Great Debuts, Still Masters

This week on the podcast, the re-release of Terence Davies’s first full-length film, Distant Voices, Still Lives, in a new restoration, has our guests reminiscing about great debut features throughout cinema. After discussing Davies’s 1988 masterpiece, the group goes on to talk in detail about some great first features to careers that either took off or were frustratingly cut short, including a trio of Ter(r)ences and Lynne Littman. Joining in the discussion were frequent Film Comment contributors Ina Archer, media conservator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture; Michael Koresky, the Director of Editorial and Creative Strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (and author of the University of Illinois Press book Terence Davies; and critic and FC contributing editor Nick Pinkerton.