Up anticipates the feminist film criticism of the 1970s and how the writers develop what Troxell terms a “contemplative aesthetic” - focusing on film’s capacity to generate states of deep contemplative absorption in the viewer.

01:08:22 Shai Biderman (with Neil) – Over lunch, Neil and Shai discuss Fables and parables—two storytelling devices designed to elicit folk wisdom and moral understanding of human situations and predicaments— how they have gained a stronghold in contemporary film-philosophy and how their use in the Coen Brothers’ oeuvre is worthy of special attention, if only because of their sheer abundance.

01:22:34 Sylvie Magerstaedt (with Kat) – For the last of the conversations featured, Kat sits down with Sylvie to talk about Tim Burton’s Big Fish and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie and how although they seem to extol the beauty and power of storytelling and myth creation, and by extension the power of cinema itself, they also raise certain ethical issues when it comes to honesty and truthfulness.

Clips featured on this episode include: Trailer for Prometheus (dir. Scott, 2012), a scene from Paterson (dir. Jarmusch, 2016) and the title song from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (dir. Coen, 2018), performed by Willie Watson and Tim Blake Nelson.

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Season 10 of the Cinematologists podcast kicks off with a double bill of episodes from the Film-Philosophy Conference held at the University of Brighton in July. Hosted by our very own Dario Llinares the event which boasted an internationally renowned line-up of keynotes and delegates. 

Both episodes are made up of interviews we managed to grab as the conference progressed and, we hope gives you a sense of the eclectic mix of themes, methodologies and films that were discussed. Neil and Dario are joined on interviewing duties by Kat Zabecka, who studies at the University of Edinburgh.

Shownotes

0.0 Introduction - Dario and Neil Discuss the build-up to the conference.

8:45 Janet Harbord (with Dario) Janet's keynote speech entitled Film as a Training for Neurotypical life explores gesture in medical film, focusing on the autistic gesture as a practice that resists interpretation through conventional means, troubling the terms of intention and agency.

26:40 Matt Holtmeier (with Neil) Matt discusses the video essay he screened at the conference - Vital Coasts, Mortal Oceans: The Pearl Button as Media Environmental Philosophy - interweaving Chilean philosophers Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, and Ricardo Rozzi, with Patricio Guzman’s cosomovisions in order to highlight the complex ecological insights at the intersection of indigenous thought and film form.

37:00 Savina Petkova (with Kat) Savina talks about her paper Real Metaphors. Animals in the Films of Yorgos Lanthimos and the role of animetaphors, Akira Lippit’s eloquent way of describing a non-anthropocentric way to look at animals and animal transformations.

50:42 Murray Pomerance (with Dario) Returning to The Cinematologists Murray outlines The Sound of Silence and his formulation of the "screaming silence" created by the sound design in the famous shower scene in Hitchcock's psycho.

01:10:57 Mila Zuo (with Kat). Mila's paper, entitled The Girlfriend Experience: Virtual Beauty and Love in Post-Cinematic Times, explores the ways new media technologies (and their representations) enable a fetishistic disavowal in virtual displays of feminine beauty and unfaithful love.

01:31:00 Colin Heber-Percy (with Dario) Under the Skin offers fruitful material for philosophical analysis and Colin's analysis - "The Flesh is Weak." Empathy and becoming human in Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin - analyses the film's “mechanics” of illusion, its deconstruction of cinema itself, reversing the gaze of the viewer: this is a film that observes us.

01:44:20 Lina Jurdeczka (with Neil). Lina's work - Untimely Cinephilia and Spectral Images in Phoenix and Ida - examines films that are set in cultural climates that seek to move on from the trauma of the Holocaust: Germany in 1945 and Poland in 1961. Yet formally their film-historical imaginaries emphasise the co-existence of past and present, dismantling the possibility of closure.

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This repost features director Mark Jenkin whose new release Bait opened last Friday (29th August 2019) to almost universal praise. Back in February 2016 Mark joined Dario at the Electric Palace in Hastings to screen and discuss the film. The story of a young man striving to provide a home for himself, his pregnant girlfriend and their unborn child, Bronco's House is an aesthetic meditation on property, power and the future. Like Bait the film is shot on a clockwork camera, using 16mm black and white negative stock, and processed by hand through an instant coffee based developer. Mark will be coming on the podcast again very soon, but until then we hope you enjoy this discussion wone of his seminal earlier works.

