The Cinematologists Podcast

With Neil visiting London for the first time in a while, we took the opportunity to record an impromptu conversation with both of us in the same room. Thankfully the vibe and repartee still seem to have remained intact. We didn't have a specific theme in mind for the show so we ended up talking about recent viewings and let the conversation take us where it will. The two major films we discussed were Robert Eggers' The Northman and Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley - we had mixed feeling about both. More on the art-house side was Zero F***s Given (Julie Lecoustre & Emmanuel Marre) and thanks to an avid lister Mark Hancock's suggestion, we get into our favourite Body Horror films. Particularly examples with a comedic element to them. We hope you enjoy the more relaxed conversational tone of this one.

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, Dario talks to director Philip Barantini about his tense, absorbing and thoroughly authentic slice of restaurant life: Boiling Point. Stephen Graham is superb as Andy, a chef on the edge breakdown with pressures coming from all angles and trying to keep his diverse team of staff working for him on a busy Christmas service. Adding to the anxiety, the restaurant is unexpectedly visited by a celebrity chef and Andy's former mentor Alastair (Jason Fleming), who brings with him notorious food critic Sara (Lourdes Faberes). 

Dario and Philip bond over their shared experiences of restaurant culture and this underpins conversation about the authenticity of the film, the use of the one-take set-up, the improvisational aspects of the script, Stephen Graham's role as a driving force on-set and on-screen, and the restaurant as a fascinating site for examinations of British social life.

Neil and Dario also round up some recent watches including Neil's Covid induced revisit of Predator and Predator 2 & Paul Schrader's The Card Counter, while Dario discusses Tony Scott's Unstoppable and Crimson Tide, and Sergio Corbucci's Il Grande Silenzio.

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

Shownotes

Boiling Poing is available to stream on Netflix

Philip Barantini and his production company Three Little Birds are both on Twitter

Mary Wild's discussion with Dario on The Card Counter is available on her Patreon page.

Silver Screen Video Podcast and their series on Tony Scott

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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 also 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 sits with emergent American filmmaker Tyler Taormina about his new, deeply strange and affecting feature Happer’s Comet, which premiered at Berlinale earlier this year. The conversation covers Tyler’s family, his approach to filmmaking, the nagging themes he can’t shake and the filmmakers his work is in dialogue with.

Additionally, Dario and Neil spend time really thinking about the theme of alienation in Tyler’s film and work, and what it says so beautifully about this moment in our time.

Thanks to Tyler for his time and Adam Kersh for introducing us to his client.

To kick things off Neil and Dario catch up on recent watches including The Batman and the folk horror documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched.

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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 also 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

Documentary film and TV maker Cherish Oteka is an insightful observer and visual translator of individual experiences related to race, sex, class, religion, and the often contentious relationship of these identities to Britishness. The Black Cop, is their latest documentary short. Nominated for a BAFTA the film is a portrait of the charismatic Gamal "G" Turawa and his experiences in the Met police as a black, gay officer.

The story of "G" covers his fostering by a white family in the suburbs to a move to London with a father unknown to him, and the subsequent racial demarcation, both implicit and explicit, he experiences. Mesmerised and inspired by the powerful figure of a black police officer directing traffic, he enters the force perhaps without realising the extreme levels of institutional subordination bordering on torture he would endure. Told with incredible candor by "G" his recollections are also a reckoning with the very concept of race. His feeling of isolation is exacerbated during the 80s aids "scare". Hiding his homosexuality from his co-workers becomes even more imperative as the media amplification looks to blame the gay community directly.

Cherish's foregrounding "G" in very close-up, personal interviews are enhanced by both historical news footage and documentary reconstruction. Dario talks to Cherish in detail about the form of the film and using a range of documentary registers, along with deploying formative memories as the narrative anchoring points of life stories. The untold histories of British culture and how, as a society, we reckon with them through art forms such as film and TV, is also a central discussion point.

Neil and Dario begin by reflecting on a number of films they have recently watched including Petrov's Flu (Kirill Serebrennikov, 2022), The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier, 2022), Paris, 13th district (Jacques Audiard,2022), C'mon C'mon (Mike Mills, 2022). 

Show Notes

Watch The Black Cop on The Guardian Website

Some more of Cherish's TV and Online work:

Too Gay for God?

A Man Called Dad

NERD: BBC Body Positivity 'Katie Snooks'

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 also 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 latest episode, Neil takes listeners inside the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum at the University of Exeter with the help of lead curator Phil Wickham.

Phil guides Neil around the museum's different exhibits that stretch from pre-cinema to the present day, they take an amble round the archive stacks and Neil reflects on the spaces of museums, archives and libraries as place of tactile proximity to history, art and knowledge.

Elsewhere Neil and Dario discuss the role of libraries and museums in contemporary education and society.

Thanks to Phil for the invitation and tour. Thanks to Dr. Helen Hanson for lunch, Pamela Hutchinson for the nudge, and Scott Barley for the use of his track Fugue (available on his Bandcamp here) to guide the journey.

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 $2.50.

We also 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.

This is part two of our interview with the seminal film scholar, critic, and composer Michel Chion. From the late 70s onwards Chion has been one of the leading voices at the intersection of film scholarship and cinephilic criticism. His work spans a huge roster of filmmakers and subjects, but it's his work on film sound with which he is arguably most identified. Books such as The Voice in Cinema (1982), Audio/Vision (1993), Music in Cinema (1995) & Film, A Sound Art in many ways defined the sub-field of film sound criticism. Chion also wrote for Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1980s and has written books on the work of Jacques Tati, Andrei Tarkovsky, Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch.

