Daughters of Darkness Podcast, with Kat Ellinger and Samm Deighan

In the seventh episode of Daughters of Darkness, Kat and Samm conclude their four-part exploration of the career of director Andrzej Zuławski, beginning with a discussion of La note bleue (1991). This unconventional biographical drama explores the fading relationship between Chopin and French writer George Sand, which is complicated by the intrusion of her teenage daughter, Solange (played by Zuławski’s then partner and longtime muse Sophie Marceau), who is also in love with Chopin. Next they look at Zuławski’s first Polish-made film in nearly two decades, the strange and sublime Szamanka (1996), about an uncontrollable young woman whose sexual relationship with an anthropologist begins to consume his life. Finally, they explore La fidélité (2000), his final film with Marceau, which follows a headstrong artist and her difficult, but passionate marriage to a book publisher that is thrown into chaos when an attractive young photographer enters her life. They wrap up the episode with a discussion of Zuławski’s recent, final film, Cosmos (2015), an absolutely beautiful adaptation of Witold Gombrowicz’s absurdist novel of the same name, about two young men who discover an existential mystery at a boarding house in the countryside.

In the sixth episode of Daughters of Darkness, Kat and Samm continue on to the third part of their four-episode discussion of the work of director Andrzej Zuławski. They start out looking at Zuławski’s two loose Dostoyevsky adaptations, La femme publique (1984) and L’amour braque (1985). La femme publique, inspired by Dostoyevsky’s novel Demons, follows a young, inexperienced actress who is cast in a film adaptation of Demons and begins a relationship with the controlling director, while political violence and conspiracy erupts around them. L’amour braque, Zuławski’s first film with his long-time partner Sophie Marceau, is an adaptation of The Idiot and focuses on a strange young man named Léon, who gets caught up with a criminal gang and falls in love with the leader’s girlfriend. Finally, they explore two of Zuławski’s most neglected films, Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours (1989) and Boris Godounov (1989). Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours again stars Sophie Marceau as a troubled young performer in a traveling psychic act. She begins a complicated relationship with a computer programmer suffering from a disease that affects the language center of his brain. Boris Godounov is a unique musical production in Zuławski’s catalogue and is a particularly frenzied adaptation of Mussorgsky’s classic Russian opera about the disastrous reign of a man believed to have murdered the child of the former tsar.

In the fifth episode of Daughters of Darkness, Kat and Samm continue on to the second part of their four-episode discussion of director Andrzej Zuławski. This time they discuss his work in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, when he was forced to leave Poland over the controversy surrounding his film The Devil (1972), which was banned by the communist government. His first French film, L’important c’est d’aimer (1975), which really launched his career in Europe, featured an international cast including Romy Schneider, Fabio Testi, and Klaus Kinski. Set in the worlds of soft and hardcore pornography, as well as avant garde theatre, it explores the tragic love triangle between a struggling actress and a photographer. This is followed by a lengthy discussion of On the Silver Globe (1988) — a surreal sci-fi epic based on a novel written by his own uncle — a film he returned to Poland to make after the success of L’important c’est d’aimer. But after a costly and intensive shoot that was nearly complete, the Polish government canceled this production and Zuławski wasn’t able to complete it for another decade. It remains unfinished, though it was recently restored. The episode concludes with a look at Zuławski’s most famous film, Possession (1981), an unsettling work about the dissolution of a marriage in divided Berlin starring Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani.

In the fourth episode of Daughters of Darkness, Kat and Samm begin a four-part discussion of the career of Polish director Andrzej Zuławski. Meant to be a celebration of his life and incredible work, the episode begins with a brief discussion of his early years, particularly his training as an assistant director under Andrzej Wajda. This is followed by a discussion of his two short films for Polish television, The Story of Triumphant Love (1969) and Pavoncello (1969), two lesser seen and perhaps more conventional works, where he established a number of the themes he would use throughout his career: love triangles, troubled romance, hysterical women, literary source material, and dizzying staircase sequences.

In the third episode of Daughters of Darkness, Kat and Samm wrap up their three-part discussion of lesbian vampire films, this time with a focus on low budget American and Spanish films from the 1970s. They begin their discussion with the unusual film The Velvet Vampire (1971), the only entry in the series to be directed by a woman.

In the second episode of Daughters of Darkness, Kat and Samm continue their three-part discussion of lesbian vampire films, this time with a focus on European cult directors like Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, and Walerian Borowczyk. They begin their discussion with the career of the prolific Jess Franco, who produced a number of films with lesbian vampire themes, namely Vampyros Lesbos (1971).

In the inaugural episode, Kat and Samm explore the history of lesbian vampire films. This first episode of three examines the lesbian vampire from her origins in eighteenth century Gothic literature, to Hammer's groundbreaking Karnstein Trilogy.