Bronco's House is available to download and stream. CLICK HERE.

It's our final episode of the season and in response to a request from one of our listeners Andrew Peirce (www.thecurb.com), we discuss the powerful outback western Sweet Country. Directed by Warwick Thornton and inspired by the true events, the film is a brutal indictment of the colonial terrorism that forged modern Australia and the specific impact on Aboriginal existence, identity and culture. The film invokes the mythos of the Western in aesthetic terms yet it is also a revisionist project that doesn't shy away from a pointed critique of European expansion and its corollary: uncompromisingly violent, white masculinity. Beautiful and terrifying we would definitely recommend watching the film before coming to our discussion.

We also reflect on our highlights of the season and Neil discuss new BFI releases of classic features and shorts by female filmmakers including Margaret Tait, Germain Dulac, Lois Weber, Dorothy Arzner and Alice Guy Blaché. Thanks for your continued support, and well be back in the autumn. 

Listen on:

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Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists

The latest episode sees The Cinematologists going deep on some of the central conversations in contemporary film culture, joined by the peerless So Mayer & Girish Shambu. 

Coinciding with So's 'A Queer Toolkit for Blowing Up The Canon' talk at HOME in Manchester, and Girish visiting the UK for the Queer & Feminist Cinephilia Workshop at the University of Birmingham, Neil talked to them both about canons, cinephilia and the responsibility of cinephiles in the current moment.

Following that conversation, Neil and Dario share their thoughts on the state of current online discourse and share their vulnerabilities about their place in it, coming back to the sanctuary of the podcast as a space that feels positive and discursive and does good work in promoting positive cinephilia and opening up the conversation to and about different voices.

Many thanks to So and Girish for their time and incredible wisdom and thoughtfulness. It's an honour to feature such important and inspiring film thinkers on The Cinematologists.

Girish Shambu - Time's Up For The Male Canon

Girish Shambu - For A New Cinephilia (A Manifesto)

So Mayer on Twitter

Girish Shambu on Twitter

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On the episode So and Girish shout out some colleagues and people doing great writing and publishing that captures the essence and spirit and tone of the work of New Cinephilia and challenging the canon. Here's where listeners can find them:

Another Gaze, Cleo Journal, MAI, Maggie Hennefeld, Devika Girish, Veronica Fitzpatrick, Kelley Dong, Miriam Bale, Alissa Wilkinson, Monica Castillo, Pamela Hutchinson, Erika Balsom, Elena Gorfinkel. 

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Website: www.cinematologists.com

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Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists

Scott Barley makes sublime, juddering, immersive, multi-sensory films. They drift across an experimental, nature doc, slow cinema axis - sometimes with brute force and sometimes with an aching tranquility. In a few years he has amassed a formidable filmography of short film work and in 2017 presented his debut feature, Sleep Has Her House, to the world.

In late 2018, Scott travelled to the School of Film & Television at Falmouth University where he and his film held the audience rapt. That conversation is presented here in full, bookended by Neil and Dario getting to grips with a piece of work that both invites and defies interpretation. They also, as is customary, talk about feeling and meaning in cinema, the type of cinema that needs and deserves attention from a podcast like this and film culture in general, and the overwhelming and altering experience of Scott’s work.

Throughout the episode there is audio from Scott’s short films, which can be found on his Vimeo page here, and from his music, which can be bought on Bandcamp here. Tracks featured are To The Lighthouse, Nebulae and Sleep Has Her House.

A special thank you to Dr Kingsley Marshall and Film at Falmouth for making this episode possible.

In closing, the episode features more pauses and collecting of thoughts than normal. Rather than edit a lot of the indecisiveness out, we’ve kept it in, because it felt right in this instance, because the film in question had a greater impact on us in that regard than normal. It is a really special piece of work. We thank Scott for sharing it with us, and can’t wait to hear what you make of this talk and Scott’s films. 

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Both Neil and I are avid users of the typewriter so when we got the chance to speak to Doug Nichol the director of the 2017 documentary California Typewriter, it was a great chance to wax lyrical about the virtues of this 'obsolete' technology. On the surface, the film could have been overly nostalgic or, heaven forbid, dripping with retro hipsterism, but following the owner and staff of a repair shop originally opened in 1949 in Berkeley, a more profound story of how technological change affects the society and the lives within emerges. Also fascinating are the comments from famous names - including Tom Hanks, Sam Shepard and John Mayer - who see the typewriter as indispensable to their creative practice and personal identity. Other characters in the documentary reflect a more obsessive reverence and eccentric application of the machine that in many ways defined 20th-century modernity. Indeed, the film ruminates on our fundamental relationship to technology suggesting that the analogue and the digital have a symbiotic relationship rather than one of death and replacement. 

