FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Marina Stepanska, director of the film Falling.

Director Marina Stepanska presented her film Falling in the East of the West competition strand 52nd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. At the start of the interview, Stepanska tells that she is quite curious to see how an international audience will react to her film. Why? Because while, to be sure, the film revolves around a blooming romance between a young lady and a young man that is easily universally understood, it is also a film that is marked by Ukrainian elements, a lot of which revolve around the Ukrainian revolution of 2014. Stepanska tells us about a lot of them, and her desire to ultimately make a movie that would represent normal Ukrainian people, which she claims is something that is increasingly rare. Her decision to do so is reflected, for instance, in the way in which she decided to cast two actors in the lead who had never acted in a feature film before. Nonetheless, as mentioned, the film does have a universal dimension, and even an optimistic one, which she also discusses.

Falling: young Anton has just been released from the rehab centre where he had sought treatment for alcoholism and drug addiction. His grandpa, a man of stern principles who brought him up from a young age, takes him off to the country, far from the lure of the big city. One night Anton meets Katia, who, like him, is trying to find her bearings in life, although at least one thing should be clear in her mind: She is shortly to be leaving for Berlin with her boyfriend Johann, a German photojournalist she met during the Maidan demonstrations. Her encounter with Anton, however, brings a new impulse into her life and profoundly affects both of them… The debuting Ukrainian director uses remarkable sensitivity in her depiction of the fragility of fledgling emotion, to a great extent aided by the finely nuanced performances of the leads. In a broader context Marina Stepanska’s psychological drama is also a strong statement on the current young generation as it tries to find its place in post-revolutionary Ukraine.

For the official website of the festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Bohdan Slama, director of the film Ice Mother.

Ever heard of ice swimming? This peculiar sport is what triggers the transformation of an older lady, the protagonist of Ice Mother by Bohdan Slama, presented in the special strand of the 52nd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival exhibiting Czech films of the 2016-2017 season. Bohdan is more than happy to talk to us about ice swimming and even tell us a story of how this important element of the film affected the lead actress of the movie, Zuzana Kronerova. But he also talks to us about the representation of older people in cinema, which is somewhat rare in cinema at large, and the element of the family in his movie. As he says, Ice Mother is a film that represents a message that is really important to him: “no matter how difficult life may be, it is important to have a feeling of hope.”

Ice Mother: is there an age limit to changing your life? And once you decide to go ahead with it, will your nearest and dearest try to dissuade you? In Bohdan Slama’s new tragicomedy a sixty-year-old widow finally manages to shake off the influence of her selfish sons in order to begin a new life with a hardy nonconformist. But any kind of change is going to cost something.

For the official website of the festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Alen Drljevic, director of the film Men Don’t Cry.

Documentary filmmaker Alen Drljevic presented his fiction directorial debut in the official competition strand of the 52nd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The film also officially opened the competition strand of Karlovy Vary this year. As mentioned, Men Don’t Cry is the director’s fiction feature debut. However, it is marked by his prominent backgrounds as a documentarian, not least of all because it originated from his own experiences attending therapy sessions for war veterans but also because he is a veteran of the Yugoslav War himself. In this interview, he also reveals to us how working on this film ended up being not only a therapeutic session for him, but also for the entire crew. But as the title implies, Men Don’t Cry also deals more generally with themes of masculinity, and we ask him about this aspect of the film in particular. Given that Men Don’t Cry is a fiction feature debut, we also ask Drljevic to tells us a little bit about his general interests as a filmmaker, how he likes to work and whether there are particular stories that he likes to tell.

Men Don’t Cry: when, less than two decades since the war ended in Yugoslavia, a diverse group of veterans gathers at a remote mountain hotel to undergo days of therapy, it’s hard to expect absolute harmony. This brilliantly directed drama, about the ability to forgive others only after we have forgiven ourselves, presents the pinnacle of the Balkan male acting scene.

For the official website of the festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Camilla Magid, director of the film Land of the Free.

