FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Kateryna Gornostai, director of the film Stop-Zemlia.

A conversation with Kateryna Gornostai, director of Stop-Zemlia, the Crystal Bear-winning film from this year’s Generation 14plus strand at the Berlinale. The film depicts the lives of a class of adolescents in contemporary-times Ukraine. In this film, Gornostai shares the interesting process that helped the film come to like and her documentary roots, which contributed to the shaping of Stop-Zemlia, among other things.

Stop-Zemlia: It‘s Masha, Yana and Senia‘s last but one year of high school. Among the thriving pot plants in the classroom and to the sound effects of a Biology lesson about physical signs of stress, the young protagonists grapple with themselves and with one another. 16-year-old Masha is the quiet center of Kateryna Gornostai’s feature debut. Steering clear of both simplified narratives and overly simplistic psychology, the film depicts her as introverted, sensitive and in love with Sasha, another classmate whose aloofness and passivity she finds a perpetual challenge. When Masha is dancing alone in her room at night, high above the rooftops of a city somewhere in the Ukraine, nothing about it feels staged. Rather, it is an invocation of the moment, of genuine emotion – and of pain.

To discover more about the 71st edition of Berlin International Film Festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Olamide Ojegbenro, director of the Chroma International Film Festival.

A conversation with Olamide Ojegbenro, director of the Chroma International Film Festival, set to run this September in Dublin, Ireland. This is the first international BIPOC film festival in Ireland, dedicated to celebrating and amplifying the voices of both emerging and established filmmakers from diverse backgrounds. Ojegbenro talks about the significance of running a festival like this in Ireland and shares details on how films can be submitted for its inaugural edition.

To discover more about the Chroma International Film Festival, click here.

The post Olamide Ojegbenro – Chroma International Film Festival appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Leena Pasanen, director of the Biografilm Festival.

A conversation with Leena Pasanen, director of the Biografilm Festival in Bologna, Italy. This is an annual showcase of biographical films from different parts of the world. This year, the Biografilm Festival will run for the 17th time on June 4-14. As well as speaking about this year’s edition and some of its highlights, we also take this opportunity to ask Pasanen how last year’s edition went, as the Biografilm Festival became the first film festival in Italy to move entirely online in response to te coronavirus pandemic.

To discover more about the Biografilm Festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Kirby Howell-Baptiste, actress of the film Cruella.

Kirby Howell-Baptiste plays Anita in the origin story about Cruella. Thanks to the film, we get to see and understand, how the protagonist of 101 Dalmatians and the evil stylist know each other from. The actress explains how incredibly happy she was to be able to portray a character who’s either so nuanced as the other two female characters, Cruella ( Emma Stone) and the Baroness ( Emma Thompson) and so diffent from them. They’re all career driven and focused but they’re evidently on different paths in life and that’s relieving for the audience to see and refreshing for an actor to play. Kirby then declares her love for Disney films and admits she still can’t believe she’s a Disney character now.

Cruella : Academy Award® winner Emma Stone (“La La Land”) stars in Disney’s Cruella, an all-new live-action feature film about the rebellious early days of one of cinemas most notorious – and notoriously fashionable – villains, the legendary Cruella de Vil. Cruella, which is set in 1970s London amidst the punk rock revolution, follows a young grifter named Estella, a clever and creative girl determined to make a name for herself with her designs. She befriends a pair of young thieves who appreciate her appetite for mischief, and together they are able to build a life for themselves on the London streets. One day, Estella’s flair for fashion catches the eye of the Baroness von Hellman, a fashion legend who is devastatingly chic and terrifyingly haute, played by two-time Oscar® winner Emma Thompson (Howards End, Sense & Sensibility). But their relationship sets in motion a course of events and revelations that will cause Estella to embrace her wicked side and become the raucous, fashionable and revenge-bent Cruella.

The post Kirby Howell-Baptiste – Cruella appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Evan Spiliotopoulos, director and writer of the film The Unholy.

“The Unholy is a cautionary tale for the blindly faithful. The film’s fundamental theme is beware of false prophets”: this is how Evan Spiliotopoulos describes the heart of his supernatural thriller The Unholy, a film starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan that mixes with the journalism genre as well. Morgan plays a once famous journalist who finds himself in the middle of a series of miracles happening in a small farming community. Evan Spiliotopoulos unveils one of the main subtexts of the film: the supernatural threat is a metaphor of very real social and political damage that can be done by intentionally false narratives in the media. The director comments on the power of believing which can lead to very good or very bad things. The film is based on the book Shrine that Spiliotopoulos read when he was a teenager and the director reveal that the style of the film is his personal love letter to italian film director Mario Bava.

The Unholy : The Unholy follows Alice, a young hearing-impaired girl who, after a supposed visitation from the Virgin Mary, is inexplicably able to hear, speak and heal the sick. As word spreads and people from near and far flock to witness her miracles, a disgraced journalist (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) hoping to revive his career visits the small New England town to investigate. When terrifying events begin to happen all around, he starts to question if these phenomena are the works of the Virgin Mary or something much more sinister. The Unholy is produced by Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert and Evan Spiliotopoulos, written for the screen and directed by Evan Spiliotopoulos, and is based upon James Herbert’s best-selling book Shrine.

To discover more about the film, click here.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Joel Fry, actor of the film Cruella.

Together with Horace ( Paul Walter Hauser), Jasper is the well-known sidekick of Cruella, one of the villain of Disney history in 101 Dalmatians. In the Disney live action coming in theaters on May 26th where Cruella is gorgeously played by Emma Stone, Fry plays Jasper, defined by director Craig Gillespie as the “heart of the film” as he represents, along with Horace, Estella (turned Cruella)’s family. The film is the origin story of the villain we have all known and loved and Joel Fry describes his approach to this new version of the story, creating background and context to a character. What does he take way from this incredible, dark and colorful Disney experience? the actor’s effective answer will open Cruella’s world to the audience and to the listeners.

