The Film Comment Podcast

Every year, the New Directors/New Films festival introduces audiences to fresh and adventurous cinema from around the world. It’s presented by Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, and for many New York moviegoers, it’s a lovely prelude to the spring. This year, the 49th edition has been postponed, and so we thought it would be nice to sit down with MoMA’s chief curator of film, Rajendra Roy, for another installment in the Film Comment Podcast: At Home. We talked about a couple of Raj’s comfort food movies—including David Lynch’s Dune and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve—and we also discussed how an institution like MoMA plans to adapt its film programming to the current moment. Also joining FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold were Clinton Krute, FC digital editor, and FC Devika Girish, assistant editor. If you’re a longtime Film Comment subscriber, listener, or reader, or are just tuning in now, please consider becoming a member or making a donation to our publisher, Film at Lincoln Center, during these unprecedented times: https://purchase.filmlinc.org/donate/contribute2

For the past week we’ve been doing a special daily edition of the podcast where we talk about what we’ve been watching at home. It’s a new week now and the world still seems to get a bit scarier every day, so we’re going to keep doing this to distract anyone who needs distraction. For this episode, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold was joined by Assistant Editor Devika Girish, Digital Editor Clinton Krute, and a very special guest: Los Angeles-based filmmaker and novelist Sandi Tan, director of Shirkers. We were pleased to welcome Sandi for a Film Comment Talk when Shirkers came out, and this time around, we had a terrific time discussing a number of great movies. We started with one agreed upon title, Leos Carax’s Mauvais Sang, starring Denis Lavant and Juliette Binoche, and ranged on from Zodiac to Fellini’s Roma. If you’re a longtime Film Comment subscriber, listener, or reader, or are just tuning in now, please consider becoming a member or making a donation to our publisher, Film at Lincoln Center, during these unprecedented times: https://purchase.filmlinc.org/donate/contribute2

In case you’re just joining us, this is another edition of the Film Comment Podcast at Home. Every day we’re talking about what we’re watching. For this episode, we check in with Sheila O’Malley, one of our regular columnists, who writes the Present Tense column. FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold joined digital editor Clinton Krute to talk with Sheila about a classic Hollywood star she’s been returning to: Jean Arthur, well known from several Frank Capra movies as well as Howard Hawks’s Only Angels Have Wings. Sheila also chose another film which we don’t want to spoil because it testifies to the great variety of movies we’re all watching right now. As usual, we’re providing links on Film Comment’s website, including where to watch the next movie we’ll focus on next episode: we’ll be talking about Leos Carax’s Mauvais Sang, starring Juliette Binoche and Denis Levant. And we’ll have a very special guest joining us that episode, posting Monday. You’ll also find more information and a link for supporting the publisher of Film Comment, Film at Lincoln Center, during these unprecedented times. Also don’t miss details on the new streaming availability of Bacurau. Thank you for listening, and let’s go now to our conversation with Sheila and Clint.

Today we continue our special homebound version of the podcast, as we all do our best to stay connected and stay sane. As before, we’re talking about what we’ve been watching and how being stuck at home is leading us to try some new movies as well as return to comfort food. We hope you enjoy our latest selection, and we'd love if you watched along with us—you'll find links below to titles under discussion. For our latest episode, I’m joined by Soraya Nadia McDonald, culture critic for The Undefeated and contributing editor to Film Comment, and by Devika Girish, our assistant editor. On this episode, we discuss Kathleen Collins’s Losing Ground, Matt Wolf’s Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, Thomas Heise’s Heimat Is a Space in Time, Legally Blonde, and Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? Also, a special treat: If you listened to the last episode, you’ll recall our own Michael Koresky promising some new music for the podcast. He came through with a dramatic performance of Michel Legrand’s “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?”, which you can hear on today’s intro.

