The Cinematologists Podcast

In the first of a special (our first ever) double header, Neil and Dario discuss new Irish comedy road movie Apocalypse Clown. As it debuts on Netflix following a short cinema run, Neil talks to 'friend of the pod', producer James Dean about his collaboration with the team behind the project, comedy music troupe Dead Cat Bounce, the project's gestation and journey to the screen and the place of comedy in film culture and cinephilia. 

This is picked up by Dario and Neil who wrestle with the general (if only perceived) seriousness (earnestness?) of cinephile culture and how comedy is often ostracised or embraced tentatively at best, within it. To kick off the episode, Neil discusses the crowdfunding campaign from filmmakers Rob Curry and Tim Plester to preserve the moving image archive of folklorist Doc Rowe who has been documenting the calendar customs of the British Isles (amongst other folk practices) for over 60 years. Details on how to support the campaign and the film, with some excellent rewards, can be found here.

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

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Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

In this episode, Neil and Dario go deep on a couple of favourite titles each from this year's excellent London Film Festival. Neil eulogises Pat Collins' That They May Face The Rising Sun and Shujun Wei's Only The River Flows, while Dario waxes lyrical on Hirokazu Koreeda's Monster and Tran Anh Hung's The Taste of Things. 

Elsewhere they briefly discuss some of their honourable mentions including Catherine Breillat's Last Summer and Moin Hussain's Sky Peals. Neil also mentions a not so honourable title. They compare the experiences of seeing films in the cinema, at press and public screenings, versus the online platform and Dario shares an experience of encountering a bad faith audience member following a screening of Andrew Haigh's lauded All of us Strangers, which Dario loved.

To listen to Neil's bonus episodes on LFF2023, find them collected here on The Cinematologists' Patreon page, available free for anyone to listen to.

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.

We’re back for season 18 and we’re kicking off with an in-depth look at new feature documentary A Year in a Field, a quiet film by Christopher Morris that is currently on tour around UK cinemas, distributed by Anti-Worlds. Produced by Bosena (Enys Men) in partnership with Stone Club and Falmouth University’s Sound/Image Cinema Lab, the film tells the story of Chris’s relationship with a 4,000 year old menhir (standing stone) in West Penwith, Kernow, and the slow burn political awakening around the climate crisis that spending time with the stone brought out of the filmmaker.

Ahead of the theatrical release Chris and Denzil joined Neil for an on-stage conversation at Falmouth venue, The Poly (a place that should be familiar to Cinematologists listeners) following a preview screening of the film for incoming school of film & television students at Falmouth University. Around the live conversation, Neil and Dario discuss the upcoming season of podcast highlights and regards A Year in a Field, discuss the potential for a political cinema and individualist versus collective responses to structural inequalities and the climate crisis. Yep, it’s a political one, right out the gate.

Welcome back to the show, it’s nice to be back with you for another season.

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing 

For our final episode of season 17, before we go on our summer hiatus, we lean into cinematic pleasure. Provoked by both of us admitting some recent struggles with the relentlessness of film culture, the seeming tyranny of "so much stuff" and the some of the less edifying aspects of film discourse, we think through the hierarchies that are often attached to certain types of pleasure. Dario quotes from an academic article by Rutsky and Wyatt - Serious Pleasures: Cinematic Pleasure and the notion of Fun - which makes pleasure distinct from notions such as joy, fun, distraction and escapism. A key question question arises through the discussion: is a 'pure' form of pleasure beyond a context of either aesthetic intention or ideological meaning, even possible, when "enjoying" a film? As this is the last episode of the season, we also share some summer recommendations for you to dive into with different registers of filmic pleasure in mind.

Neil's Fun Times

The Big Lebowski 

Pacific Rim

Day of the Outlaw

Odds Against Tomorrow

Stop Making Sense

Jarmusch Double Bill of Down By Law/ Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai

Le Samourai

Branded to Kill

Anything by Joe Dante (The Burbs, Matinee, Gremlins)

Quiz Show

Inherent Vice

Dario's delights

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

The Hard Way

A Few Good Men

Training Day

Nightcrawler

Thelma and Louise

True Lies

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

Paterson

All is Forgiven

Cold War

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing 

In May 2023, Laura Mulvey and Rod Stoneman returned to Falmouth 45 years following a weekend of Independent Film and Sexual Politics to reconvene a dialogue about politics, experimental film, cinematic form and radicalism. The event, Falmouth Film Weekend [1978 Revisited], was hosted by Falmouth University’s Sound/Image Cinema Lab, and was delivered by Neil, in consort with staff and student colleagues. The weekend was a mix of screenings, seminars and talks, the latter by Laura and Rod.