Follow @Doug_Nichol & @Caltypefilm on Twitter.

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The year is 2027, the world has collapsed but Britain soldiers on. Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men has seemingly only increased in significance and appreciation since its release in 2006. Based loosely on a P.D. James novel Cuarón imagines a world that has lost hope because of human infertility but this only the narrative starting point for an aesthetically and thematically layered dystopian nightmare. Discussion of the film's many social, cultural and political elements sometimes takes away from the fact it is a brilliant piece of action cinema with an aesthetic immediacy and depth of world-building, that has become a signature of Cuarón's filmmaking

We screened the film at Kings College London and would like to thank PhD Student Joseph Jenner for organising the event and co-presenting the screening with Dario.

Show notes

Why Children of Men has never been as shocking as it is now - Nicolas Barber (BBC)

Humanity Adrift: Race, Materiality, and Allegory in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men - Zahid R. Chaudhary (Camera Obscura)

Future Shock - Abraham Riesman (Vulture)

Why Alfonso Cuarón's anti-Blade Runner looks more relevant than ever - Stephen Dalton (BFI)

The Child to Come: Life After the Human Catastrophe - Rebekah Sheldon

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Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists

Dr Racquel Gates is assistant professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the College of Staten Island. She is the author of Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture (Duke, 2018).

For the latest episode, Racquel talked to Neil about her book and a number of other topics including contemporary black screen art and criticism, Eddie Murphy, Halle Berry, Whoopi Goldberg, Black cultural scholarship and the Academy, Empire, Reality TV, Sorry To Bother You and lots more. Racquel was very tolerant of Neil’s rambling enthusiasm for her work and the ideas and thoughts it spawned in him. Her book is incisive and entertaining and as a thinker Racquel expertly discusses texts while understanding the fluidity of ideas and issues around flaws, problems, virtues and areas of scholarly note. This conversation is one of our favourites. It gets into some really fascinating areas and touches on black film history and the wider contexts of the contemporary moment. We hope you enjoy it.

Here’s a link to the book Racquel mentions whose title gets lost on the episode due to a drop in the Skype signal - Horror Noire by Robin R. Means Coleman.

A link to Wesley Morris on the Longform Podcast and his NYT essay, and the Harper’s Podcast Like This Or Die, all of which are referenced in Neil and Dario’s chat around the central conversation on this episode.

Listen on:

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Our long-awaited final episode in partnership with the BFI’s Comedy Genius season is finally here and it’s a doozy. Compiled over the last few months as the national season was taking place between November and January, this episode sees a diverse range of film critics, academics, filmmakers and an illustrator (as well as Neil and Dario of course) sharing some of their favourite comedy films and performances.

This episode was envisaged as a joyous journey into screen comedy and our guests have picked a range of performers from cinema (as well as television and stand-up comedy) history to reflect upon. We hope it serves as a reminder of the joy and importance of laughing and the innate and deeply personal connection that audiences have with screen comedy. 

Thanks to the BFI FAN Network for supporting the making of this episode. Thanks also, to our amazing roster of participants who shared their time and their love of comedic performances in all different shades.

Our line-up:

Dr Sabina Stent talking about Spy / Scott Tanner Jones talking about Midnight Run / Dr Felicity Gee talking about Nicole Kidman in To Die For / Jason Wood talking about Sons of the Desert / Annabel Grundy talking about Jennifer Saunders / Ash Clark talking about Eddie Marsan in Happy-Go Lucky / Ren Zelen talking about Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau / Hel Harding-Jones talking about The Out Of Towners / Mark Jenkin talking about Stir Crazy / Hope Dickson Leach talking about 3 Joan Cusack performances / David Litchfield talking about Raising Arizona / Violet Lucca talking about Step Brothers & Dr Racquel Gates talking about Katt Williams and his stand-up special It’s Pimpin’ Pimpin’

The Wile E. Coyote cartoon featured in this episode can be viewed here.

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In a bumper episode, the penultimate one of the year, Dario interviews Jessica Hausner about her new film Club Zero and Guy Maddin, Evan, and Galen Johnson about Rumours. Both films have limited UK releases this week (Friday, December 6th), and, interestingly, though they are very different films, they have thematic connections, particularly in relation to contemporary crises, social critique, and satirical modes.

