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On today’s episode, our fourth from Berlin, FC Editor Devika Girish is joined by an international cadre of programmers and critics made up of Jonathan Ali, Frédéric Jaeger, and Antoine Thirion, to talk about Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias’s Pepe, Hong’s A Traveler’s Needs, Malaury Eloi Paisley’s L’homme-vertige, Dag Johan Haugerud’s Sex, Victor Kossakovsky’s Architecton, and Guillaume Cailleau and Ben Russell’s Direct Action. But that’s not all! This episode also features a special, short interview by FC Publisher (and President of Film at Lincoln Center) Lesli Klainberg with super-producer Christine Vachon of Killer Films, the production company behind two standout hits of 2023, Past Lives and May December....
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This year, Clint and Devika asked Kelli Weston, who literally holds a PhD in horror cinema, and Steven Mears, a critic and FC’s famously nocturnal copyeditor, to inflict two movies of their choice upon us. Kelli chose the 1976 slasher flick Alice, Sweet Alice, and Steve picked Jack Clayton’s Henry James adaptation The Innocents. Both movies were ultimately more goofy than scary, but they yielded a truly rich conversation about the role of religion, class, children, and more in horror....
In a wide-ranging conversation about a pivotal moment in American film history, Dorsky—whose Ingreen (1964) screens as part of the FLC series—and Hiler regaled us with anecdotes about their partnership in life and filmmaking, the state of moviegoing and movie-making in the New York of the ’60s, and the culture-shifting exploits of Jonas Mekas, Gregory J. Markopoulous, Stan Brakhage, Bruce Conner, and others. We also discussed Hiler’s fascinating project about medieval stained glass, “Cinema Before 1300,” and a new book, Illuminated Hours....
On today’s podcast, Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish talks to critics Justin Chang (The Los Angeles Times and Fresh Air) and Jessica Kiang (Variety and elsewhere) about Sundance selections Eileen, You Hurt My Feelings, Cat Person, and Past Lives (pro-side this time—listen to the con-side here). Catch up on all of our Sundance 2023 coverage here.
The Film Comment Podcast from Sundance is sponsored by Autograph Collection Hotels.
In January, New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis wrote an article headlined “As Indies Explode, an Appeal for Sanity” bemoaning the increasing number of films hitting theaters, which her employer, due to a blanket policy, decrees should be reviewed. By her count, some 900 films received reviews in the paper in 2013, a jump of 75 from the year before (something like 7,500 more minutes of movie that had to be covered—over five straight days’ worth of films)....
Film Forum’s “This Is DCP” series officially kicked off last Friday with a digital reincarnation of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (following a matinee of the underrated The Guns of Navarone). On hand to present the restoration was Grover Crisp, Sony’s Executive Vice President of Asset Management, Film Restoration, and Digital Mastering. Microphone at the ready, he conducted an informal presentation and running Q&A session while on the screen two versions (and visions, really) of Dr....
“I certainly join you in rejecting the notion that the late films are grounded in any straightforward atheism.” Let’s broaden that and agree to agree—which I know we do but which we must state outright for the enlightenment of our readers—that the idea of Bresson’s late films (or earlier or earliest films, for that matter) being “grounded” in anything, be it Christianity, atheism, or eroticism, is absurd; that Shklovsky is on the nose and that the greater the artist the more “enstranged” the work; and that fundamentalism of any stripe is a horror....
These are clearly human beings, like ourselves, entrapped in a terrible way of life in which the enemy cannot he annihilated, conquered, or absorbed, because an enemy is needed to provide the exchange of victims, whose only possible end is another victim. Men have involved themselves in many vicious circles, and kingdoms and empires have collapsed because they could find no way out but to fall before invaders who were not so trapped....
