The Cinematologists
The Cinematologists
Friday Mar 11, 2022
Cherish Oteka & The Black Cop
Friday Mar 11, 2022
Friday Mar 11, 2022
Documentary film and TV maker Cherish Oteka is an insightful observer and visual translator of individual experiences related to race, sex, class, religion, and the often contentious relationship of these identities to Britishness. The Black Cop, is their latest documentary short. Nominated for a BAFTA the film is a portrait of the charismatic Gamal "G" Turawa and his experiences in the Met police as a black, gay officer.
The story of "G" covers his fostering by a white family in the suburbs to a move to London with a father unknown to him, and the subsequent racial demarcation, both implicit and explicit, he experiences. Mesmerised and inspired by the powerful figure of a black police officer directing traffic, he enters the force perhaps without realising the extreme levels of institutional subordination bordering on torture he would endure. Told with incredible candor by "G" his recollections are also a reckoning with the very concept of race. His feeling of isolation is exacerbated during the 80s aids "scare". Hiding his homosexuality from his co-workers becomes even more imperative as the media amplification looks to blame the gay community directly.
Cherish's foregrounding "G" in very close-up, personal interviews are enhanced by both historical news footage and documentary reconstruction. Dario talks to Cherish in detail about the form of the film and using a range of documentary registers, along with deploying formative memories as the narrative anchoring points of life stories. The untold histories of British culture and how, as a society, we reckon with them through art forms such as film and TV, is also a central discussion point.
Neil and Dario begin by reflecting on a number of films they have recently watched including Petrov's Flu (Kirill Serebrennikov, 2022), The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier, 2022), Paris, 13th district (Jacques Audiard,2022), C'mon C'mon (Mike Mills, 2022).
Show Notes
Watch The Black Cop on The Guardian Website
Some more of Cherish's TV and Online work:
Too Gay for God?
A Man Called Dad
NERD: BBC Body Positivity 'Katie Snooks'
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 also 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.
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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.
Thursday Dec 16, 2021
Jodorowsky‘s Dune (w/ director Frank Pavich)
Thursday Dec 16, 2021
Thursday Dec 16, 2021
In our penultimate episode of 2021, Dario speaks to Frank Pavich the director of Jodorowsky's Dune and NYHC. With all the publicity and discussion around Denis Villeneuve's blockbuster interpretation of Frank Herbert's influential Sci-Fi novel, it was fantastic to go back to the first, incredibly imaginative but ultimately failed attempt to bring the book to the screen from one of cinema's singular visionaries: Alejandro Jodorowsky. Frank talks about his first contact with Jodorowsky, his uncompromising attitude to the production scope and casting, and his assembling of a team of designers and artists including Kurt Geiger, whose drawings Pavich uses to great effect in the documentary and which would go on to define mainstream sci-fi for decades to come.
Frank also talks about NYHC (New York Hardcore) his directorial debut, putting the making of the film into the context of his fascinating idiosyncratic film education, and how the film was made in that liminal period between the analog and digital eras of filmmaking. You can watch it online for free here.
Also, Neil reviews serval blu-ray releases including Champion directed by Mark Robson and starring Kirk Douglas, Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence (both from Masters of Cinema), Jean Pierre Melville’s Enfant Terrible (BFI), Alistair Mcleland’s music film on Saint Etienne, I’ve Been Trying to Tell You.
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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 $2.50.
We also 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.
Transition music is from the OST for Jodorowsky's Dune by Kurt Stenzel.
Saturday Nov 06, 2021
Dr Alison Peirse - Women Make Horror
Saturday Nov 06, 2021
Saturday Nov 06, 2021
A Tale of Two Sisters, 2003, Editor Lee Hyeon-mi
In this episode, Neil talks to one of Horror Cinema’s leading scholars and all-round creative force of nature, Dr. Alison Peirse. Alison teaches film at Leeds (and is an old colleague of Dario’s!) where she is an associate professor. She writes a brilliant newsletter called The Losers Club and is finding success on the film festival circuit with her debut video essay Three Ways to Dine Well.
Alongside monographs on 1930s and Korean horror, Alison is the editor of the recent publication Women Make Horror which is a groundbreaking piece of scholarship in form and focus, and she contributes an intellectually provocative and exhilarating piece that explodes the previous limits of not only Horror scholarship but cinema scholarship more broadly. It’s a great book.
It was a pleasure to welcome Alison to the podcast and you can learn more about her work (and sign up for her newsletter) on her terrific website here.
Elsewhere on the show Neil and Dario discuss their evolving and crystallised thoughts on academic practice growing out of the conversation with Alison and also extol the virtues of Alexandre Rockwell’s new film Sweet Thing (Neil) and the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune (Dario).
It’s also worth hanging around and signing up for the bonus episode where Neil and Dario get deeper into questions about film academia and purge some negative feelings that have built up over time.
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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.
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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 $2.50.
We also 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.
Thursday Oct 14, 2021
London Film Festival 2021: Part 1
Thursday Oct 14, 2021
Thursday Oct 14, 2021
The first episode in our coverage of the London Film Festival. Dario and Neil discuss the blended format of the festival and the context by which one comes to watch specific films at certain moments because of festival serendipity. Under the spotlight for this mid-festival check-in are:
The Storms of Jeremy Thomas (Mark Cousins, 2021)
Memory Box (Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige, 2021)
Luzzu (Alex Camilleri, 2021)
Azor (Andreas Fontana, 2021)
Leave No Traces (Jan P. Matuszyński, 2021)
Citizen Ashe. (Rex Miller & Sam Pollard)
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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 $2.50.
We also really appreciate any reviews you might write about the show (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.
Tuesday Sep 03, 2019
(Repost) Bronco's House w/ director Mark Jenkin
Tuesday Sep 03, 2019
Tuesday Sep 03, 2019
This repost features director Mark Jenkin whose new release Bait opened last Friday (29th August 2019) to almost universal praise. Back in February 2016 Mark joined Dario at the Electric Palace in Hastings to screen and discuss the film. The story of a young man striving to provide a home for himself, his pregnant girlfriend and their unborn child, Bronco's House is an aesthetic meditation on property, power and the future. Like Bait the film is shot on a clockwork camera, using 16mm black and white negative stock, and processed by hand through an instant coffee based developer. Mark will be coming on the podcast again very soon, but until then we hope you enjoy this discussion wone of his seminal earlier works.
Bronco's House is available to download and stream. CLICK HERE.
Wednesday Nov 14, 2018
Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten (w/ director Julien Temple)
Wednesday Nov 14, 2018
Wednesday Nov 14, 2018
On the latest installment of the podcast, Neil shares the stage with one of his filmmaking heroes, director Julien Temple, before and after a screening of Temple’s 2007 film Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten. It’s a film with significant personal meaning for Neil as the episode explains. The film was screened on 35mm at Truro’s WTW Plaza Cinema and was made possible by the support of Kingsley Marshall at the School of Film & Television, Falmouth University.
The episode also sees Dario discuss how the film made him think differently about punk and the pair get into the politics of music documentary regarding issues such as the representation of female artists and global music cultures. There’s also talk about the latest film culture developments surrounding the demise of Filmstruck and the dominance of Netflix and how, sadly, all this stuff may not be anything new at all.
This episode also features the song ‘Afro Cuban Be Bop’ by (Joe Strummer &) The Astro-Physicians. Taken from the film I Hired A Contract Killer (dir. Kaurismaki, 1990). Available officially for the first time on the recent release Joe Strummer: 001.
The film is available to rent or buy on Amazon and iTunes and is available on UK/US DVD and Blu-ray.