FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST| Ilaria Gomarasca interviews Bruce Weber, director of the film Nice Girls Don’t Stay for Breakfast.

Bruce Weber introduces us behind the scenes of his last work, presented at Venice Classics.

Nice Girls Don’t Stay for Breakfast: In the late 1990s, iconic photographer Bruce Weber managed to convince Robert Mitchum to appear before his camera for a filmed portrait. Weber shot Mitchum in 35mm and 16mm black and white, hanging with friends and cronies in restaurants and hotel rooms and singing before a microphone at Capitol Records, recording standards for a projected album. When Mitchum passed away in 1997, Weber parked his beloved project and it was some time before he went back into his footage, picked up the camera again to continue, and complete, his tribute to Mitchum.

The post Bruce Weber – Nice Girls Don’t Stay for Breakfast #Venezia75 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Haifaa Al-Mansour, director of the film The Wedding Singer’s Daughter.

Filmmaker Haifaa Al-Mansour directed The Wedding Singer’s Daughter, one of the two Miu Miu Women’s Tales short films presented at the 75th Venice International Film Festival and featured in the program of the Giornate degli Autori strand. The director tells us about her choice for the subject of the film, the perception of the role of an artist in her native country of Saudi Arabia, and in honor of Miu Miu’s series, to mention and highlight the work of a woman in film that she particularly admires.

The Wedding Singer’s Daughter: It’s nighttime in 1980s Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Glittery and glamorous heels climb out of cars. Women shrouded in traditional black abayas make their way into a wedding hall. There, they reveal what’s underneath: dazzling dresses and wild hair. Their true selves set free, unseen by male gaze. There are strict segregation rules in Saudi weddings. All eyes and ears are on the wedding singer; until the electricity cuts out suddenly. “This is the worst wedding singer ever,” guests mutter, condescendingly. Will the young daughter manage to save her mother’s dignity?

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Dakota Fanning, director of the film Hello Apartment.

Actress Dakota Fanning makes her directorial debut with the short film Happy Apartment, made as part of Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales series, presented at the 75th Venice International Film Festival and featured in the program of the Giornate degli Autori. Fanning tells us about whether she always imagined herself in the role of director, the decision of her film revolving around a home setting and finally, in honor of the objective of the series, to highlight a woman in film that she particularly admires.

Hello Apartment: Ava enters the Brooklyn loft for the first time. It’s empty. Freshly painted but old. Sun streams through the large windows, onto the hardwood floor, worn with marks from previous inhabitants. Ava sits down. This is now home. Her home. This is where she’ll meet a boy and fall in love. This is where wine will be spilt at the party. This is where they’ll scream at each other, and decide it’s all over. The apartment will become a witness to Ava’s personal history – her joy and sadness, hopes and disappointments – the kind of universal space we all find ourselves evolving into adulthood.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Marina Abramovic and Masha Alyokhina. 

Performance artist Marina Abramovic and Masha Alyokhina of Pussy Riot sit down with FRED in a chat that starts from cinema and journeys into such topics as death, politics and revolution. Abramovic and Alyokhina are also among the many protagonists of Hermann Vaske’s documentary Why Are We Creative?, which was presented at the 75th Venice International Film Festival in the program of the Giornate degli Autori.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Abdelhamid Bouchnak, director of the film Dachra.

Director Abdelhamid Bouchnak’s feature Dachra premiered as the closing film of the 75th Venice Film Festival’s International Critics Week strand. In this interview he talks about working within the genre movie, or as he calls it, “elevated genre”, the true stories that inspired Dachra and the style of the movie, especially the use of handheld camera. In addition, Bouchnak also mentions his Tunisian identity as a distinctive feature of his filmmaking.

Dachra: Yasmin, a Tunisian journalism student, and her two male friends set out on a university assignment to solve the cold case of Mongia, a woman found mutilated 25 years ago, now imprisoned in an asylum and suspected of witchcraft. As they pursue their investigation, the three friends stumble into the archaic and ominous world of Dachra, an isolated countryside compound filled with goats, silent women, mysterious drying meat and steaming pots. They are welcomed to stay overnight by the jovial yet menacing cult leader, but when Yasmin discovers Dachra’s secrets, she must escape before she is consumed.

