FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, directors of the film Battle Of The Sexes, distributed in Italian cinemas from October 19th.

The Battle Of The Sexes is not only something that still goes on today in our society, it is also the name of the 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs and the third film by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris that stars Emma Stone and Steve Carell as King and Riggs. On the occasion of the Italian release of the film, FRED meets the directors who start describing their journey working on this film from the very beginning: the real battle of the sexes that was going on between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump. They admit they thought the film could be perfect to be screened at the White House to celebrate Clinton’s presidency and how far women had gone and how much they have earned in society from 1973 on. As we all know things went differently and Battle Of The Sexes is a way to discuss how much women still have to fight to get equal treatment in society and at work.

Battle Of The Sexes: In the wake of the sexual revolution and the rise of the women’s movement, the 1973 tennis match between women’s World #1 Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and ex-men’s-champ and serial hustler Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) was billed as the Battle Of The Sexes and became one of the most watched televised sports events of all time, reaching 90 million viewers around the world. As the rivalry between King and Riggs kicked into high gear, off-court each was fighting more personal and complex battles. The fiercely private King was not only championing for equality, but also struggling to come to terms with her own sexuality, as her friendship with Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough) developed. And Riggs, one of the first self-made media-age celebrities, wrestled with his gambling demons, at the expense of his family and wife Priscilla (Elisabeth Shue). Together, Billie and Bobby served up a cultural spectacle that resonated far beyond the tennis court, sparking discussions in bedrooms and boardrooms that continue to reverberate today.

For the official website of the film, click here.

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The post Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton – Battle Of The Sexes appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi interviews Randy Haberkamp, Managing Director, Preservation and Foundation of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science of America.

Randy Haberkamp, besides being Managing Director, Preservation and Foundation of the Academy, is also a dog lover and an expert of dogs on films. He came to Turin for the exhibition Bestiale: Animal Film Stars, which the Acadamy helped with, and for a one-of-a-kind screening for dogs and their owners of a Rin Tin Tin film, an event like it never seen before. We met him to talk about the history of films through dogs, actors and more.

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PODCAST| Chiara Nicoletti interviews Glenn Close and Anne Stark, actresses in the film The Wife.

Glenn Close and her daughter Anne Stark are the protagonists of The Wife by Björn Runge, presented as a Gala Premiere at the 13th Zurich Film Festival. They play the same character, the young Joan Castleman falling in love with this young and promising professor (Jonathan Pryce) and writer and the adult Joan, dealing with the results of her life spent supporting this man. Glenn Close and her daughter talk about their approach to the film and their roles and describe their mother-daughter relationship in real life. Since The Wife portrays a strong and talented woman who gave up her career and ambitions for love, it is the perfect occasion for Glenn Close to talk about her career choices and iconic films such as Fatal Attraction.

The Wife:  Joan Castleman is a model wife: loyal, attentive, considerate and still very attractive. She and her spouse, Joe, a successful writer, have been a formidable team for the past 40 years. Joan has always taken Joe’s shortcomings and affairs with a pinch of humour – they are, after all, a part of his existence as an artist – and her years of support finally seem to pay off: Joe is asked to travel to Stockholm in order to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. The more he finds himself in the spotlight, however, the more she finds herself trapped in his shadow. In a Stockholm hotel lobby – on the eve of the ceremony – Joan takes a radical decision… THE WIFE is the bittersweet story of one woman’s liberation, in which Glenn Close manages to upstage any shred of masculinity with elegance and venom.

For the official page of the film on the Festival website, click here.

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PODCAST| Samantha Sartori interviews Serge Bozon, director of the film Mrs. Hyde.

As Noah Baumbach said “my parents used to come to the New York Film Festival, and call it The Festival”. The Festival has a very limited number of movies selected, in the main slate category there are only 25 movies. There are no prizes at The Festival; the prize is being selected and, as the director of The Festival, Kent Jones, said, they select only the movies that move them. Among these movies is Mrs Hyde by Serge Bozon. We meet Serge Bozon and talk about how he worked with Axelle Ropert on her idea of this very free adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel; he reveals some of the crucial ideas and technical tricks that characterize the unique aesthetics of his astonishing movie, shot in 35mm with the Director of Photography, Céline Bozon. He humbly admits that the attention to the movie and the sold out screenings are due to Isabelle Huppert’s presence, but it is definitely also due to this talented filmmaker’s original approach to movie-making.