Filmmakers whose work was screened included Kenneth Anger, Yvonne Rainer, Stephen Dwoskin, Barbara Hammer and Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen. The programme reached back to the original line-up as well as updating it with filmmakers from that period whose work has become so important to understanding of the era, such as Carolee Schneeman, and those who followed that radical moment, such as Isaac Julien.

This episode collects Laura’s incredible talk, both reflective and critical, looking back and forward simultaneously, and shares it for Cinematologists listeners. Dario gets excited by the intellectual questions posed by the talk and he and Neil discuss form and content, ideology, the digital and its radical potentialities. It was an honour to listen to Laura Mulvey and Rod Stoneman, key figures in film theory and history, and it’s an honour to share their talks via the podcast. Rod’s can be found on our website via this link. The only reason it isn’t shared on the main feed is due to the desire to contain the episode to a single release.

NB: The ‘Graeme’ Laura refers to is Graeme Ewens, a Falmouth based former member of the London Filmmaker’s Co-operative, who was in attendance for the weekend.

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing 

In association with Dead Good Film Club and Death Futures [DORS#6])

In this episode, Neil accepts an invitation from Newcastle's Dead Good Film Club and the Death Online Research Network (DORN) to host a Q&A on the Japanese film Plan 75 (2022). The panel brought together religious and humanist celebrants, death educators and palliative care specialists as part of the 6th Death Online Research Symposium held at Northumbria University, tilted 'Death Futures'.

The screening was hosted at the wonderful Tyneside Cinema in early June 2023. Elsewhere in the episode Neil and Dario get into the themes of the film and the cinematic application of them, as well as the vagaries of hosting Q&As, and Neil catches up with the Dead Good Film Club's Andy Jones about his work.

Thanks to Andrew at Tyneside Cinema, Andy at DGFC, Stacey at DORN and the panellists; Emma Satchell, Kate Owens-Palmer and Dr Mark Lee.

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

In this episode Neil and Dario discuss two fairly recent films that were both prize winners at Cannes 2022: Lukas Dhont's Close and Hlynur Pálmason's Godland. In terms of setting and story the films seem very different, however there is connecting tissue in the ways that the social fabric in each film defines the experience of the male characters, their sense of self, relation to others and the world. It's this context that provides a jumping off point for a wide ranging conversation that examines how films can deal with men in cinema without defaulting to "just another film" that superficially idealises maleness or didactically critiques the discourse of toxic masculinity. The impressive intersections of form and content in both films is explored with neither wandering down easy generic territory.

Close follows the story of two close friends Leo and Remi who, after a blissful summer, start a new middle school and soon have to negotiate the playground hierarchies that seem to examine and define them. In Godland, Danish Priest Lukas is sent on a perilous journey to Iceland to set up a church in a remote community, taking with him all the paraphernalia of an early camera. Guided by "man of the Earth" Ragnar, the extreme conditions take a physical, psychological and spiritual toll which tests the priest's concept of faith.

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You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

Both films are available to stream and the conversation does contain spoilers.

In this special audio documentary episode of The Cinematologists Podcast, we draw upon the fascinating research in an AHRC funded project Demons of the Mind: Psychiatry and Cinema in the long 1960s. Exploring the complex interrelations between cinema and the psy-sciences during a unique period of material collaboration, we cover the dimensions of mutual influence between filmmakers and psychiatric professions in a number of contexts - the depiction of psychological themes in case history adaptations, relationships between doctors and patients, changing ideas around causes and treatments of conditions, the context of censorship, and the very social perception of mental illness. The episode also focuses on the rationale for collaborations between filmmakers and psy-professionals, their ideological and moral parameters, and the formal characteristics of films influenced by psychiatry in various ways.

The episode, written, narrated and edited by Dario and featuring contributions from research investigators Dr Tim Snelson of the University of East Anglia and Dr William R. Macauley of the University of Manchester, weaves together the core arguments and findings from the project with indicative clips from a range of films that were the focus of enquiry.

After the main edit, Dario discusses with Neil the making of the podcast, thinking through both the technical elements of editing this type of podcast and the decision-making process when adapting such in-depth research to the audio form.

