The Film Comment Podcast

Every January, Film Comment editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute like to take stock of holiday multiplex offerings with an episode they call "New Year, New Releases." For the 2024 edition, they invited FC podcast veteran Alissa Wilkinson, staff critic at the New York Times, and first-time guest Robert Daniels, an editor at RogerEbert.com. They started off this year’s haul with a pair of sports movies about bad dads and the perils of masculinity: The Iron Claw, directed by Sean Durkin, about the Von Erich family of pro-wrestlers; and Ferrari, by Michael Mann, about Enzo Ferrari, and his F1 racing ambitions. Then they discussed the new book-to-movie-to-stage-to-movie adaptation, The Color Purple, and The Book of Clarence, a befuddling Jesus comedy starring Lakeith Stanfield.

Last night, Film Comment Editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish headed a panel of special guests—Bilge Ebiri (critic, Vulture), and Amy Taubin (critic and FC contributing editor)—for a real-time countdown of the films topping our year-end critics’ poll. The evening featured a lively discussion (and some hearty debate) about the films as they were unveiled—and now it’s here in Podcast form, for your home-listening pleasure. Consider it a holiday gift from us to you, our loyal listeners. Read the full list, plus Best Undistributed Films, individual ballots, and more, here: https://www.filmcomment.com/best-films-of-2023/

In the epigraph to his new book, writer-slash-film programmer-slash-performance artist Stanley Schtinter succinctly describes his project: “Last Movies is a dedication to the absence of choice, to chance. If there is any bias in the cast-list it is a bias coded into the tell-ing of the first century of cinema (that I parasitise); the result, a forensic of the last earthly dance of a star, and the pause they took (if indeed they did) to catch a movie.” Conceived of as both a writing project and an epic durational film program, Last Movies explores the seemingly morbid subject of the final films watched by a selection of twentieth century luminaries. Delving into the lives and ultimate viewings of figures from Franz Kafka to John F. Kennedy to Kurt Cobain to the Heaven’s Gate cult, the book maps a strange and surprising cultural history from a seemingly arbitrary scatter plot. Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute sat down with Schtinter and critic Erika Balsom, who wrote the book’s forward, to discuss the many layers of Last Movies, how the project is actually life-affirming, why the author dressed up like a cop for a recent Q&A in London, and much more. Last Movies is available now from Tenement Press: https://tenementpress.com/Last-Movies

This year’s Berlinale saw the filmmaking debut of acclaimed philosopher Paul B. Preciado with the feature, Orlando, My Political Biography. Born in Spain and based in France, Preciado is the author of a number of groundbreaking texts about gender and sexuality—including his 2008 work of "auto-theory," Testo Junkie, in which Preciado weaves reflections on his experience of taking testosterone with ruminations on how the body and its desires are formulated, controlled, and regulated by society. Precaido’s first film is as much of an exuberant formal invention as that book was. He was invited to make a documentary about his life, and instead, enlisted a diverse ensemble of trans individuals to interpret their lives through the text of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel, Orlando: A Biography, which details the centuries-spanning adventures of an aristocrat who magically changes gender overnight. Blurring the boundaries between self and other, documentary and fiction, fantasy and reality, and past and present, Preciado crafts a work that explodes binaries not only in content, but also in form. On today's episode, Film Comment editor Devika Girish interviews Preciado about the making of Orlando, My Political Biography, his decision to make a collective portrait rather than a biopic, and about the violence that cinema has inflicted on trans people across history—and how we can use moving images to pave the path for a different future. Orlando, My Political Biography is currently in theaters.

After a three-year hiatus induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2023 Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival returned this year with a new curatorial team and a robust lineup of independent and art-house work from all over South Asia and beyond. One of the major international film festivals in the region, MAMI (as it is colloquially known) is a unique combination of corporate glitz and die-hard indie cinephilia. Sponsored in large part by Reliance Industries, the company owned and run by the richest family in India, and boasting major Bollywood figures on its board, the festival is nevertheless an oasis for formally and politically bold filmmaking in a cultural landscape dominated by commercial blockbusters and constrained by censorship policies. Devika attended the festival for the first time this year, as did curator and Film Comment contributor Inney Prakash. On today’s episode, they discuss their experience in Mumbai and some of the highlights of the South Asia selection, including The World Is Family by Anand Patwardhan, Against the Tide by Sarvnik Kaur, Which Colour? by Shahrukhkhan Chavada, a program of short films by Amit Dutta, and more.

Midway through the new documentary Little Richard: I Am Everything, actor and singer Billy Porter says something that distills one of the film’s major themes: “In the face of insurmountable challenges, sometimes simply existing is a revolutionary act.” The film, directed by the multi-hyphenate filmmaker Lisa Cortés, tells the story of one of the great American artists, a global celebrity whose simple existence as a Queer Black man was a direct challenge to the status quo. A studied deep dive into the archive, filled with incendiary performances and biographical detail, I Am Everything is also a challenge to pop music history, and an effort to finally afford Little Richard his place as both the progenitor of rock ’n’ roll and a groundbreaking cultural force unto himself. Film Comment’s Clinton Krute spoke with Cortés about the contradictory nature of a man who swung between libertine impulses and religious conviction his entire life, how she reads his work and life as a utopian and cosmic project, and her own remarkable and varied career in the entertainment industry.

It’s once again that time of year when ghosts, ghouls, and goblins are on the prowl. That’s right: it’s Halloween. And as much as we are scared to admit it, that means it’s also time for another Halloween Hangover episode of the Film Comment Podcast, where co-editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute confront one of their greatest fears—horror movies—with the help of some masters of the macabre. For this year’s festivities, they invited two horror experts to inflict some fear—FC contributor Nicholas Russell, and Clyde Folley, curator of the ’90s Horror series currently haunting the Criterion Channel. The two selected a pair of freaky favorites: Abel Ferrara’s Body Snatchers, an early-’90s remake of the classic sci-fi chiller, and Michael Powell’s 1960 serial killer masterpiece, Peeping Tom. Where Powell’s film lived up to its reputation as an endlessly fascinating text, rich with commentary on the inherent violence of visual culture, Ferrara’s streamlined variation on an oft-told tale opened up surprising questions about identity, family, and conformity. Listen to the end for some bonus, bone-chilling picks!

The 61st New York Film Festival closed up shop last weekend, which means that it was once again time for Film Comment’s Festival Report, our annual live overview of the NYFF that was. FC co-deputy editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute convened an all-star team of critics—Molly Haskell, Adam Nayman, and Kelli Weston—for a spirited wrap-up discussion about the highlights and lowlights from the NYFF60 lineup. In front of a lively audience, the panel discuss and debate Todd Haynes’s May December, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast, Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, Thien An Pham’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, and and many other noteworthy selections. Find all of our coverage of NYFF61 here: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/category/festivals/nyff/nyff-2023/

“Every film is a documentary of its own making,” Jacques Rivette famously said, pointing to the mix of fabrication and truth that lies at the heart of every movie. As images increasingly permeate our lives, these questions are ever more complex. What constitutes truth when the camera intervenes? How do we decide to accept—or question—what we see? Film Comment editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute were joined on stage at the 61st New York Film Festival by World Records editor Jason Fox and NYFF61 filmmakers Kleber Mendonça Filho (Pictures of Ghosts), Rosine Mbakam (Mambar Pierrette), and Frederick Wiseman (Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros) for a discussion about the ways in which filmmakers engage both documentary and narrative techniques to invite and challenge viewers’ trust in images. This panel expanded on the ideas in Trust Issues, a new audio series by World Records. Watch a video of this event here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cH06adWHQs

As this year’s historic strikes by the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists have shaken up the entertainment industry and film festivals, they’ve brought to the forefront a truth sometimes elided by cinema’s glamorous facade: that movies are made by workers. In a business increasingly dominated by massive corporations, what is the role—and value—of the labor of acting, writing, and other craftswork? This panel—moderated by Film Comment editor Devika Girish and FC contributor Madeline Whittle—brought together Lisa Takeuchi Cullen (President, WGA East), Rebecca Damon (SAG-AFTRA Executive Director, New York Local), and Alissa Wilkinson (Senior Correspondent, Vox) for a deep-dive into the circumstances that led to the strikes, the needs of actors and writers working in Hollywood today, and the history and contemporary role of labor organizing in the American film industry.