The Film Comment Podcast

There’s no single way to celebrate the holiday season, but nearly every custom is centered on family and friends gathering together. In the first segment of this episode, Digital Editor Violet Lucca spoke with Julien Allen, Reverse Shot and Cinema Scope writer, to explore the British tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas and the works of M.R. James. In the second, Lucca is joined by Michael Koresky, Director of Editorial and Creative Strategy, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Ina Archer, media artist and FC contributor, Margaret Barton-Fumo, FC columnist, to discuss horror movies set during this joyous time of year.

On the other side of the visibility hurdle, questions about queer representation in film persist. Is visibility enough? How much is an appropriate amount? Do all queer films need to support the cause? Where is the gay hotel in The Lobster? In this episode of The Film Comment Podcast, we discuss the reductive mainstream treatment of queer characters in Hollywood fare, how television affords more exploration of gay characters, the aesthetics of queer sex scenes, and the failure of such films to either address queerness directly or imagine queer characters on the sidelines. To elaborate upon ideas from Mark Harris’ piece in the November/December issue on the paucity of LGBT visibility in Hollywood films, FC Digital Editor Violet Lucca was joined by Harris, K. Austin Collins of The Ringer, Farihah Zaman, filmmaker, critic and Production Manager for Field of Vision, and Michael Koresky, Director of Editorial and Creative Strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

2016 may be ill-suited to fond recollections, but the annual Film Comment Top 20 list does have plenty of good cheer to go around. This year's poll was conducted a bit differently, with a sharpened focus on Film Comment's contributors in order to better capture the magazine's voice. Even though the results will inevitably be skewed by factors like regional specificity and the availability of advance screenings for late-season films under consideration, polls aren't about securing an airtight appraisal of a year; they're about starting a critical discussion, which can just as much concern what was omitted as what was included. In this episode of The Film Comment Podcast, Digital Editor Violet Lucca takes stock of the results along with Nicolas Rapold, the magazine's Editor, and Michael Koresky, Director of Editorial and Creative Strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. The conversation also covers films that didn't quite make the cut, what films the polls helped bring to light, and, of course, the best diner scenes in 2016 (no need to unwrap the silverware when you use your napkin).

The clickbait consensus may be that cinema is dead, but the fact of the matter is a bit more nuanced. In the November/December issue of Film Comment, New York Film Festival Director Kent Jones suggests that perhaps we are witnessing the marginalization of cinema—although cinema may no longer be the most significant popular art form, it will evolve into something new. In other words, its particular impact may change, but it is certainly not dead. Jones joins Film Comment Digital Editor Violet Lucca and New York Film Critics Circle member Nick Pinkerton to discuss the shifting landscapes of the multiplex and the home theater, as well as what artistic salvation may come from cinema's marginalization.

There’s more to tearjerkers than the deceptively simple term might suggest, and in this episode of the Film Comment podcast, we consider the nuanced workings of cinematic sorrow. Is a tearjerker expressly and solely designed to elicit collective weeping, or is the effect of the button-pushing more personalized than we might admit? Does it count if a film moves its viewers to a profound silence rather than outright sobs? And what exactly makes us cry? The release of Kenneth Lonergan's new film Manchester by the Sea has brought these questions to the forefront of cinematic circles, and Film Society Editorial Director Michael Koresky's feature in the new Film Comment explores how Lonergan's cinema is structured by the experience of grieving. Our conversation spins off into a broader discussion of the "tearjerker" film, its ways and means, and why one might beware of watching any remotely traumatic film on a plane. Film Comment Digital Editor Violet Lucca is joined by Koresky and FC contributors Shonni Enelow, assistant professor of English at Fordham University, and Mark Harris of Vulture.

According to the experts, this wasn’t supposed to turn out this way… but it did. While the election of Donald Trump has prompted a great deal of speculation by pundits and citizens alike, we’ve asked some of our own experts to weigh in. In the first part of this episode, J. Hoberman, critic for The New York Times and a Film Comment contributing editor, and Tobi Haslett, contributor to Artforum, n+1, and The Village Voice, to discuss films that they understand differently after the election, and how politics and aesthetics interrelate. In the second, Farihah Zaman, filmmaker, critic and Production Manager for Field of Vision, and Meenasarani Linde Murugan, assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, discuss issues of representation and what a Trump presidency potentially means for filmmakers and their creative process.

What are the uncanny forces at work behind Paul Verhoeven’s visceral and transgressive cinema? In anticipation of the Film Society’s complete retrospective of the Dutch master’s films and the U.S. release of Elle, this episode offers a comprehensive discussion of the director’s audacious and eclectic career encompassing art-house Dutch films (Turkish Delight [1971], Spetters [1980]) and big-budget Hollywood productions such as Basic Instinct (1992), Total Recall (1990) and Starship Troopers (1997). In the first part of the podcast, Film Comment Digital Editor Violet Lucca sits down with a panel of Verhoeven connoisseurs, including Cinema Scope critic Adam Nayman, Film Comment Deep Cuts columnist Margaret Barton-Fumo (also the editor of a forthcoming book of interviews with Verhoeven), and Fort Buchanan director Benjamin Crotty, to tackle the controversy that lies at the core of Verhoeven’s work. In the final part of the episode, Margaret Barton-Fumo speaks to Verhoeven about the uncomfortable eroticism that pervades Elle and his Brechtian influences.

It's finally here: Election Day. After you've cast your vote, hopefully this new episode of the Film Comment podcast will help you relax as the results come in. This week, we spotlight two writers whose work has never shied away from the political: blacklisted screenwriter Walter Bernstein, whose numerous credits include The Front, Fail-Safe, and The House on Carroll Street; and Cuban novelist Edmundo Desnoes, whose seminal work Memories of Underdevelopment investigated the bourgeois mindset during the Cuban revolution and was subsequently adapted into the 1968 film by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. Each talks with Digital Editor Violet Lucca about exploring different forms of subjective experience within objective political realities, as well as harnessing their art to provoke further questioning from viewers.

Although one-on-one interviews with filmmakers are often accessible (depending, of course, on the personality at hand), group roundtables with a variety of filmmaking talent can be more difficult to come by. To counter this void, Film Comment assembled such an event at the 54th New York Film Festival—and now, in this week's episode of the podcast, you can listen to the complete talk. This Film Comment panel brought together three NYFF filmmakers—Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper), Alison Maclean (The Rehearsal), and Kleber Mendonça Filho (Aquarius)—to discuss their practical approaches to the craft of filmmaking, as well as their grander philosophies about the art form. The conversation, moderated by Film Comment Editor Nicolas Rapold, covers a swath of topics, from on-set collaboration to transnational cinema. Questions from the audience also make a requisite appearance near the end.

Kristen Stewart took a quick breather from promoting her triptych of new films at NYFF to reflect on collaborating with Olivier Assayas and Kelly Reichardt. She also shares her excitement about stepping behind the camera for the first time. And speaking of directorial debuts, Chloë Sevigny discusses making her first short film, Kitty, on the heels of its North American premiere at NYFF, as well as the pursuit of a unique, substantive acting career in a white male-centric independent film landscape.