Director Camilla Magid presented her feature documentary debut Land of the Free in the documentary competition of the 52nd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Her documentary is set in the depressed neighbourhoods of South Central in Los Angeles, California, and particularly focuses on a slice of life of three different men of different ages – Brian, an adult, Juan, a young man in his late teens, and Gianni, a kid – whose lives have been affected by coming into contact with crime and the wrong side of the law. Besides talking about the origins of Land of the Free, and how she worked to tells the stories of her protagonists, Camilla also shares with us her views on these problems of society and how her opinions, views and expectations of how the stories would develop over the course of filming changes throughout the production.

Land of the Free: in the economically depressed neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles it’s far too easy to get on the wrong side of the law. One fateful day 42-year-old Brian, who has just been released from serving a long prison sentence, experienced it firsthand. The vicious cycle of social determination, however, also begins to effect the lives of teenager Juan and seven-year-old Gianni. The debuting director immerses herself in the depths of human vulnerability in order to draw out fragments of hope.

For the official website of the festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Jun Geng, director of the film Free and Easy.

Jun Geng’s film Free and Easy was presented at the 52nd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The director describes the film as a tragicomedy, and in this interview, he explains his reasons for wanting to make this film. Free and Easy is also set in a nearly deserted village in the middle of the barren landscape of northern China, which we find out is also Jun Geng’s own hometown. The film is also defined by a sense of humour, which is mixed with more serious issues that it deals with, particularly relating to comments on modern Chinese society. What are the challenges of making a film, or writing a screenplay, in such a way? Jun Geng also reveals to us in this interview that Free and Easy represents the second phase of his filmmaking. The style is quite different, in fact, from his first movies. How so? Find out in this exclusive Fred Film Radio interview.

Free and Easy: a door-to-door soap salesman comes to a sparsely populated village in northern China. With his arrival, however, the number of bizarre attacks on the local population increases. Laced with a considerable dose of black humor, the movie offers an unusually entertaining and uncompromising sketch of Chinese society today.

For the official website of the festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Eddie Muller,  founder and director of the Film Noir Foundation.

Film noir: a familiar term in discussions about cinema. But what does it entail? And is it always used correctly? For instance, does it only relate to crime movies? We talk about film noir with one of its greatest experts: Eddie Muller. Not only has Muller written extensively about the film noir; he also founded and is the director of the Film Noir Foundation – a non-profit and public corporation that rescues and restores America’s noir heritage, which he introduces us to in this interview. As an expert of film noir and “noircheologict,” Muller was invited to the 2017 Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna to introduce a number of noirs, such as The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950). He briefly talks about these films, as well as the delight of screening them in front of an audience who may not ever have seen these classic works before.

For the official website of the festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Nick Ebeling, director of the film Along for the Ride.

How do you go from being the number one director of your generation – in 1969, opening doors for the directors of New Hollywood – to being blacklisted from 16 years? This is what happened to Dennis Hopper, actor, and director of the landmark film Easy Rider (1969). Easy Rider was followed by The Last Movie two years later, now widely forgotten. Not, however, by Nick Ebeling, who pays tribute to Hopper and The Last Movie through his documentary Along for the Ride, which he introduced at the 2017 Il Cinema Ritrovato. Yet, Along for the Ride is no conventional biographical documentary, but rather, in his words, “kind of like something that would be befitting a major cultural figure like Dennis Hopper who always worked against the grain and always did things differently, and the film tries to honor him structurally and visually in that way.”

For the official website of the festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Jon Wengstrom, head of Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute.

Jon Wengstrom, head of archival film collections at the Swedish Film Institute, tells us about the Swedish Film Institute and its practices of storing films – not only Swedish films but all films that were screened in Sweden. His overview reminds us once again of the difficulties and challenges of film archives. Besides this, Wengstrom also talks about a number of Swedish shorts and features that he presented and introduced at the 2017 edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato, including My Home is Copacabana (1965) by Arne Sucksdorff in honor of the filmmaker’s centenary of his birth (this was his last film), and The Girl from the Marsh Croft (1917) by Victor Sjostrom. The latter feature allows us to initiate a brief discussion on the legacy of Sjostrom and his impact in film history, as well as Ingmar Bergman, who greatly admired him and cast him in his film Wild Strawberries (1957).