Mrs. Hyde: Serge Bozon’s eccentric comedic thriller is loosely based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with many a twist. Mrs. Géquil (Isabelle Huppert), a timid and rather peculiar physics professor, teaches in a suburban technical high school. Apart from her quiet married life with her gentle stay-at-home husband, she is mocked and despised on a daily basis by pretty much everyone around her—headmaster, colleagues, students. During a dark, stormy night, she is struck by lightning and wakes up a decidedly different person, a newly powerful Mrs. Hyde with mysterious energy and uncontrollable powers. Highlighted by Bozon’s brilliant mise en scène, Isabelle Huppert hypnotizes us again, securing her place as the ultimate queen of the screen.

For the official page of the film on the Festival website, click here.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Ivan Kozlenko, deputy director of the National Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Centre.

An interview with Ivan Kozlenko, deputy director of the National Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Centre, the national film archive of Ukraine, from the 36th Pordenone Silent Film Festival (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto). Kozlenko presented An Unprecedented Campaign by Mikhail Kaufman, described in the Giornate catalog as a “dutiful celebration of the first Five Year Plan (1928-1932), chronicling triumphs of industry, of agriculture, and social care and literacy,” but is also a look at the last fruitful year of Stalin’s collectivization before the great starvation of Ukraine, which happened in 1932, as Kozlenko explains. Besides the film, we talk about he many activities of film preservation, archive, and exhibition of the centre and also about the man who names it, the great Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews film historian Russell Merritt. 

Earlier this year, we lost David Shepard, one of the most important film preservationists and beloved champions of silent and classic cinema. If you have seen a Chaplin film, a D.W. Griffith film, a European silent movie, etc., chances are Shepard had something to do either with its restoration or its distribution. Film historian Russell Merritt, who knew him well, dedicated the Jonathan Dennis Memorial Lecture of the 36th Pordenone Silent Film Festival (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto) to him. “You don’t have to be unknowledgeable about film not to have heard about David Shepard,” he tells us in this interview, “and yet he is one of the major architects of film preservation and film distribution.” In addition to telling us about the many things Shepard did in his life and career, he also talks about where he believes his passion for early and classic cinema to have come from, and a little bit about how he met Shepard and the impact he had on his own career. With Merritt, who has also collaborated with the Pordenone Silent Film Festival for many years, we discuss the important role this festival played in raising awareness of the importance of silent film heritage and the pleasures of showing it. Finally, as the icing on the cake, we talk about a film that somewhat represents Le Giornate, A Flash of Light by D.W. Griffith. Made in 1910, A Flash of Light was one of three films Griffith made in one single week (the pioneering filmmaker made over 400 one-reel and two-reel films before making the work he is arguably best known for, The Birth of a Nation, in 1915). Though it is neither the most famous, nor the best film by Griffith, it represents the festival, which exhibits all silent films, from the famous usual suspects and the masterpieces, to the obscure and not so good works, in order to celebrate the entire landscape of the exciting first thirty years of film history and to celebrate the work of film preservation (including the teachings of David Shepard) that allows us to see them today.

The Jonathan Dennis Memorial Lecture: In 2002 the Giornate del Cinema Muto inaugurated this annual lecture in commemoration of Jonathan Dennis (1953-2002), founding director of the New Zealand Film Archive. Jonathan Dennis was an exemplary archivist, a champion of his country’s culture, particularly of Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand – and above all, a person of outstanding human qualities. The lecturers selected as people who are pre-eminent in some field of work associated with the conservation or appreciation of silent cinema. Previous lecturers include Neil Brand, Peter Lord, Naum Kleiman, and James Curtis. Film historian Russell Merritt dedicated the 2017 Jonathan Dennis Memorial Lecture to the memory of film preservationist David Shepard. The lecture was titled “David Shepard – Shadowing Silent Film for Fifty Years.”

