The Cinematologists Podcast

Hannah Strong on Sofia Coppola

The latest episode is another first for the podcast as this episode marks the first time we have gone back to talk about a filmmaker we’ve already dedicated an episode to. The reason for this landmark is Hannah Strong’s new book on Sofia Coppola for Abrams Books, Sofia Coppola: Forever Young. The book is the first in the Abrams series to see a female filmmaker given such lavish treatment.
Neil talks to Hannah about her approach to writing the book, Hannah’s personal and cinephilic connection to Coppola’s work and the trajectory her career has taken, and how she’s wrestled with and managed emerging from such an auspicious family shadow to her position as one America’s leading filmmakers in her own right.
Elsewhere, Neil and Dario talk about Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr, recently released on Blu-ray in a beautiful edition by Eureka Video/Masters of Cinema, and Sofia Coppola’s position in American film culture and the demands and expectations this position comes with.
———
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

Nightmare Alley, The Northman and more

With Neil visiting London for the first time in a while, we took the opportunity to record an impromptu conversation with both of us in the same room. Thankfully the vibe and repartee still seem to have remained intact. We didn't have a specific theme in mind for the show so we ended up talking about recent viewings and let the conversation take us where it will. The two major films we discussed were Robert Eggers' The Northman and Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley - we had mixed feeling about both. More on the art-house side was Zero Fucks Given (Julie Lecoustre & Emmanuel Marre) and thanks to an avid lister Mark Hancock's suggestion, we get into our favourite Body Horror films. Particularly examples with a comedic element to them. We hope you enjoy the more relaxed conversational tone of this one.
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
 
 

Boiling Point (w/dir. Philip Barantini)

In this episode, Dario talks to director Philip Barantini about his tense, absorbing and thoroughly authentic slice of restaurant life: Boiling Point. Stephen Graham is superb as Andy, a chef on the edge breakdown with pressures coming from all angles and trying to keep his diverse team of staff working for him on a busy Christmas service. Adding to the anxiety, the restaurant is unexpectedly visited by a celebrity chef and Andy's former mentor Alastair (Jason Fleming), who brings with him notorious food critic Sara (Lourdes Faberes). 
Dario and Philip bond over their shared experiences of restaurant culture and this underpins conversation about the authenticity of the film, the use of the one-take set-up, the improvisational aspects of the script, Stephen Graham's role as a driving force on-set and on-screen, and the restaurant as a fascinating site for examinations of British social life.
Neil and Dario also round up some recent watches including Neil's Covid induced revisit of Predator and Predator 2 & Paul Schrader's The Card Counter, while Dario discusses Tony Scott's Unstoppable and Crimson Tide, and Sergio Corbucci's Il Grande Silenzio.
You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.
Shownotes
Boiling Poing is available to stream on Netflix
Philip Barantini and his production company Three Little Birds are both on Twitter
Mary Wild's discussion with Dario on The Card Counter is available on her Patreon page.
Silver Screen Video Podcast and their series on Tony Scott
____
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.
_____
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

Tyler Taormina (Ham on Rye, Happer’s Comet)

In this episode, Neil sits with emergent American filmmaker Tyler Taormina about his new, deeply strange and affecting feature Happer’s Comet, which premiered at Berlinale earlier this year. The conversation covers Tyler’s family, his approach to filmmaking, the nagging themes he can’t shake and the filmmakers his work is in dialogue with.
Additionally, Dario and Neil spend time really thinking about the theme of alienation in Tyler’s film and work, and what it says so beautifully about this moment in our time.
Thanks to Tyler for his time and Adam Kersh for introducing us to his client.
To kick things off Neil and Dario catch up on recent watches including The Batman and the folk horror documentary Woodlands Dark and 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 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

Cherish Oteka & The Black Cop

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.
_____
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.

Bill Douglas Cinema Museum

In this latest episode, Neil takes listeners inside the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum at the University of Exeter with the help of lead curator Phil Wickham.
Phil guides Neil around the museum's different exhibits that stretch from pre-cinema to the present day, they take an amble round the archive stacks and Neil reflects on the spaces of museums, archives and libraries as place of tactile proximity to history, art and knowledge.
Elsewhere Neil and Dario discuss the role of libraries and museums in contemporary education and society.
Thanks to Phil for the invitation and tour. Thanks to Dr. Helen Hanson for lunch, Pamela Hutchinson for the nudge, and Scott Barley for the use of his track Fugue (available on his Bandcamp here) to guide the journey.
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.