Before turning to cinema, Chion was part of the experimental school of Music Concrete under the mentorship of Pierre Schaeffer, the "godfather" of avant-garde electronic music in France. He continues to compose to this day.

Chion asked that he give his answers in French so I enlisted the help of a colleague from the University of Brighton, the sound artist, composer, and performer Johanna Bramli (check out her work here), to help with the translation. This is another interesting first for the podcast.

At the end of part 2 of this double episode, Neil and Dario discuss many aspects of the interview and Chion's approach to film scholarship. We hope you enjoy what we think is a fantastic start to the new season.

Shownotes

Chion biography (Experimental music): https://electrocd.com/en/artiste/chion_mi/Michel_Chion/biographie

Pierre Schaeffer and Music Concrete - https://www.frieze.com/article/music-22

Ercan Bouliase - https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/arts/music/pierre-boulez-french-composer-dies-90.html

GRM: Group Recherché Musical https://www.musicainformatica.org/topics/groupe-de-recherches-musicales.php

Luciano Berio - https://www.universaledition.com/luciano-berio-54

Transition music for this episode taken from Michel Chion’s

La vie on Prose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK3xqAv65r0

Requiem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4XfD3yrYHI

La Grand Nettoyage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUUkA8wqlxQ

Johanna Bramil: http://www.johannabramli.com/

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 $2.50.

We also 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 are back with Season 15 of The Cinematologists podcast. To begin our new run we are starting with a real high point: a double episode featuring the seminal film scholar, critic, and composer Michel Chion.

From the late 70s onwards Chion has been one of the leading voices at the intersection of film scholarship and cinephilic criticism. His work spans a huge roster of filmmakers and subjects, but it's his work on film sound with which he is arguably most identified. Books such as The Voice in Cinema (1982), Audio/Vision (1993), Music in Cinema (1995) & Film, A Sound Art in many ways defined the sub-field of film sound criticism. Chion also wrote for Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1980s and has written books on the work of Jacques Tati, Andrei Tarkovsky, Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch.

Before turning to cinema, Chion was part of the experimental school of Music Concrete under the mentorship of Pierre Schaeffer, the "godfather" of avant-garde electronic music in France. He continues to compose to this day.

Chion asked that he give his answers in French so I enlisted the help of a colleague from the University of Brighton, the sound artist, composer, and performer Johanna Bramli (check out her work here), to help with the translation. This is another interesting first for the podcast.

At the end of part 2 of this double episode, Neil and Dario discuss many aspects of the interview and Chion's approach to film scholarship. We hope you enjoy what we think is a fantastic start to the new season.

Shownotes

Chion biography (Experimental music): https://electrocd.com/en/artiste/chion_mi/Michel_Chion/biographie

Pierre Schaeffer and Music Concrete - https://www.frieze.com/article/music-22

Ercan Bouliase - https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/arts/music/pierre-boulez-french-composer-dies-90.html

GRM: Group Recherché Musical https://www.musicainformatica.org/topics/groupe-de-recherches-musicales.php

Luciano Berio - https://www.universaledition.com/luciano-berio-54

Transition music for this episode taken from Michel Chion’s

La vie on Prose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK3xqAv65r0

Requiem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4XfD3yrYHI

La Grand Nettoyage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUUkA8wqlxQ

Johanna Bramil: http://www.johannabramli.com/

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 $2.50.

We also 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.

It was one of the highlights of The Cinematologists to have Peter Bogdanovich come on the podcast. One of the key links between Old and New Hollywood his passing is just another sign that 20th-century cinema culture is receding further into history. Our chat is focused very much on his film The Great Buster and it was fantastic this he gave us so much time. We hope you enjoy this repost of the interview where we focus on his Buster Keaton documentary The Great Buster.

A United Nations translator, negotiating through the Serbian occupation of Srebrenica; the avant-garde queerness of one the world's most influential bands; a working-class writer's climb towards artistic and social recognition; the gallows humour of asylum seekers in the UK immigration system; a young orphan search for a story of the self; a neurosurgeon fighting to understand her own consciousness; radical technology as the bait of a heist gone wrong; the deep trauma of stoic gambler, and a reckoning between tragedy and love on the road and in the theatre. 

These are just some of the themes Dario and Neil discuss in the films that feature on the Cinematologists end of year review. We thank you so much for your support over the year and hope you enjoy this look back over our cinematic highlights. We wish you a merry christmas and a happy New Year.

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 $2.50.

We also 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 our penultimate episode of 2021, Dario speaks to Frank Pavich the director of Jodorowsky's Dune and NYHC. With all the publicity and discussion around Denis Villeneuve's blockbuster interpretation of Frank Herbert's influential Sci-Fi novel, it was fantastic to go back to the first, incredibly imaginative but ultimately failed attempt to bring the book to the screen from one of cinema's singular visionaries: Alejandro Jodorowsky. Frank talks about his first contact with Jodorowsky, his uncompromising attitude to the production scope and casting, and his assembling of a team of designers and artists including Kurt Geiger, whose drawings Pavich uses to great effect in the documentary and which would go on to define mainstream sci-fi for decades to come. 

Frank also talks about NYHC (New York Hardcore) his directorial debut, putting the making of the film into the context of his fascinating idiosyncratic film education, and how the film was made in that liminal period between the analog and digital eras of filmmaking. You can watch it online for free here.

Also, Neil reviews serval blu-ray releases including Champion directed by Mark Robson and starring Kirk Douglas, Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence (both from Masters of Cinema), Jean Pierre Melville’s Enfant Terrible (BFI), Alistair Mcleland’s music film on Saint Etienne, I’ve Been Trying to Tell You. 

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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 $2.50.

We also 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.

Transition music is from the OST for Jodorowsky's Dune by Kurt Stenzel.