Neil and Dario dedicate an episode to discussing the work of the brilliant French filmmaker Alice Diop, using the release of her debut fiction feature Saint Omer as a jumping off point into her incredible body of work.

Their conversation takes in some of her documentary work, On Call (2016), Towards Tenderness (2016) and We (2021), all of which, along with Saint Omer, are available to stream on MUBI in the UK currently.

The conversation covers a variety of topics but all respond to Diop's themes, preoccupations and formal dexterity, with Neil and Dario struggling to find the language for a filmmaker whose work is so concerned with the possibilities, limitations and power of both cinematic and spoken language.

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

Brett (writer/director/editor) and Simon (producer) Harvey, are stalwarts of contemporary Cornish cinema and 2022 saw the release of their third feature film Long Way Back, which has just hit region.co.uk/film/">streaming platforms. 

Supported by Falmouth University's Sound/Image Cinema Lab, which has also supported the work of Mark Jenkin and for which Neil is the research and strategy lead, Long Way Back marks a departure in style and ambition for the filmmaking brothers and their company o-region.

Neil talks to them about their process and influences, the role of music in both those aspects, the Cornish film community and the challenges of the UK indie film landscape. From there, Neil and Dario discuss regional UK filmmaking, the role of film festivals, independent ambition and london-centricism as both a concept and reality. 

Elsewhere, Neil recommends new Chilean cinema release The Cow Who Sang A Song Into The Future, directed by Francisca Alegria and featuring a favourite actor of the hosts, Pablo Larrain regular Alfredo Castro, which prompts a chat about eco-sophical cinema.

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

This is a very special episode where we were invited, by friend of the podcast So Mayer to discuss a new film screening series and project. In 2022 and 2023, a series of trans-focused film events took place across the UK as part of Inclusive Cinema’s T.L.C (aka Tender Loving Care for Trans-Led/Trans-Loved Cinema) project. 

Integrated into indie cinema and festival programmes, films were screened with Q&As and panels on diverse topics related to trans visibility in cinema, thanks to support from the BFI Film Audience Network (BFI FAN) awarding National Lottery funding. These events were recorded live and have been made into a podcast series.

Alongside these podcasts, there is a guide to Good Practice Examples for Tricky Questions also on the project's website, linked to above. These questions and answers were created alongside, and refer to, the three T.L.C. podcasts and discussions around screenings.

For this special episode of the podcast, Dario (he/him) spoke to So (they/them), along with Film Critic and podcaster Lillian Crawford (she/her), who introduced the first film of the series - screened at the Lexi Cinema - the extraordinary Japanese film Funeral Parade of Roses, in July 2022. 

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

Just a quick trailer for our Berlinale Dispatches minisodes which you can listen to Dario's daily missives from the festival, over at our Patreon feed: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists.

In this episode, Neil talks with husband and wife filmmaking team Josh Appignanesi and Devorah Baum about their new work Husband, a follow-up to 2016's meta-documentary-autofiction-comedy The New Man. Josh and Devorah are co-directors and appear in the film as versions of themselves navigating marriage, parenthood, work and a New York tour for Devorah's latest book.

The conversation covers their unique approach to marriage and moviemaking, comedy, collaboration and feelings. It's a fascinating discussion about a polarising piece of cinema.

Polarising, because as the discussion around the interview highlights, Neil and Dario had very different responses to the film and in an in-depth chat, grapple with those responses and what it says about them as viewers and people.

Husband is In UK cinemas now and on Curzon Home Cinema from 10 February"

https://homecinema.curzon.com/film/husband/

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

For this episode, Neil and Dario dive back into the work of master Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa having last talked about his cinema in the earliest days of the podcast when they screened Yojimbo for an audience in Falmouth.

The occasion for this revisit is a new, extensive retrospective of his work hosted at the BFI Southbank (and some regional partner cinemas) and on their BFI Player platform. The season is curated by filmmaker Asif Kapadia and writer Ian Hayden Smith, who Dario talked to as the two-month long season got underway.

Their discussion covers the curation approach, the influence of Kurosawa on them and the wider film community more broadly, and why he remains a key figure of focus in global film history.

Elsewhere, Neil and Dario look at some of Kurosawa's post-War films set in contemporary Japan, with a deeper focus on I Live In Fear (1955) and High and Low (1963). 

With thanks to Sarah Bemand at the BFI for the invitation to cover this season, setting up the interview with Asif and Ian and providing access to the BFI Player to view titles.

For more on the ongoing season visit the BFI website here. 

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

For our first episode of 2023, Dario speaks to a great friend of the podcast Mark Jenkin about his new Cornish "folk horror", Enys Men. Starring Mary Woodvine as a volunteer isolated on a Cornish island seemingly with the task of observing and recording the local wildlife. This sets the stage for a disquieting, time-bending, psycho-ecological fable, forged through Jenkin's singular audio-visual sensibility. 

In a wide-ranging conversation, Mark goes deep into the artistic process underpinning the film, thinks through questions the work throws up about loneliness, isolation, time and memory. The notion of genre is another topic of discussion, with the renaissance in cinematic folk horror. But Dario forward his thesis that Enys Men is a "last woman on Earth" sci-fi.      

It's also great have Neil returning to the show after his hiatus. He reviews another potential entry to the international folk horror canon Yanuari (January). From Bulgarian director Andrey Paounov and co-written by former Cinematologists guest Alex Barrett.

