The Film Comment Podcast

This week, Film Comment is reporting from Berlin, where the 2023 Berlinale is currently underway. Throughout the festival, we’ll be sharing daily podcasts, dispatches, and interviews covering all the highlights of this year’s selection, including new films by Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec, Hong Sangsoo, James Benning, and many more. On today's episode, FC co-editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute are joined by FC contributor Erika Balsom and B. Ruby Rich, Editor-in-Chief of Film Quarterly to discuss the haul of the first couple days: Paul B. Preciado's Orlando, My Political Biography, Tina Satter's Reality, Matt Johnson's Blackberry, Luke Fowler's Being in a Place - A Portrait of Margaret Tait, and Tatiana Huezo's The Echo.

This week, Film Comment is reporting from Berlin, where the 2023 Berlinale is currently underway. Throughout the festival, we’ll be sharing daily podcasts, dispatches, and interviews covering all the highlights of this year’s selection.  A couple days ago, before the festival kicked off, FC co-deputy editor Devika Girish attended the opening conference of the Berlin Critics’ Week—an autonomous sidebar to the Berlinale, organized independently by a collective of German critics, including Amos Borchert, Elena Friedrich, Petra Palmer, and Dennis Vetter. The topic of the conference was “Cinema of Care - Who Looks After Film Culture?” which included a panel discussion moderated by Devika, and featuring a stellar lineup of guests: curators Abby Sun and Marek Hovorka, and the filmmaker Claire Denis. The four had a provocative, in-depth conversation about what care looks like on the level of aesthetics, in filmmaking, and in film programming, and how we might build a sustainable and collective film culture. We’re very grateful to Berlin Critics Week for letting us share the conversation on the podcast.

With an award-winning filmography that includes the epochal Civil Rights series Eyes on the Prize, 2020’s MLK/FBI, and 2021’s Citizen Ashe, among many others, documentarian Sam Pollard has changed the way we read history. Pollard is also an editor and producer, working with filmmakers like Spike Lee and Bill Gunn. Simply put, the guy is a legend. Which brings us to his latest film, the new two-part documentary Bill Russell: Legend, which digs deep into the life and career of one of the greatest basketball players of all time. The winner of a record 11 championships with the Boston Celtics from 1956 to 1969, including two as a player coach, Bill Russell broke many boundaries, both on the court and off. Pollard’s film is a remarkably nuanced portrait of a complex figure who, as a record-breaking athlete and active participant in the Civil Rights movement, stood at the intersections of sports, celebrity, and race in America. FC co-deputy editor Clinton Krute invited Pollard on the podcast to discuss his new film with scholar Samantha N. Sheppard, whose 2020 book Sporting Blackness: Race, Embodiment, and Critical Muscle Memory on Screen is an expansive analysis of sports documentaries and representations of Blackness on screen. We discussed the intensive research process behind the film, how the genre of the sports documentary can be used to rewrite history, and the legacy and life of Russell, who passed away in July 2022.

On our final podcast from this year’s Sundance Film Festival, FC co-editor Devika Girish talks to filmmakers Deborah Stratman, Mary Helena Clark, and Mike Gibisser about their fantastic new films, which premiered in the festival’s New Frontier section. Stratman’s Last Things explores the history of our universe through the point of view of rocks. She combines stunning images of rocks with interviews with a geoscientist and excerpts from various sci-fi texts—read by the filmmaker Valerie Massadian—to craft a narrative of the past and the future that decenters humans, and invites us to think beyond ourselves. Mary Helena Clark and Mike Gibisser's A Common Sequence, explores how our ideas of the commons have changed in our capitalistic, tech-driven present. The film uses three case studies: the first focuses on efforts to conserve and study the achoque salamander in Mexico, known for its regenerative properties; the second explores the use of artificial intelligence in apple picking and harvesting; and the third digs into the ways in which genetics is fast becoming a prime site for data mining.  The filmmakers joined for a wide-ranging conversation about the ideas behind their films, how they approach questions of time and perspective, and what it felt like to be an experimental filmmaker at Sundance. It turns out that Clark and Gibisser were once students of Stratman’s—so the three had much to say about each other’s work. Catch up on all of our Sundance 2023 coverage here: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/category/festivals/sundance/sundance-2023/

The Sundance Film Festival triumphantly returns to in-person screenings this year, which of course means that your intrepid Film Comment crew is once again on the scene in snowy Park City, bringing you dispatches and podcasts covering all the highlights of the 2023 edition. On today’s podcast, Dessane Lopez Cassell (SEEN), Poulomi Das (The Playlist), and Jessica Kiang (Variety) join FC’s Devika Girish for another round of Sundance conversation. This time around, the critics discuss festival selections Passages, Shortcomings, A Thousand and One, and Milisuthando. Catch up on all of our Sundance 2023 coverage here: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/category/festivals/sundance/sundance-2023/

The Sundance Film Festival triumphantly returns to in-person screenings this year, which of course means that your intrepid Film Comment crew is once again on the scene in snowy Park City, bringing you dispatches and podcasts covering all the highlights of the 2023 edition. On today’s podcast, Miriam Bale (Indie Memphis Film Festival) and Abby Sun (International Documentary Association) return for another round of Sundance conversation with Film Comment’s Devika Girish. This time, they discuss festival selections Fair Play, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, Rye Lane, and The Tuba Thieves. Catch up on all of our Sundance 2023 coverage here: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/category/festivals/sundance/sundance-2023/

The Sundance Film Festival triumphantly returns to in-person screenings this year, which of course means that your intrepid Film Comment crew is once again on the scene in snowy Park City, bringing you dispatches and podcasts covering all the highlights of the 2023 edition. 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, Past Lives (pro-side this time), and Cat Person. Catch up on all of our Sundance 2023 coverage here.

The Sundance Film Festival triumphantly returns to in-person screenings this year, which of course means that your intrepid Film Comment crew is once again on the scene in snowy Park City, bringing you dispatches and podcasts covering all the highlights of the 2023 edition. On today’s podcast, Film Comment’s Devika Girish talks to Vadim Rivov(Filmmaker Magazine) and Dan Sullivan (Film at Lincoln Center) about Sundance selections Fremont, Gush, Polite Society, and A Common Sequence. They also dig into the festival’s New Frontier section and whether or not there’s such a thing as a “Sundance film.” Catch up on all of our Sundance 2023 coverage here: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/category/festivals/sundance/sundance-2023/

The Sundance Film Festival triumphantly returns to in-person screenings this year, which of course means that your intrepid Film Comment crew is once again on the scene in snowy Park City, bringing you dispatches and podcasts covering all the highlights of the 2023 edition. On today’s podcast, Film Comment’s Devika Girish talks to Miriam Bale (Indie Memphis Film Festival) and Abby Sun (International Documentary Association) about Sundance selections Earth Mama, Past Lives, Against the Tide, Little Richard: I Am Everything, and Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project.

The Sundance Film Festival triumphantly returns to in-person screenings this year, which of course means that your intrepid Film Comment crew is once again on the scene in snowy Park City, bringing you dispatches and podcasts covering all the highlights of the 2023 edition. On today’s podcast, Film Comment’s Devika Girish invited FC friends and critics Alissa Wilkinson (Vox), Sam Adams (Slate) and Kayla Myers (Indie Memphis Film Festival) to chat about the buzzy titles of Day Two, including Justice, Earth Mama, To Live and Die and Live, Mami Wata, Animalia, the documentary shorts program, and more.