The Film Comment Podcast

For this week's podcast, we take a close look at Projections, the New York Film Festival’s program of experimental work from around the globe. Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Nellie Killian, programmer and Film Comment contributing editor, and Becca Voelcker, doctoral student at Harvard and contributor, for a review of Projections highlights by Beatrice Gibson, Zachary Epcar, Jeremy Shaw, Sky Hopinka, and Laida Lertxundi, as well as the unique nature of the experimental film community.

The 56th New York Film Festival features three special Film Comment Talks, the first of which was our latest “Cinema of Experience” roundtable. On the occasion of our September/October cover featuring Burning star Steven Yeun—interviewed by Devika Girish about the notion of authenticity, and the excitement of working with director Lee Changdong—the focus of the talk was Asian and Asian American experience on and off screen. At the Film Society of Lincoln Center, I was joined by a stellar cast of commentators with an array of professional perspectives: Andrew Chan, web editor of the Criterion Collection; David Ninh, director of press and publicity; Genevieve Yue, assistant professor of culture and media at the New School; and Andrew Ahn, director of the film Spa Night. The 25th anniversary of The Joy Luck Club became the starting point for a thoughtful and movingly personal discussion. Stay tuned (or drop on by) for our next two talks: a chat with NYFF filmmakers and our critics' wrap-up of the films.

“In their films—especially Barton Fink, The Man Who Wasn’t There, No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, and Inside Llewyn Davis—there’s always the sense that the deck is stacked against us and that we’re the authors of our own misery, a doubly discomfiting, Camusian view that perfectly matches their aesthetic approach, an overwhelming omniscience that results in a kind of bravura melancholy,” Michael Koresky writes in his feature about Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs in our September/October issue. This week, Koresky, FSLC Editorial and Creative Director, moderates a special Film Comment Podcast featuring three more Coeniacs in conversation about the brothers’ dazzling 30-year-plus body of work, from greatest hits to lesser-known ballads: K. Austin Collins, film critic at Vanity Fair; Aliza Ma, head of programming at Metrograph; and Adam Nayman, Toronto-based critic and author of the new book The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together (Abrams). The Ballad of Buster Scruggs screens on October 4 and 9 in the New York Film Festival and opens in November. And look out for our Film Comment Talks during NYFF: the Cinema of Experience on September 29, our Filmmakers Chat on October 7, and our critics' Festival Wrap about festival highlights on October 10.

Our latest guest for our Film Comment Talks was Ethan Hawke. His new film Blaze, which he directed, stars in, and co-wrote, was released in August by IFC Films. In a busy year that also saw the release of First Reformed, where he played a tormented priest, Hawke took time to talk with FC stalwart Nick Pinkerton about playing characters who value authenticity and integrity. The actor-writer-filmmaker was in prime raconteur mode, in front of an enthused audience. Look out for more Film Comment Talks during the New York Film Festival and beyond!

“Very rare are the movie depictions of restaurant work that evoke the mental and emotional dissonance required to get through an eight-hour shift,” April Wolfe wrote in her Film Comment review of Support the Girls. “Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls—which takes place predominantly within a topsy-turvy 24-hour period, as the manager of a T&A sports bar juggles the concerns of every needy patron and employee—portrays precisely that odd mix of knowing self-abjection and bubbling, flirtatious confidence present in real-life restaurant workers.” The portrayal of work on screen is a practically inexhaustible topic for study, but recently we dipped a toe into the discussion, with a little help. A few weeks before the fall festival glut, I joined filmmaker/critic Sierra Pettengill, author of the Chick Strand feature in our September/October issue, for an interview/discussion with Bujalski concerning Support the Girls and the challenges of depicting work on screen.

Our Toronto 2018 podcast series comes to a close as our group gabs about Olivier Assayas's garrulous Non-Fiction, Alex Ross Perry's Her Smell, Ho Wi Ding's Cities of Last Things, and more. Guests include Aliza Ma, head programmer at Metrograph; Eric Hynes, curator of film at Museum of the Moving Image in New York and Film Comment columnist; leading Toronto critic Adam Nayman, a Cinema Scope and Reverse Shot contributor; and Michael Koresky, Director of Editorial and Creative Strategy at Film Society of Lincoln Center. Back to New York!

The Toronto hit parade continues with another podcast from the festival formerly known as the Festival of Festivals. I brought together even more hearts and minds this time for another spirited chat: Aliza Ma, head programmer at Metrograph; Eric Hynes, curator of film at Museum of the Moving Image in New Yorkand Film Comment columnist; Nick Davis, a Film Comment contributing editor and professor of film, literature, and gender studies at Northwestern University; and Michael Koresky, director of editorial and creative strategy at Film Society of Lincoln Center. We discussed High Life, If Beale Street Could Talk, The Crossing, American Dharma, and In Fabric.

Drawn like hopeless spaceships into a black hole, Film Comment and friends are currently attending the sprawling Toronto film festival. I brought together a couple of critics willing to take time out from the buffet of movies for a spirited chat: Nick Davis, a Film Comment contributing editor and professor of film, literature, and gender studies at Northwestern University; and leading Toronto critic Adam Nayman, a Cinema Scope and Reverse Shot contributor. We discussed a number of films you may not have heard much about, and a few you have, including Fahrenheit 11/9, Graves Without a Name, Destroyer, Peterloo, and Aniara.

Taking a breath to look back, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Jonathan Romney, FC contributing editor, in an undisclosed garden location at the Venice Film Festival to discuss a few of the much-anticipated headliners: Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, Laszlo Nemes’s Sunset, S. Craig Zahler’s Dragged Across Concrete, and Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria.

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.