Tea with sg

Ben @benhozie just premiered @fantasiafestival his new film PVT Chat starring Uncut Gems' @juliafox and @petervackofficial. People who asked what's Julia gonna be in next...this is it. It's a very NYC movie. Internet folk in NYC movie. Bc that's what we are. Made by a bunch of NYC people, namely Ben, who fronts one of the last fresh and relevant actual NYC based indie rock bands. They're like The Strokes, but Ben sings about today's existence on the internet. I told him I felt like his songs are like essays that could go on Medium, but since he's more tasteful than those Medium ranters, he makes music that drives the feelings and points so much deeper. Trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTtUjKAGHqU 

Justine's Sibyl releases Friday Sept 11 via FIlm at Lincoln Center, my fav. I watched the film last year at NYFF and loved it. I talk to Justine about contemporary films about adults living adult lives, dealing with adult thoughts. We get them from France, but rarely United States. She has such a wonderful cast because she creates such major roles. Every single role in the film is nuanced, a look into a three dimensional person. There are no thin secondary characters, she does each one relatable justice, and simply spends more time with some than others. Sibyl is alive and dynamic, a real person I could know. The second collaboration with Virgenie Efira, it's the kind of role American actresses just don't get to perform. Efira takes advantage. Watch Friday @filmlinc https://www.filmlinc.org/films/sibyl/

Eve @evebarlow has a conflict. A few actually. Most people know her as a music journalist writing for @guardian @GQ @latimes @nymag @pitchfork @billboard @tabletmag @nmemagazine @playboy. Lately, she's been a really loud Jew. Will her music people remain interested when Judaism is the topic? Will the massive influx of new followers via Judaism read her music writing? Can she be a music journalist who is also an activist around Judaism? What about Zionism? What about the conversation around Israel as a state? Antisemitism? Anti-Judaism? Anti-Israel? Anti-Zionism? Where does racism come into play? What about intersectionality? Right and left? Right and wrong? Shortly after George Floyd was killed, I spoke out that this was not a moment for Jews to make any noise, that this was a moment specifically about oppression against people with black skin. Eve and others like her friend @benmfreeman made me come to the opinion that that rhetoric was repeated often enough and spun enough to create a real moment of Antisemitism. We get into it.

Ryan @aryankrugerthing is filmmaker behind @friedbarrymovie playing now @fantasiafestival. It's a gonzo trip movie where he pulls out all the tricks he never got to use on his many music videos or commercials. It's heroin gonzo meets alien gonzo. I don't know if it really matters if we're watching Barry under the influence of heroin or an alien possession, but just everything happens. What I loved most about talking to Ryan is hearing how much he loves his movie. He made exactly the film he wanted to make, and is fully satisfied with it. It's such a hard place to get to, where either technical or creative or circumstantial aspects often get in the way of filmmakers being content with even well-received work. Watch Fried Barry now at www.fantasiafestival.com

Julia @reel.jss stars in Come True, premiering TONIGHT @fantasiafestival. It's Anthony Scott Burns' soph film, and I learned from Julia they had eight people on set. Very cool. It makes sense. Burns requires serious emotional openness and evolution from Julia, where her internal shifts in her subconscious and unconscious fully drive the narrative. It's Julia's show. Her face is the star of the movie. And she's got one of those faces. It's a classic you don't forget. Added iconic short blonde hair. Julia's young but already a serious veteran a decade into her career. Loved talking craft with her and getting inside what she brought us in Come True. Check it out, like right now, at www.fantasiafestival.com

Chino premieres Undergods, his feature debut, this weekend @fantasticfestival. It's pitch black in cool blue, a dystopian future, a crumbled Europe, a sinkhole of a narrative carved into chapters channeling this despair into stories of broken intimacy. Broken organization, broken communication, broken masculinity. Everything broken and fragmented. As we discuss though, this isn't to leave you hopeless. It's to open your eyes and demand something else when you exit that theater (or turn off your laptop screen). I particularly enjoyed the threads we took on generational decay as well as the phenomenon of creatives finding a sweet spot of inspo with work made in the six surrounding years of their birth. Trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2NQjAHZyc0 and watch the full film at www.fantasiafestival.com

Isabel @isabelpeppard77 is co-director of Morgana @morganadocumentary, which is showing @fantasiafestival right now, after its premiere at Melbourne Film Festival. Her co-director Josie Hess @yosiesaurus couldn't join us just bc lotsa time zones. Morgana is an emotional story of a woman making a courageous shift in her circumstances and taking control of her life and narrative.  At the end of her rope, lost in her standard housewife/mother life, Morgana decided to break her 12 year celibacy and hire a prostitute, then kill herself. That experience instead inspired her to memorialize the experience in a pornographic film. Many films later, she is considered the pornographer's pornographer and won many awards. I'll leave the rest of the movie. There's a lot. Isabel and I specifically talk a lot of the analogue to intimacy and touch in a pandemic time. Watch it now www.fantasiafestival.com www.josieiscool.com www.isabelpeppard.com www.permission4pleasure.com www.morganadocumentary.com

I'll write a better description later but I wanted to upload this immediately because @theblockislandsound premieres like right now @fantasiafestival. I have a bunch of episodes in a row focused on films there. Will be rolling them out through the weekend and next week. Funny I didn't even know they went to Emerson College with me. Fun episode. Great film, GO WATCH IT! www.fantasiafestival.com 

George @georgeguttridgesmith of @obubuteafarms (Wazuka, Japan) is officially my longest episode! And we could have kept going easily. If you go back to my episode with Elyse Petersen of Tealet, you heard us talking about Obubu's internship program. Elyse started that, and George was a participant in 2018, never left Wazuka. Well, he left and came back, but you know what I mean. Obubu is a leader in the field. Beyond internships, there's a wonderful tour business, videos, classes, trips, and great great tea. We talked lots of ideas about the future of tea. Get into the last half of it for me really riffing on where I want things to go. linktr.ee/obubuteafarms

Kathryn @klfbiz3, founder of @biz3publicity is IMHO one of the most important people in the music industry. I didn't say 'women.' She's touched more angles than most I know. We started by talking about her ex-husband's new record (www.agrapedope.com), formerly of peak cool indie rock band Tortoise. We barely talked about her cofounding OWSLA with Skrillex and Tim Smith. We talked some about her generic publicity and management empire. We touched on hip hop artists she works with like Killer Mike, J. Cole. Talked a little about her client Colin Kaepernick. Talked a lot about her more recent addition/transition to life coaching. She's great.