For the official website of the festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Jay Weissberg, artistic director of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival.

We meet Jay Weissberg, film critic and artistic director of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival (aka Le Giornate del Cinema Muto) at the 2017 Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. Last year’s edition of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival marked Weissberg’s first as artistic director. We ask him about his take on how it went, But we also take this opportunity to ask him about what this year’s program has in store (the 36th edition of the festival will take place from September 30 to October 7). Highlights include the opening screening of The Crowd (1928) by King Vidor and The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927) by Ernst Lubitsch as well as strands featuring the origins of the Western in Europe, hidden gems from Scandinavian cinema, cinematic documents on the effects of war, and much more. The collegium, Besides talking about the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, Weissberg also shared with us his thoughts on this year’s edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato and some of the titles and strands that most impressed him.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Mark Kidel, director of the film Becoming Cary Grant.

Director Mark Kidel talks about his documentary Becoming Cary Grant, which he presented at the 2017 Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, Italy. The documentary talks about Cary Grant, one of the greatest and most iconic Hollywood actors of all time. But far from being a typical biographical documentary, Becoming Cary Grant not only reveals personal details of Grant’s life but is also quite creative and attempts to get inside Grant’s head. Thus, we find that Cary Grant was born Archie Leach in Britain, and had a personal life that was quite different from the famous Cary Grant persona. Kidel talks to us about working on this film, about why he made the movie and how his awareness of and opinion of Cary Grant evolved while making the movie, about how he was able to gain access to some greta primary source material and expand on it creatively, and more.

Becoming Cary Grant: “everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant”. As Mark Kidel’s biofilm confirms, at least for the Office of Vital Records Archie Leach from Bristol became Cary Grant in 1942, when he gave up his British citizenship and his new passport bore just the name that would earn him the unconditional admiration of the whole world. However, as Kidel argues in his evident psychological take, Grant couldn’t free himself of Archie Leach with just an eraser. So poor Archie with his suffering, the trauma of being abandoned by his mother and his problems with women continued to percolate under the unrivalled elegance, the sartorial suits, the cosmopolitan ease and the smile of the man who “carries the holiday in his eye” (Stanley Cavell) and who made us believe life could be the most exquisite exercise in style; and so to finally come to terms with Archie Leach, Cary Grant underwent therapy with LSD, which he took during weekly sessions for three years under medical supervision and without breaking the law (in the mid-1950s it was an experimental treatment authorized by the government and quite appreciated by the Malibu community). The film focuses on the psychotropic rebirth of a depressed and divided Cary Grant. The issue has been well documented by biographies of the actor, starting with Graham McCann’s classic A Class Apart (1996); Grant himself spoke about it extensively, sharing his enthusiasm for the experiment’s results with “Ladies’ Home Journal” in a long interview-confession in 1963, which later was incorporated in a long but never published autobiography. The first person voiceover draws principally from this source, whereas the images alternate the melted colours of home movies from the 1930s, used as an entryway into Cary’s mental trips (vacations, boats, female bodies and faces), with the shining sharpness of film sequences, with a preference for ones with a darker emotional and photographic tone (from Notorious to the supernatural comedy Topper to the dysphoric None but the Lonely Heart); movies with characters bordering on or consumed by an anxiety which echoes Kidel’s vision and in which Cary Grant is more clearly, to use the words of Franco La Polla, “a comedian who cannot respond to the drama of reality with comedy” (by the way, had the immersions in lysergic acid made us forget it, critic David Thomson reminds us that we’re talking about “the best and most important actor in film history”). Speaking of shininess: judging by the sequences in the documentary, Cary Grant’s filmography looks in excellent shape, but Bringing Up Baby cries out for a new restoration.

For the official website of the festival, click here.

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