Michel Chion, in Conversation (Part 2)

This is part two of our interview with the seminal film scholar, critic, and composer Michel Chion. From the late 70s onwards Chion has been one of the leading voices at the intersection of film scholarship and cinephilic criticism. His work spans a huge roster of filmmakers and subjects, but it's his work on film sound with which he is arguably most identified. Books such as The Voice in Cinema (1982), Audio/Vision (1993), Music in Cinema (1995) & Film, A Sound Art in many ways defined the sub-field of film sound criticism. Chion also wrote for Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1980s and has written books on the work of Jacques Tati, Andrei Tarkovsky, Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch.
Before turning to cinema, Chion was part of the experimental school of Music Concrete under the mentorship of Pierre Schaeffer, the "godfather" of avant-garde electronic music in France. He continues to compose to this day.
Chion asked that he give his answers in French so I enlisted the help of a colleague from the University of Brighton, the sound artist, composer, and performer Johanna Bramli (check out her work here), to help with the translation. This is another interesting first for the podcast.
At the end of part 2 of this double episode, Neil and Dario discuss many aspects of the interview and Chion's approach to film scholarship. We hope you enjoy what we think is a fantastic start to the new season.
Shownotes
Chion biography (Experimental music): https://electrocd.com/en/artiste/chion_mi/Michel_Chion/biographie
Pierre Schaeffer and Music Concrete - https://www.frieze.com/article/music-22
Ercan Bouliase - https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/arts/music/pierre-boulez-french-composer-dies-90.html
GRM: Group Recherché Musical https://www.musicainformatica.org/topics/groupe-de-recherches-musicales.php
Luciano Berio - https://www.universaledition.com/luciano-berio-54
Transition music for this episode taken from Michel Chion’s
La vie on Prose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK3xqAv65r0
Requiem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4XfD3yrYHI
La Grand Nettoyage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUUkA8wqlxQ
Johanna Bramil: http://www.johannabramli.com/
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.
 

Michel Chion, in conversation (Part 1)

We are back with Season 15 of The Cinematologists podcast. To begin our new run we are starting with a real high point: a double episode featuring the seminal film scholar, critic, and composer Michel Chion.
From the late 70s onwards Chion has been one of the leading voices at the intersection of film scholarship and cinephilic criticism. His work spans a huge roster of filmmakers and subjects, but it's his work on film sound with which he is arguably most identified. Books such as The Voice in Cinema (1982), Audio/Vision (1993), Music in Cinema (1995) & Film, A Sound Art in many ways defined the sub-field of film sound criticism. Chion also wrote for Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1980s and has written books on the work of Jacques Tati, Andrei Tarkovsky, Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch.
Before turning to cinema, Chion was part of the experimental school of Music Concrete under the mentorship of Pierre Schaeffer, the "godfather" of avant-garde electronic music in France. He continues to compose to this day.
Chion asked that he give his answers in French so I enlisted the help of a colleague from the University of Brighton, the sound artist, composer, and performer Johanna Bramli (check out her work here), to help with the translation. This is another interesting first for the podcast.
At the end of part 2 of this double episode, Neil and Dario discuss many aspects of the interview and Chion's approach to film scholarship. We hope you enjoy what we think is a fantastic start to the new season.
Shownotes
Chion biography (Experimental music): https://electrocd.com/en/artiste/chion_mi/Michel_Chion/biographie
Pierre Schaeffer and Music Concrete - https://www.frieze.com/article/music-22
Ercan Bouliase - https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/arts/music/pierre-boulez-french-composer-dies-90.html
GRM: Group Recherché Musical https://www.musicainformatica.org/topics/groupe-de-recherches-musicales.php
Luciano Berio - https://www.universaledition.com/luciano-berio-54
Transition music for this episode taken from Michel Chion’s
La vie on Prose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK3xqAv65r0
Requiem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4XfD3yrYHI
La Grand Nettoyage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUUkA8wqlxQ
Johanna Bramil: http://www.johannabramli.com/
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.