The Film Comment Podcast

This week we celebrate two different strands of Indian cinema, looking at the past and the vibrant present. First, we look at the landmark Film at Lincoln Center retrospective for Ritwik Ghatak, director of The Cloud-Capped Star, A River Called Titas, and other films. For that part of the discussion, we’ll be joined by two of the series' programmers, Moinak Biswas and former Film at Lincoln Center director of programming Richard Peña. For the second half of the episode, we’ll be talking about the Tamil filmmaker Vetri Maaran with R. Emmet Sweeney, who wrote about the director’s bloody portraits of South India in our November-December issue. Our special guest host for the episode is FC assistant editor Devika Girish.

Horror movies are the usual choice for Halloween viewing. But we here at Film Comment got to wondering: what are the scariest movies that are not horror films? There are many ways a movie can get under your skin, and it’s not always through gore or the supernatural. To discuss this notion, FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold got together with Film Comment regular Michael Koresky and Ashley Clark, senior repertory programmer at BAM. Each chose one or two movies (including Cabaret, Bamboozled, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day) that frightened them but don’t fall into the horror genre, leading to an intriguing discussion of how movies get under your skin. And sleep tight!

The Lighthouse is the mind-bending new movie out from Robert Eggers, a director who’s making a career out of revisiting America’s primal past in vividly imagined period films. In 2015, Eggers won the Best Directing Award at Sundance for The Witch, a chilling piece of horror set in a colonial New England settlement. In The Lighthouse, Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson star as two lighthouse keepers, a grizzled old-timer and his new apprentice, in 19th century Maine. For our latest Film Comment Talk at Film at Lincoln Center, FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold spoke with Eggers about the art, craft, and angst of making the movie, fleshing out the details of its setting, and what he’d do with an unlimited budget.

At Film Comment, we love it when we get behind a movie and then see other movie-goers share the love. Parasite, the funny and fierce thriller from Bong Joon Ho, was on the cover of our September-October issue, but wasn't released in theaters until mid-October. But what a release! Audiences are packing the theaters. To talk about the movie’s appeal and Bong’s masterful filmmaking, FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sat down with contributing editor Amy Taubin, who wrote out September-October feature on Parasite, and FC columnist and critic Michael Koresky. And don't miss the essay on Parasite by Midsommar filmmaker Ari Aster, also available in our latest issue.

Mister America is the new film starring Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington. It’s a documentary-style satire about an first-time political candidate named Tim Heidecker, that is, the character Heidecker has played for years now alongside Turkington as part of their movie show On Cinema at the Cinema. In case you don’t already know, Heidecker and Turkington have created an incredible comedic universe involving their two movie-guy characters which spans a vanity spy show, Twitter, and now Mister America. FC Editor-in-Chief sat down with the duo to talk about how they put it all together, where cinema verité comes into it, and what they think of Alan Partridge.

For the festival’s final week, contributing critics and editors gather together for a spirited discussion with Film Comment‘s Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold about the movies they’ve seen in the NYFF57 lineup. Panelists include programmer and FC contributing editor Nellie Killian; Michael Koresky of Film Comment and Reverse Shot; Amy Taubin of Film Comment and Artforum; and critic Phoebe Chen. The panel discusses Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s To the Ends of the Earth, Bertrand Bonello’s Zombi Child, Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow, Eloy Enciso Cachafeiro’s Endless Night, among many others.

Every year at the New York Film Festival, Film Comment brings together a group of intrepid filmmakers whose work is screening in the festival. It’s a rare chance to share stories about the art, craft, and angst of filmmaking, and to compare notes on inspirations and what makes a good collaboration. This year, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief spoke with an all-star lineup of filmmakers from across the festival: Pietro Marcello, director of Martin Eden, Corneliu Porumboiu, director of The Whistlers, Justine Triet, director of Sibyl, and from the Projections program, Akosua Adoma Owusu, director of Pelourinho: They Don’t Really Care About Us, and Luise Donschen, director of Entire Days Together.

The new film Bacurau centers upon the residents of a remote Brazilian village who gradually discover that they’re being hunted by a group of Western tourists. Part class-warfare satire, part thriller, the movie gripped audiences at the New York Film Festival and it marks a major achievement by its directors Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles. In this episode, FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold joins FC Assistant Editor Devika Girish in a conversation with Mendonça Filho and Dornelles where they discuss five key scenes from the film. These include the opening scene, which takes us via drone shot and truck drive into the film’s remote setting; a psychotropic interlude in which the residents of Bacurau dance the capoeira in preparation for battle; and finally a climactic action sequence that occurs in a local museum. They also discuss a memorable exchange between Udo Kier, who appears here as the icy-cruel leader of the Western mercenaries, and Brazilian acting legend Sonia Braga, who plays the village matriarch. Listen ahead for details on the making of each scene.

Think of it as a festival within the festival: every year, the annual Projections program brings the latest and greatest of experimental film to the New York Film Festival. Projections is a crucial and consistently popular snapshot of the boundary pushing part of cinema that is embedded in the DNA of the New York Film Festival, by way of co-founder Amos Vogel. To navigate this year’s rich offerings, I brought together two leading critics in the field: Ed Halter, a critic in residence at Bard and co-director of Light Industry, and Film Comment contributing editor Nellie Killian, who teaches at Pratt. The conversation starts with a broad look at today’s experimental scene before spotlighting favorites from this year’s Projections. Tune in for more Film Comment fun at the New York Film Festival with our Filmmakers Chat director showcase on Saturday, October 5th, and our critics wrapup on Wednesday, October 9, both free events at Film at Lincoln Center.

Every year at the New York Film Festival, Film Comment puts on a slate of special events, including public talks and a screening presentation. Our first NYFF talk this year was titled State of the Nation, a wide-ranging conversation about the complex interplay between politics and cinema. How do filmmakers grapple with the challenge of portraying current events and recent history on screen? And how successfully are movies reflecting the political complexities of a fast changing world? FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sat down with a variety of voices to discuss these questions from different angles: Scott Z. Burns, writer-director of The Report and writer of The Laundromat; Jamsheed Akrami, professor at William Paterson University, director of Friendly Persuasion: Iranian Cinema After the 1979 Revolution, and author of our Jafar Panahi interview feature from March-April; and Devika Girish, Assistant Editor of Film Comment, who wrote a cover story for FC last year about Black Panther.