Club Zero stars a very well-cast Mia Wasikowska as Ms. Novak, a girlish teacher whose radical ideas about diet lead a group of students down a dangerous path. Dario's conversation with Jessica and composer Marcus Binder explores influence, seduction, and the complexities of societal expectations through the lens of her film. They discuss the dangers of eating disorders, the pressures of social responsibility placed on children, the alienating dynamics of the school environment, and how misinformation can so easily be spread.

Rumours boasts a stacked cast led by Cate Blanchett, who represents the leaders of the G7. Dario talked to director-writer team Guy Maddin, Galen Johnson, and Evan Johnson about the film at the London Film Festival. The conversation navigates the complexities of creative expression in film, touching on themes of self-perception, audience expectations, character development, and the balance between artistic freedom and commercial viability. They discuss the challenges of navigating genre conventions, the significance of casting choices, and the implications of stereotypes in representing national identities.

Neil and Dario then reflect on both the interviews and films, examining their artistic choices, character development, and how well the themes capture contemporary anxieties around authority, ideology, and ambivalence. They also discuss the aesthetics of symbolism and the emotional distance created through cinematography, as well as the broader implications of anxiety and manipulation in youth culture. This leads to a reflection on how artists address the current socio-political moment, how crisis is influencing many film works in an implicit way, and whether a political cinema is possible while maintaining a unique voice in an uncertain, changing cultural landscape.

Thanks to Tom Finney at Blue Dolphin Films

Thanks to Chris Lawrence at Film Publicity

Thanks to George Crostwait and the team at The Garden Cinema

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £3 per month.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it), and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

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Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

The final episode of our Berlinale trilogy is a continuation of Neil’s travels around the German capital watching films and talking to filmmakers and critics, and a culmination of Neil and Dario’s reflections on the festival and the films they both saw. The pair discuss Andre Hörmann’s Chicago boxing documentary Ringside and the episode also features some of Neil’s interview with the filmmaker as well as a section of his chat with Kim Longinotto, whose film Shooting The Mafia Neil and Dario discussed in the first Berlinale episode. Neil also shares his thoughts on the PJ Harvey documentary A Dog Called Money, the Colombian genre-bender Monos, the Kino Lorber revival of Bette Gordon’s Variety and the finally revealed to the world concert film masterpiece that is Amazing Grace.

Film critics sharing their time and reflections on this episode are Rhys Handley, Ian Mantgani and Kambole Campbell.

Thanks to everyone whose contributions have made these three episodes possible including, and maybe especially, Kingsley Marshall of Film at Falmouth.

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(Baracoa, 2019 Pablo Briones, Sean Clark)

Part 2 of the Berlinale trilogy sees Neil and Dario discuss film festival podcasting, the films Baracoa and BAIT to coincide with interviews conducted by Neil with the filmmakers behind those films, Pablo Briones and Jace Freeman, and Mark Jenkin respectively. The episode also features Neil’s chats with film critics Elle Haywood, Ella Kemp, Neil Young, Megan Christopher and Steph Watts. Finally, the episode also features Neil’s in the moment reflections on a number of films he saw.

The films discussed in this episode are:

Baracoa (Pablo Briones, The Moving Picture Boys)

BAIT (Mark Jenkin)

I Was At Home, But (Angela Schanelec)

The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg)

Varda by Agnès (Agnès Varda)

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We are really excited to put out the first of three special episodes cover the 2019 Berlin Film Festival which both Dario and Neil attended in a kind of tag team configuration. Having applied for a press pass for the Cinematologists, and was taking 40 his students to the festival, Neil had organised a whole raft of interviews with directors and critics which form parts 2&3 of our Berlinale coverage. Dario made a last minute decision to go for the opening weekend. So this first episode consists of 3 mini reports of each day's and then a rather bleary-eyed catch-up with Neil after he arrived after midnight on Sunday. The films discussed in this episode are:

Rebels of the Neon God (1992, Tsai Ming-Liang)

Shooting The Mafia (Kim Longionotto)

Serendipity (Prune Nourry)

Out Stealing Horses (Hans Petter Moland)

Light of My Life (Casey Affleck)

Systèm K (Renaud Barret)

Der Boden Unter den Füben [The Ground Beneath my Feet] (Marie Kreutzer)