“NO NEW ‘MOVIES’ TIL INFLUENZA ENDS“ read the October 10, 1918, headline in The New York Times, during the global flu pandemic one century ago. Then as now, theaters nationwide were temporarily closing, leaving moviegoers without any movies to go to. “WE MISS OUR MOVIES” went another newspaper headline that same October, atop an article that marveled at the impact of this young popular art form: “In a few years, and so gradually as to be almost imperceptible, the custom of watching them has grown upon individuals of all mentalities to a greater extent than they realized until they suddenly were deprived of them.” The “movies” are a bit more familiar now, but we’re definitely feeling deprived of moviegoing, the community that cinemas provide, and, well, just plain getting out of the house and seeing people. So we’ve begun our Film Comment Podcast at Home series, gathering together (remotely!) to talk about the movies we’re watching at home. While we can’t do anything about the stir-craziness, or the dread, we can at least share movies and keep each other company. Without further ado, please enjoy our latest installment, where I’m joined by Film Comment critical stalwart, Michael Koresky, and my editorial colleagues at the magazine, Devika Girish and Clinton Krute. We hope you’ll follow along and watch with us. On this episode, we discuss Desperately Seeking Susan, After Hours, Columbo, The Big City, Stuff and Dough, The Green Fog, Vertigo, Crimes of the Heart, The Truth, If We Say That We Are Friends, Ridge and more.

You don’t need us to tell you that we’re living in extraordinary times, and consequently, many of us are spending our time indoors these days. And with all that extra time inside, we’ve been talking with folks and hearing that it might be nice to listen to some friendly talk about movies—and maybe give us something else to think about. So we will be doing special editions of The Film Comment Podcast where we talk about what we’ve been watching, and wherever possible, we’ll be providing relevant links so you can watch too or read more. Call it The Film Comment Podcast at Home. For our first installment, Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sat down with his editorial colleagues—remotely, don’t worry!—Digital Editor Clinton Krute and Assistant Editor Devika Girish, to talk about their recent viewing habits and, of course, vent some general concerns about the movies. Some of the movies discussed include Věra Chytilová’s Daisies, Dušan Makavejev’s A Man Is Not a Bird, and Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Bacurau is the new film from Brazilian filmmakers Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, and it has a pulp thriller premise with a radical heart: a small rural community becomes the target of a mysterious, heavily armed group of foreign white tourists. But the Bacurau residents don’t give up, and the result is what Ela Bittencourt calls, in our March-April issue, “a blistering portrait of resistance.” You might know the filmmakers from their prior work on Neighboring Sounds and Aquarius. For their latest, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sat down with Bittencourt on her recent visit to New York and discussed the film’s resonance with Brazilian history and the filmmakers’ consistently thoughtful and dazzling technique. You can also read Bittencourt’s interview with Mendonca Filho and Dornelles in the same issue, and our special interview podcast from the New York Film Festival.

First Cow is the movie on the lovely cover of our March-April issue, directed by Kelly Reichardt. The setting of the movie is an Oregon frontier town in the 1820s, when newcomers are busily trying to get a foothold in life and in business. Two such newcomers are at the center of First Cow, a cook named Cookie and a fugitive he befriends named King Lu. It’s another chapter in Reichardt’s richly imagined vision of America, a portrait of outsiders and of friendship which also accounts for the unruly forces of commerce and greed. First Cow is now in theaters and it screened last year in the New York Film Festival, where FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold spoke with Reichardt between events at Film at Lincoln Center. She generously went into detail about images and the sounds that compose the film’s historical snapshot, as well as the artistic influences. Be sure to check out our features on First Cow in the print magazine as well as our discussion on last week’s podcast.

In the cover story of our March-April issue, out now, Film Comment Digital Editor Clinton Krute writes “Kelly Reichardt’s deceptively modest epic First Cow opens with a wide, static shot of a barge, heavy with consumer goods, pushing down the Columbia River. Like the story that follows, this shot is deceptively straightforward, gesturing toward one of the themes—nature vs. society, with the human being somewhere in-between—that the filmmaker has been worrying since her 1994 debut, River of Grass. With First Cow, Reichardt has managed to weave together the various concerns—social, philosophical, economic, and cinematic—that have haunted her films to date, producing a work of remarkable beauty and startling complexity.” Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sat down with Krute and Phoebe Chen, a regular contributor, to talk about Reichardt’s career and her latest, in theaters this week.

The Berlin International Film Festival is now over, but there were a few more films we wanted to share with you. We’ve talked about highlights such as new films from Christian Petzold and Hong Sangsoo. For our final Berlinale episode, we’re discussing new work from Tsai Ming-liang; the Golden Bear award-winner, There Is No Evil, from Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof; and a couple of films that will be appearing in New Directors / New Films here in New York, The Trouble with Being Born and Los Conductos. This podcast also has a bonus feature for you: our conversation about documentary ethics with Orwa Nyrabia, artistic director of IDFA, the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam. For this episode, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold was joined by Devika Girish, assistant editor at Film Comment.