Dr. Tim Snelson is an associate professor in media history at the University of East Anglia (UK). His research addressing the relationship between media and social history has been published in journals including Media History, History of Human Sciences, Cultural Studies and The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. He has explored wartime cycles of psychological horror and crime films in a book titled Phantom Ladies: Hollywood Horror and the Home Front (Rutgers University Press, 2015).

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8282-2432

Dr. William R. Macauley is a lecturer at the University of Manchester and senior research associate at the Science Museum, London. He has an academic background and extensive research experience in psychology and the history of science, technology, and medicine. His work has been published in scholarly books and journals including History of the Human Sciences, Journal of British Cinema and Television, History of Technology, and the Journal of Sonic Studies.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1748-9610

Book to accompany the research project:

Tim Snelson , William R. Macauley  and David A. Kirby, Demons of the Mind: Psychiatry and Cinema in the Long 1960s (forthcoming Edinburgh University Press, 2024).

Bibliography

Baudry, Jean-Louis, and Alan Williams. “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus.” Film Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 2, 1974, pp. 39–47. 

Laing, R.D. 1960. The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness. (2010 edition) Penguin Modern Classics.

Laing, R.D. 1970. Sanity, Madness and the Family: Families of Schizophrenics. Penguin Books Ltd

Metz, Christian, and Alfred Guzzetti. “The Fiction Film and Its Spectator: A Metapsychological Study.” New Literary History, vol. 8, no. 1, 1976, pp. 75–105. 

Mulvey, Laura. 1975. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Screen, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 6-18

Filmography

Secrets of a Soul (1926, G. W. Pabst) 

Calling Dr Death (1943, Reginald Le Borg)

Shock (1946, Alfred L. Werker)

Dark Mirror (1946, Robert Siodmak)

Possessed (1947, Curtis Bernhardt)

The Snake Pit (1948, Anatole Litvak)

The Three Faces of Eve (1957, Nunnally Johnson)

Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock)

The Caretakers (1963, Hal Bartlett)

The Collector (1965, William Wyler)

Repulsion (1965, Roman Polanski)

In Two Minds (TV, 1967, Ken Loach)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975, Miloš Foreman)

Silence of the Lambs (1991, Jonathan Demme)

Good Will Hunting (1997, Gus Van Sant)

Girl, Interrupted (1999, James Mangold)

Joker (2019, Todd Philips)

Addition music via Artlist.io

A.J. Nutter - Winds of Design

Alon Peretz - While the Town Was Sleeping

Norvik - Waterbed

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow. Or visit www.cinematologists.com

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

Neil and Dario dedicate an episode to discussing the work of the brilliant French filmmaker Alice Diop, using the release of her debut fiction feature Saint Omer as a jumping off point into her incredible body of work.

Their conversation takes in some of her documentary work, On Call (2016), Towards Tenderness (2016) and We (2021), all of which, along with Saint Omer, are available to stream on MUBI in the UK currently.

The conversation covers a variety of topics but all respond to Diop's themes, preoccupations and formal dexterity, with Neil and Dario struggling to find the language for a filmmaker whose work is so concerned with the possibilities, limitations and power of both cinematic and spoken language.

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing

Brett (writer/director/editor) and Simon (producer) Harvey, are stalwarts of contemporary Cornish cinema and 2022 saw the release of their third feature film Long Way Back, which has just hit streaming platforms. 

Supported by Falmouth University's Sound/Image Cinema Lab, which has also supported the work of Mark Jenkin and for which Neil is the research and strategy lead, Long Way Back marks a departure in style and ambition for the filmmaking brothers and their company o-region.

Neil talks to them about their process and influences, the role of music in both those aspects, the Cornish film community and the challenges of the UK indie film landscape. From there, Neil and Dario discuss regional UK filmmaking, the role of film festivals, independent ambition and london-centricism as both a concept and reality. 

Elsewhere, Neil recommends new Chilean cinema release The Cow Who Sang A Song Into The Future, directed by Francisca Alegria and featuring a favourite actor of the hosts, Pablo Larrain regular Alfredo Castro, which prompts a chat about eco-sophical cinema.

You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: click here to follow.

We also produce an extensive monthly newsletter and bonus/extended content that is available on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cinematologists. You can become a member for only £2.

We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we'll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast so please do that if you enjoy the show.

_____

Music Credits:

‘Theme from The Cinematologists’

Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing