On this 20th and final episode of 2025, host Dr Pasquale Iannone is joined by Professor Sir Christopher Frayling. Christopher is an internationally renowned educationalist, historian and broadcaster who spent more than 35 years at London’s Royal College of Art as Professor of Cultural History and then as Rector. Across more than five decades, Christopher has published widely on film, literature and the arts with volumes exploring everything from the Middle Ages to the Gothic. He is as a pioneer in the academic study of the Spaghetti Western, with publications such as his 1981 book on the subject and his definitive biography of director Sergio Leone (2000).
Christopher tells Pasquale about his latest book The Hollywood History of Art (2025), a mammoth, lavishly illustrated volume from Reel Art Press which explores the ways in which Hollywood cinema has approached the lives (and works) of artists. Christopher explains how the idea for the book came about and how he developed the structure. Discussion then turns to specific films such as Rembrandt (1936), Lust for Life (1956), The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), Love is the Devil (1998) and Frida (2002).

On this episode of the podcast, host Dr Pasquale Iannone is joined by Professor Sue Harris.
Sue is Professor Emerita of Film Studies at Queen Mary University of London and an internationally-renowned specialist in French cinema. She has also published noted volumes on the Hollywood film musical, film stardom and production design.
Sue is a trustee and collaborator of the long-running, UK-wide French Film Festival. During this year’s Festival, Sue sat down with Pasquale to discuss the controversial Oscar-winning French filmmaker Bertrand Blier who sadly passed away in January at the age of 85 and who was the subject of a special tribute.
Sue is a foundational Blier scholar, one of the first writers anywhere to take the director’s work seriously. Her first solo authored monograph was a ground-breaking study of his films which was based on her PhD thesis.
Blier is perhaps best known for his scandalous 1974 satire Les Valseuses, the story of two young drifters (Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere) who offend and terrorise those they encounter on their wanderings across France.
Sue tells Pasquale about the background to Les Valseuses, its reception and its unprecedented box office success in France. The then turn their attention to Blier’s breakthrough film, the offbeat crime picture Buffet Froid (1979) which reunited the director with Depardieu and also featured Blier’s actor father Bernard.

On this episode of the podcast, host Dr Pasquale Iannone is joined by film programmer, researcher and writer Camilla Baier. Camilla is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh’s MSc in Film Exhibition and Curation programme and is also co-founder of the feminist film collective Invisible Women.
Camilla discusses Invisible Women’s latest project, a touring film season celebrating the Golden Age of Mexican Melodrama which arrives at Edinburgh’s Filmhouse in late November. The rarely-screened four titles in the Stronger Than Love: ¡Too Much Mexican Melodrama! season are described as ‘emotionally explosive women’s pictures’ and showcase the pioneering work of women filmmakers such as Adela Sequeyro, Matilde Landeta, Ninón Sevilla and Miroslava Stern.
Camilla tells Pasquale about her fascinating career in film curation which has taken her across the world, from Germany to Mexico. Discussion then turns to the four films that make up the melodrama season: Nobody's Wife (Adela Sequeyro, 1937), Streetwalker (Matilde Landeta, 1951), Victims of Sin (Emilio Fernández, 1951) and Stronger Than Love (Tulio Demicheli, 1955).
The Stronger Than Love: ¡Too Much Mexican Melodrama! is currently touring the UK and will be arriving at Edinburgh's Filmhouse from 22nd November.

On this episode of the podcast, host Dr Pasquale Iannone talks to award-winning British filmmaker Paul Andrew Williams about his new film Dragonfly.
Built around two powerful performances by Oscar-nominated actors Brenda Blethyn and Andrea Riseborough, the film is set in Yorkshire and tells of elderly widow Elsie (Blethyn) who lives alone in her semi-detached bungalow with occasional help from carers. Living next door to Elsie is Colleen (Riseborough), a young woman who lives with her dog. When Colleen sees that Elsie’s needs aren’t being met by the overworked carers, she introduces herself to her neighbour and offers to help out. Colleen’s motives start to come under scrutiny, especially on the part of Elsie’s absent son (Jason Watkins).
Pasquale spoke to Paul a few weeks after Dragonfly’s UK premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in August. They discuss the background to the film, the casting of Brenda Blethyn and Andrea Riseborough, Paul’s decision to shoot on 16mm film, his collaboration with composer Raffertie and much more.
Dragonfly is released in cinemas on 7th November.

On this episode of the podcast, host Dr Pasquale Iannone talks to recent University of Edinburgh filmmaking graduate Maryam Haddadi about her documentary self-portraits Accused Number 41 (2024) and Between Us (2025).
Maryam studied the MA in Film Directing at Edinburgh College Art and her graduate film Accused Number 41 focuses on an incident that happened in her native Iran when she was arrested by Guidance Control (better known as the morality police) and falsely accused of dressing provocatively. The film was recently shortlisted for the 2025 Student Oscars - the only film from a Scottish University to make the finals.
Commissioned by the Scottish Documentary Institute's Bridging the Gap scheme, Between Us is a tender portrait of motherhood focusing on Maryam and her four year old son Masih. The film recently screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, with more screenings to come in Glasgow and Inverness.
Maryam tells Pasquale about her first experiences of filmmaking in Iran and then reveals how her approach to documentary filmmaking was shaped by her time at ECA. Discussion then turns to Accused Number 41 and Between Us.
More information on Maryam's work is available via her Instagram profile (@maryamhaddadi.films)

This episode of the podcast explores prison films, with a special focus on Swedish filmmaker Mai Zetterling’s lesser-known drama Scrubbers from 1982.
Scrubbers stars Chrissie Cotterill as Annetta, a young mother serving a prison sentence at a female borstal. The film features many familiar faces, including Kathy Burke and Eva Mottley as Annetta’s fellow prisoners as well as Miriam Margoyles, Pam St Clement and Robbie Coltrane as prison staff.
Joining host Dr Pasquale Iannone to discuss Scrubbers and the prison film more generally is Dr Jamie Bennett. Jamie is Research Associate at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Criminology and an internationally-renowned scholar of media representations of prison. He has worked in prisons for three decades in a variety of senior positions and is currently group director for contracted prisons in HM Prison & Probation Service. Jamie has held the position of Governor at various prisons, including HMP Morton Hall in Lincolnshire which, at the time, was a women’s prison with a diverse international population.
Jamie’s recent publications include 2021’s Prisoners on Prison Films (co-authored with Victoria Knight) and Managing Prisons: Managerialism, Austerity and Moral Blindness (2024).
In a wide-ranging discussion, Jamie and Pasquale discuss the history of prison movies and TV shows - from 1930’s pre-code film The Big House to Alan Clarke’s controversial 1979 drama Scum to Jimmy McGovern’s recent BBC series Time (2021). They then look at Scrubbers in detail, exploring the film’s representation of life in a women’s prison. They draw on sources such as director Zetterling’s memoir and contemporary reviews of the film from the likes of Barbara Kruger.

On this episode of the podcast, host Dr Pasquale Iannone is joined by Dr Karen Pearlman.

Karen is Associate Professor at MacQuarie University in Sydney and an internationally-renowned scholar of creative practice, distributed cognition and feminist film histories. Her many projects as editor and/or director include, most recently, her short film Breaking Plates (2024) which has screened at various festivals this year, including Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. Film historian Pamela Hutchinson has written of Breaking Plates that ‘it’s rare to see such joyful feminist revolution on screen, or such deep, loving engagement with silent film style. […]’ Karen’s books include the groundbreaking 2009 textbook Cutting Rhythms: Intuitive Film Editing, which went into its third edition this year.
Pasquale spoke to Karen down the line from Sydney to discuss her other big release of 2025, a monograph on the American independent filmmaker Shirley Clarke. Like Karen, Clarke was a dancer, editor and filmmaker. She was active between the early 1950s and mid-80s, making several influential shorts as well as four daring, often controversial features on the African-American experience including The Connection (1961), The Cool World (1963), Portrait of Jason (1967) and Ornette in America (1985). Karen tells Pasquale about her approach to Clarke’s work and how it challenges and critiques traditional notions of film authorship. Clarke's work is placed in context, and the discussion also explores Clarke's links to her filmmaking contemporaries Jonas Mekas and Maya Deren.
Karen and Pasquale then discuss some of Clarke’s features, including a title which is now acknowledged as a landmark of LGBTQ+ cinema and which was once described by legendary Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman as ‘the most extraordinary film I’ve seen in my life.’
Shirley Clarke (2025) by Karen Pearlman is published by Edinburgh University Press and is part of the series Visionaries: The Work of Women Filmmakers (Series editors Lucy Bolton and Richard Rushton).

In this episode, host Dr Pasquale Iannone explores some highlights from the 78th Edinburgh International Film Festival which took place in August 2025.

Writer-director Mas Bouzidi tells Pasquale about his debut feature Concessions, a bittersweet comedy shot on 16mm which tells of the final day of business of a New York cinema.

Pasquale is also joined by writer-director Gerard Johnson and lead actor Polly Maberly to discuss their powerful new thriller Odyssey. Maberly delivers an extraordinary performance as a take-no-prisoners, drug-addled London lettings agent whose firm is going through hard times but is determined to keep up appearances, even if it means sliding further and further into debt.

Pasquale also discusses EIFF titles Young Mothers (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) and Dragonfly (Paul Andrew Williams)

On this episode of the podcast, host Dr Pasquale Iannone is joined by writer, critic and academic Hannah McGill to discuss Poetic Realism, a 1930s trend in French cinema which combined the earthy and the ethereal to often mesmerising effect.  

Whether shot in real locations or on large-scale sets, whether set in France or elsewhere around the globe, these early sound pictures are moody and melancholy. They’re fatalistic tales of immigrant labourers, train workers, tugboat captains, petty criminals, deserters, gangsters.

Directors who made films in this style included Marcel Carné, Julien Duvivier and the three Jeans - Renoir, Vigo and Grémillon.

Hannah and Pasquale discuss the socio-political backdrop, some of the major films, directors and actors as well as the trend's influence on Italian neorealism and American film noir. 

Films discussed include L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934), Toni (Jean Renoir, 1934), La grande illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937), La bête humaine (Jean Renoir, 1938), Le quai des brumes (Marcel Carné, 1938), Le jour se lève (Marcel Carné, 1939) and many more.

On this episode of the podcast, host Dr Pasquale Iannone sits down with Scottish writer-director (and University of Edinburgh alumnus) John Maclean to talk about his second feature Tornado (2025). The film had its world premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival in February and went on general release in the UK in mid-June.
Set in late 18th century Scotland, Maclean's film tells of a young Japanese woman (Kōki) who makes a living performing Samurai puppet shows with her father Fujin (Takehiro Hira). One day, their paths cross with a rag-tag group of criminals led by the ruthless, stone-faced Sugarman (Tim Roth) and his son Little Sugar (Jack Lowden). Events then take a more sinister turn.
Beautifully shot in widescreen by John’s regular collaborator Robbie Ryan, Tornado is lean, muscular filmmaking - a heady, inventive Scottish take on the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa and the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone.
John tells Pasquale about his entry into filmmaking via the lo-fi music videos he made for The Beta Band, the group he co-founded in the 1990s. He also discusses his influences, his preference for storyboarding, his approach to casting, music and much more.