Cruella : Academy Award® winner Emma Stone (“La La Land”) stars in Disney’s Cruella, an all-new live-action feature film about the rebellious early days of one of cinemas most notorious – and notoriously fashionable – villains, the legendary Cruella de Vil. Cruella, which is set in 1970s London amidst the punk rock revolution, follows a young grifter named Estella, a clever and creative girl determined to make a name for herself with her designs. She befriends a pair of young thieves who appreciate her appetite for mischief, and together they are able to build a life for themselves on the London streets. One day, Estella’s flair for fashion catches the eye of the Baroness von Hellman, a fashion legend who is devastatingly chic and terrifyingly haute, played by two-time Oscar® winner Emma Thompson (Howards End, Sense & Sensibility). But their relationship sets in motion a course of events and revelations that will cause Estella to embrace her wicked side and become the raucous, fashionable and revenge-bent Cruella.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Paul Walter Hauser, actor of the film Cruella.

“Horace and Jasper were pretty underdeveloped characters in 101 Dalmatians” says Paul Walter Hauser, playing Horace in the Disney live action on the origin of the villain Cruella ( Emma Stone). The actor, whom we all appreciated as the protagonist of Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell, walks us through the process of giving background and shaping a character from the animated film to the live action that shifted from being a simple sidekick in 101 Dalmatians to Cruella ( Estella at first) ‘s family. Hauser also describes his interaction with the Production design and his approach to the film being darker than most Disney live action we’ve seen lately.

Cruella: Academy Award® winner Emma Stone (“La La Land”) stars in Disney’s “Cruella,” an all-new live-action feature film about the rebellious early days of one of cinemas most notorious – and notoriously fashionable – villains, the legendary Cruella de Vil. “Cruella,” which is set in 1970s London amidst the punk rock revolution, follows a young grifter named Estella, a clever and creative girl determined to make a name for herself with her designs. She befriends a pair of young thieves who appreciate her appetite for mischief, and together they are able to build a life for themselves on the London streets. One day, Estella’s flair for fashion catches the eye of the Baroness von Hellman, a fashion legend who is devastatingly chic and terrifyingly haute, played by two-time Oscar® winner Emma Thompson (“Howards End,” “Sense & Sensibility”). But their relationship sets in motion a course of events and revelations that will cause Estella to embrace her wicked side and become the raucous, fashionable and revenge-bent Cruella.

The post Paul Walter Hauser – Cruella appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Fiona Crombie, production designer of the film Cruella.

Fiona Crombie, production designer for Disney live action Cruella actually built, with her production team, 130 sets to create the physical world of Cruella, played by Emma Stone. The production designer describes the three world she had to shape to represent Estella ( the protagonist before turing Cruella), her turning into Cruella and the world of the evil Baroness ( Emma Thompson). The behind the scenes of Cruella is full of women working not only in the artist department but also in the technical ones and Crombie is very proud of the people she could work with.

Cruella: Academy Award® winner Emma Stone (“La La Land”) stars in Disney’s Cruella, an all-new live-action feature film about the rebellious early days of one of cinemas most notorious – and notoriously fashionable – villains, the legendary Cruella de Vil. “Cruella,” which is set in 1970s London amidst the punk rock revolution, follows a young grifter named Estella, a clever and creative girl determined to make a name for herself with her designs. She befriends a pair of young thieves who appreciate her appetite for mischief, and together they are able to build a life for themselves on the London streets. One day, Estella’s flair for fashion catches the eye of the Baroness von Hellman, a fashion legend who is devastatingly chic and terrifyingly haute, played by two-time Oscar® winner Emma Thompson (“Howards End,” “Sense & Sensibility”). But their relationship sets in motion a course of events and revelations that will cause Estella to embrace her wicked side and become the raucous, fashionable and revenge-bent Cruella.

The post Fiona Crombie – Cruella appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Samba Gadjigo and  Jason Silverman, directors of the film Sembene!.

A conversation with Samba Gadjigo and Jason Silverman about the life and legacy of the father of African cinema, Ousmane Sembéne. Together, they directed a 2015 documentary feature called Sembene! and look after the preservation of and accessibility to the works of Sembene via The Sembene Project and Sembene Across Africa. All this we talk about here.

Sembene! : is a feature-length HD documentary, tells the unbelievable true story of the “father of African cinema,” the self-taught novelist and filmmaker who fought, against enormous odds, a monumental, 50-year-long battle to give African stories to Africans. It is told through the experiences of the man who knew him best, colleague and biographer Samba Gadjigo, using rare archival footage and more than 100 hours of exclusive materials. The Sembene Project’s goal is to preserve African cinema and culture, and make it available to Africans both on the continent and in the diaspora.

To discover more about the film, click here.

The post Samba Gadjigo, Jason Silverman – Sembene! appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews David Walsh, head of FIAF‘s Training and Outreach.

A conversation with David Walsh, head of FIAF’s Training and Outreach, about this year’s Biennial Audio-Visual Archival Summer School. The program will run digitally on September 20-October 1 and registration will open between June 16-July 7. Aside from speaking about the Summer School, we talk about FIAF’s commitment to trainings in film preservation and the importance of film preservation at large.

BAVASS 2021 will be an online event, running for ten days in late September. Based on successful online training models that FIAF has used during the pandemic, and on the successful first edition of this biennal event held in Bloomington, Indiana, in May 2019, this ambitious training school will combine lectures and interactive workshops across a wide range of topics. Participants will also carry out assignments in their own time throughout the two weeks of the school.

To find out more about FIAF, click here.

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