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Jay Weissberg, director of the 36th Pordenone Silent Film Festival (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto).

Director of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto), joined us for a chat about the 36th edition, as it approached its conclusion. It was, indeed, another stellar edition of the most important silent film festival in the world. It included all types of films from the first thirty years of silent cinema, in a celebration not only of silent film, but also of film preservation. Weissberg provides us with a detailed overview of this year’s program, sharing with us, as he does, his knowledge and passion for silent film and cinema in general. He begins by talking about the Giornate’s opening film, The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928), and the closing film, The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Ernst Lubitsch, 1927), both accompanied by live orchestral scores composed by Carl Davis. (Both films, he tells us, are also incredibly still unavailable on DVD.) He also tells us about the program on Soviet Travelogues, the reason why actress Louise Brooks was chosen as the cover girl for this year’s Giornate catalog, the festival’s tribute to the great silent era actress Pola Negri, the screening of titles from the golden age of Scandinavian cinema, and a lot more.

For the Festival website, click here.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Laura Horak and Maggie Hennefeld, curators of the film Nasty Women.

Laura Horak and Maggie Hennefeld presented a strand at the 36th Pordenone Silent Film Festival (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto) titled Nasty Women. The title of the strand was inspired by Donald Trump, who called Hillary Clinon a nasty woman while she was responding to a presidential campaign question. It featured slapstick comedy films from the early 1900s about women who were funny in an unruly and a little bit nasty kind of way. Horak and Hennefeld also give us a few examples of titles presented in the program, most of all of which have hardly ever been heard of – and, as Hennefeld tells us, some of them have not even been identified yet. From this strand we conclude that, while when we say slapstick comedy people immediately think of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and the other usual suspects, there were also some amazing female slapstick comedians from the silent era, who made films that are certainly worth re-discovering.

For the page of the film in the Festival website, click here.

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PODCAST| Nicolò Comotti interviews Christian Sonderegger, director of the film Coby.

FRED sits down for a chat with Christian Sonderegger, director of Coby, here in competition within the ZFF’s International Documentary selection. An engrossing film about the transition of a brave girl into a loving man, Coby finds its biggest strength in the depiction of life as we all know it: made of bills and insecurities, of love and (mis)understanding.

Coby:  “Changing has consequences, not changing also has consequences”. Jacob is living a regular life in Ohio along with his partner Sara. Nothing points towards the fact that a couple of years ago Jacob used to be a woman. His ‘former self’, Susanna, was 23 when she told her parents that she wanted to be the man that she always felt she was. Her long path to change was as disruptive for her loved-ones as it was for ‘Coby’ himself; since the very first injection of testosterone, she kept a meticulous YouTube journal. Filmmaker Christian Sonderegger, Jacob’s half brother, weaves that impressive video material with clips of various family members to create a fascinatingly intimate portrait of an incredibly strong person who changes to remain the same. The film becomes a metaphor for human adaptability to (seemingly) vast changes.

For the web page of the film, click here.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Helen Mirren, protagonist of the film  The Leisure Seeker.

Helen Mirren is the protagonist along with Donald Sutherland of Paolo Virzì’s english language debut The Leisure Seeker, in competition at the 74th Venice International Film Festival. The Oscar winner talks about her role in the film, a woman who is bossy, charming, who loves life, loves to engage in life and a character Helen Mirren likes thinking to have things in common with. Helen Mirren defines The Leisure Seeker not only a love story but “a tale of seeking liberation”.

The Leisure Seeker: The film stars Academy Award-winner® Helen Mirren and two-time Golden Globe-winner® Donald Sutherland as a runaway couple going on an unforgettable journey in the faithful old RV they call The Leisure Seeker, travelling from Boston to The Ernest Hemingway Home in Key West. They recapture their passion for life and their love for each other on a road trip that provides revelation and surprise right up to the very end.

For the official page of the film on the Festival website, click here.

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