The Cinematologists Podcast

Knowing Sounds: Podcasting as Academic Practice

Knowing Sounds is an experimental podcast exploring the possibilities and outcomes of using the podcast medium as a creative practice underpinned by conceptual thought to produce and disseminate academic research. The podcast, which more specifically can be defined as an audio essay, is split into three sections. The first is an experimental collage of music, dialogue and sound effects from a selection of films interwoven with excerpts from audience members who attended The Cinematologists live screenings. It is designed to open up questions as to the potential for a sonic landscape to tap into the ‘cinematic imagination’ without the use of images. We thus play with aural engagement creating a space for the listener to actively negotiate the binary between the abstract emotions and intended rational meaning inferred through listening. The second section is a spoken analysis of the potential of podcasting as an academic form exploring how the mechanics sound production and dissemination in the digital age can challenge the powerful logocentric link between knowledge and writing. We also interrogate the structural formation that, paradoxically, has given rise to the ubiquity of podcasts in mainstream culture but has undermined its potential development. Furthermore, interweaving illustrative references, we analyse specific film podcasts and how they utilise a developing grammar of sonic writing to expand cultural discourse. The final section brings together other contributors to the journal of disrupted media practice commenting on their alternative methods of production and exhibition aimed at unsettling assumptions about the relationship between practice and theory.

Before Sunrise (with film reviewer Ren Zelen)

The first screening of season 4 at the University of Brighton, Hastings campus is Richard Linklater's romantic drama Before Sunrise starring Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. Dario is joined on-stage by screenwriter and lecturer Rob Greens (@robgreens) and by Digital Film alumnus James Calver (@jammycalver) who are both big fans of the film and Linklater's style of filmmaking. Dario also interview's freelance film reviewer Ren Zelen who gives her take on some of the main releases at the London Film Festival. If you want to read Ren's review follow her on twitter @RenZelen.

Memento

We return with season 4 featuring a freshers week choice at Falmouth University with Christopher  Nolan's complex, existential neo-noir Memento getting the nod. Neil is joined on stage to introduce the film once again by Kingsley Marshall.Neil and Dario also discuss how to engage to the fullest extent with all the possibilities of film culture that are out there. 

Broken Embraces

Our second summer episode is our London debut where we took the podcast to the Curzon Bloomsbury to screen Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces. Perhaps not his most highly lauded film Broken Embraces does however, offer an opportunity to discuss Almodovar's relationship to cinema itself through the film's meta-cinematic structure and constant allusions to how we see the world cinematically.This episode also features an interview with Jose Arroyo from the University of Warwick who has written about and interviewed Almodovar.  Dario's blog on Broken EmbracesApologies for some poor quality sound on this episode.

Summer Special

In this summer interlude Dario and Neil cover a large range of subjects including the state of cinema, Bret Easton Ellis' film podcast, fandom and online culture, the Cary Grant Festival in Bristol, the joys and ills of academic conferences, and various films they have seen. Show notes:Bret Easton Ellis podcastDeath Foretold is not Death - Neil's article in Director's NotesCreators, fans and death threats: Talking to Joss Whedon, Neil Gaiman and more on the Age of Entitlement - LA Times article by Todd MartensCinematologists screening of Broken Embraces: 

Old Joy/I am Belfast (plus an interview with Mark Cousins)

Dario is joined by Neil at the Electric Palace in Hastings once again to screen Kelly Reichardt's poetic road movie Old Joy. A rainy afternoon in a fern-carpeted forest. Two old friends, Mark and Kurt (Will Oldham), drive up into the mountains near Portland, and get lost trying to find the hot springs. Resounding with sustained images and sounds given the time to reverberate, unarticulated tensions course through the film like a hidden creek. Finally at the turn-off to the springs, we see the sky reflected in their windshield and the whole world turns on this moment.The episode also feature's Neil's fascinating interview with all round cinematic mensch Mark Cousins about his new film I Am Belfast.

The Last Detail (with film critic Christina Newland)

In our penultimate episode of the season Dario is joined by film Scholar, writer and podcaster Alex Fitch to present a classic of the American new wave: The Last Detail (1973) directed by the under appreciated Hal Ashby and starring Jack Nicholson. Two hard-boiled petty officers, Buddusky and Mulhall, are detailed to take a young sailor, Meadows, to a Naval Prison to serve an eight-year sentence for a trivial offense, and they decide to show him a good time on the way. They narrowly escape a bar fight, tangle with some Marines, and visit a brothel for Meadows’ first sexual experience. After reluctantly turning him in, Buddusky and Mulhall realize they are as much prisoners of their own world as Meadows now is of his.ario also interviews freelance film critic and journalist Christina Newland. They discuss studying film at university, writing process, feminist politics, and boxing movies along with this weeks overarching theme: the American new wave.Christina Newland's article on Creed and the Legacy of the boxing film.Molly Haskell (1987) From Reference to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the MoviesCinephilia and Beyond: ‘The Last Detail: Hal Ashby and Robert Town's Slice of the 70s America'

Ex_Machina

Dario returns to the School of Film and Television at Falmouth University to host a screening of Alex Garland's Sci-Fi drama Ex_Machina. He is joined on-stage by Dr Verena Von Eicken who selected the film and they discuss its potential to be read as a metaphorical critique of gendered power relations and the male gaze. Neil and Dario also discuss issues around the narrative structure of film, Alex Garland as a writer director and other recent examples of hard Sci-Fi such as Her (2013) and Under the Skin (2013).
Show Notes: 
Link to Laura Mulvey's seminal 1975 essay Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema
Link to Donna Haraway's 1983 essay The Cyborg Manifesto