The post Abdelhamid Bouchnak – Dachra #Venezia75 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Emre Yeksan, director of the film Yuva.

Director Emre Yeksan gives us a film of passion and pain, a tour de force for the main actor in this naturalistic and almost animal performance and some food for thoughts about how progress can be too often dangerous and violent towards nature. His experience with the Biennale College Cinema programme was hectic and stressful but very rewarding, indeed.

Yuva: Veysel’s wild solitary life in the woods is disrupted when the land he inhabits is sold to investors. One day, his younger brother Hasan comes from the city to convince him to leave. As the imminent threat of the eviction rapidly grows, the belated confrontation of the two brothers leads to the discovery of a magical home: a universe under the earth.

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PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Amir Naderi and Monk Serrell-Freed, director and actor of the film Magic Lantern.

Amir Naderi loves to find new actors and faces and with Magic Lantern he did it again. Thanks to leading actor Monk Serrell-Freed, he tells us the story of a missing love, a mysterious girl and the never ending love he has for cinema.

Magic Lantern: Mitch is a 22 year-old projectionist who is loading the last film for the final screening at a small theatre that is about to be converted into a digital cineplex. He dreads loading this last film reel into the projector because he knows it will drag him into yet another desperate search for love now lost. He gazes through the small projection window, onto the flickering light of the screen and then somehow farther, into another world; a world that is his and his alone. He sees another version of himself on the screen, where he works at a small, fading thrift shop. He leads a lonely existence, with only his curmudgeonly boss and the store’s mannequins for company. This monotonous life is broken by the arrival of a beautiful, otherworldly young girl in search of the perfect hat. She and Mitch share a brief and inexpressible moment of connection, interrupted by a phone call that drags her away. When Mitch tries to follow her, she has vanished. All that remains is her cell phone on the sidewalk, which seems to call out to him. Mitch picks it up and embarks on a journey of love and obsession that takes him through dream, reality and cinema as he struggles to find the mysterious girl.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Tory Kittles and Michael Jai White, actors of the film Dragged Across Concrete.

An interview with Tory Kittles and Michael Jai White, actors in Dragged Across Concrete, presented out of competition at the 75th Venice Film Festival. The film marks the return of filmmker S. Craig Zahler to the oldest and most prestigious film festival, and the actors talk about working with him along with their connection to the characters they play in the movie and the chemistry they share in those moments that you wouldn’t normally see in a contemporary genre movie, and that are the moments that Zahler is becoming known for.

Dragged Across Concrete: Two police detectives find themselves suspended when a video of their strong-arm tactics is leaked to the media. With little money and no options, the embittered policemen descend into the criminal underworld and find more than they wanted waiting in the shadows.

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PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Helga Trupel, Vice President of the Commission for Culture and Education of the EU.

Helga Trupel, Vice President of the Commission for Culture of the European Commission, talks with us about the essential issue of the regulation of copyright for authors and writers of films or tv productions in Europe and the issue of streaming and vod platform. The law was to be discussed on September,11th and it was regulated on time before the stop of legislative activities for the European elections. She explains why this issue needed to be solved urgently.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Ivan Salatic, director of the film You Have the Night.

Director Ivan Salatic talks about You Have the Night, his feature film debut, which was featured on the program of the International Film Critics Week of the 75th Venice Film Festival. The director talks about the story, its inspiration, the Montenegrin dimension of the film, the use of archive footage and more.

You Have the Night: After leaving the ship on which she works, Sanja finds herself stranded, with nowhere to go but home. The shipyard has filed for bankruptcy, leaving many workers out of work. Boats covered with tarpaulin are scattered around the landscape, set aside for better days. A storm comes; one life is lost. Luka is waiting for the night in the woods. The night when everything could change.

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