The Cinematologists Podcast

To coincide with the UK cinema release, Neil talks to director Rachel Lambert about Sometimes I Think About Dying, her third feature film.

The conversation covers making a feature that had a successful life as a short film, the artistic and thematic legacies of COVID, the importance of location and place, the all-too-human desire to be seen and the terror that comes with that, the importance of Buster Keaton and the genius of Punch...

The new episode of the podcast sees Alison Peirse, now Professor of Film Studies at University of Leeds, return to the show to update us on her work in videographic scholarship and Global Women's Horror Film studies. The episode follows the recent release of a stunning special issue of the vital MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture Journal, edited by Alison, featuring a trove of video essays looking at the role of women in Global Horro...

For the latest episode of the podcast Neil talks to filmmaker and academic Dr Nariman Massoumi about his wonderful short documentary Pouring Water on Troubled Oil (2023). 

MUBI: In 1951, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company set out to produce a publicity film promoting its activities in Iran. They hired the poet Dylan Thomas. This poetic film follows Thomas’s journey capturing his encounter with the country and its people as a political u...

In the first episode of season 19 Neil takes the reins solo, with Dario on sabbatical, for a conversation with one of the UK’s leading filmmakers Jeanie Finlay, ahead of her popular and powerful new documentary Your Fat Friend, released in UK cinemas on Feb 9, 2024.

Jeanie returns to the podcast having recorded a live conversation about her career to date and previous release, Seahorse (2019), at the fil...

In this final episode of 2023 (and season 18), we (Neil and Dario) ruminate on a year spent thinking cinematically and engaging with cinema in the unique way that has become the hallmark of The Cinematologists; thoughtful, personal, searching for meaning and meaningful experiences across the movie spectrum.

We both share brief discussions of two films that stuck with us from different points of the year,...

In this episode of the Cinematologists podcast, we reflect on the pervasive apathy often accompanying the endless influx of new releases and how to combat nagging sense of FOMO which, at times, feels like it can never be satiated. When both of us saw Napoleon and agreed there wasn't much we wanted to talk about, and neither did a raft of art-house films on the various streaming platforms particularly get our juices flowing, we deci...

In this special bonus, to tide you over before we are back with full, regular episodes in the run-up to year's end, Neil talks to filmmaker Toby Amies about his stunning music film In The Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50. 

The conversation coincides with the film's release on streaming platforms following a critically lauded festival and cinema run. Thanks to Toby for taking the time to talk to us.

Elsewhere Neil recom...

Our own Prof. Neil Fox in his day job is director of Falmouth University's Sound/Cinema Lab, which is behind films such as Mark Jenkin's Enys Men (2022) and Chris Morris' A Year in a Field (2022) as well as Wilderness (2017), which Neil wrote and produced. Wilderness was also made with a student crew and was proof of concept for making a feature drama within the structure of a university course. With Dario delivering a module to se...

A special for cinephiles and podphiles this week as we welcome the superb critic and broadcaster Rico Gagliano. Rico's official title is the Head of Audio at Mubi but it's his creative direction and voice that is the driving force of The Mubi Podcast. Indeed, the notion of creative auteurism is just one of the many topics covered in the in-depth conversation with Dario.

We discuss a little of his background – his cinephile origin s...

No matter the status of cinema, films focused on Hollywood icons seem to always retain a healthy level of interest. A key question is: do they bring anything new to the understanding of a storied figure. Stephen Kijak the director of Rock Hudson: All that Heaven Allowed, released on UK streaming this week, embarks on a sweeping ambitious, and intimate portrayal of a star whose symbolism transcended, albeit unintentionally, the silv...

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...

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 an...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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 Universit...

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 provide...

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 pro...

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 convers...