Shownotes

ENYS MEN is in cinemas now. 

The Cinematic DNA of ENYS MEN season [curated by director Mark Jenkin] runs at BFI Southbank until 31 January with selected films and Jenkin’s shorts collection available on BFI Player now.

ENYS MEN will be released on Blu-ray/DVD and BFI Player on 1 May. The ENYS MEN Original Score by Mark Jenkin is out now digitally via Invada Records and released on vinyl on 24 February.

Documentary mention by Mark and Neil on Folk Horror is Woodlands Dark, Days Bewitched

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

We come to the end of another cinematic year, and for our look back over 2022 Dario is joined by The Independent's film critic  Clarisse Loughrey. As usual, the episode is contextualised with a meander through some of the big themes and news stories of the year in film. This is followed  by a countdown of both Dario and Clarisse's top five films of the year. 

Both Dario and Neil want to thank our audience for their continued support throughout the year, we hope you have enjoyed the season and continue to be a listener into 2023. Dario will be publishing the January newsletter at the end of the week which will double up as something of a New Year reflection. 

All the best to you all for 2023 - Dario and Neil.

Shownotes

Clarisse Loughrey on Twitter. 

Clarisse's films-2022-movies-ranked-b2237591.html">full films of the year list, published in The Independent.

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

So this is the penultimate episode of 2022. We were at the Garden Cinema on Tuesday 20th to watch The Coen Brothers Blood Simple. My co-host for the evening was the Producer and now regular contributor to the James Dean. James was absolutely superb, both an astute appreciator of the Coen Brothers as artists, but fascinatingly relaying some nuggets of personal experience from having actually met and watched the Coen's at work. Listening to James and watching the film, which was an absolutely incredible DCP restoration by Criterion with 5.1 sound, I just was reminded about the pure joy of watching a film.

It’s almost heresy to say, but the film seems to offer itself up for the pure joy of watching, without and underlying sense of message. It’s cine-literate, but unpretentiously so, and it’s refreshingly Apolitical. Of course, the argument arises that there is no such thing a culture product that is Apolitical. Everything is defined by an underlying ideology. As a well-trained cultural studies scholar, the notion of being always already within ideology is something that has been drilled into me. Indeed, one could suggest that the Coens, whether they would explicitly acknowledge or speak to the wider allusions of their work, have been knowing chroniclers of the Absurdist contradictions at the heart of the American dream.

Yet, this is never imposed didactically. On the contrary there is arguably a respect for audiences literacy of, and practice in, to borrow from Stuart Hall, decoding and negotiating the signifiers of film. That might sound overwrought, in the way I’ve put it. What I mean is, they revel in the possibilities of cinema as form. Unlike many other filmmakers for who use references as pastiche or as an exercise in nerding out. The Coens invite you to the self-contained pleasure of the film they are presenting you with, without the necessity of connecting a reference external to the text. Even with the noir invocations, exploitation riffs, tours of pulp violence, one never feels excluding from enjoying the fundamental filmic pleasures.

Watching and listening, to this pristinely recreated digital artifact, in such a perfect auditorium, and with the knowledge of a shared audience intent, my will to analyse interpret gradually just succumbed to a purity of pleasure. Looking back, if there has been a theme to this season of the podcast, it has been a kind of tension. Between how we define and categorise films; the push to define the status of cinema in a fractured and uncertain media landscape. And the ephemeral, fleeting joy of those minute of empathy and immersion. Where the mechanistic shaping of light and sound creates a canvas of illusion which offers the chance to connect the external universe with your internal dreamscape.

With just the end of year review to come, I want to thank all the contributors to this season. Guest hosts James Dean, Caroline Catz, Mary Wild, Sarah Cleaver, David Lowbridge-Ellis, Catherine Wheatley, Savina Petcova, Chris Cassingham, Clarisse Lockree, the podcast really has functioned thanks to your generosity of time and insight. Also, thanks to all the other guests we have had on the show this season.

Thanks to George and all the staff at the Garden for Hosting the live episodes. You should all join their membership scheme immediately. It’s a magical and still largely undiscovered venue in the heart of London.

And thanks to Neil of course, who has been on a break apart from the Sight and Sound episode.  His support and encouragement behind the scenes has been invaluable. It’s been a challenge to do this without him and I’m looking forward to getting back to the main purpose of the show, which is our movie conversation (DL).

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

In this episode, Dario talks MA student in Film Curation Chris Cassingham about his graduation film series: Beyond Interpretation. Screening at the ICA in London in January, the series that explores the connections between paranoia, conspiracy, anxiety, and the precarious realities of artistic creation at the margins of the American film industry. At a time when it is increasingly difficult to make and distribute films that defy simple categorisation, resist commercial expectations of narrative and form, and whose concerns are often out of step with capitalist ideals of profit, it is important to seize every available opportunity to present them to new audiences.

Dario discusses with Chris his course at NFTS and the film curation itself as discipline, reflecting on the challenging times for exhibitors and the film industry as a whole in getting audiences to come to theatres. Dario contextualises this in his opening remarks, thinking about cinema-going as a recurring theme of the podcast, even before the pandemic. The impact of streaming has obviously had a major influence on film audiences, along with shifting criteria in what types of films mainstream audiences deem worthy to see at the cinema.

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing