The Film Comment Podcast
Founded in 1962, Film Comment has been the home of independent film journalism for over 50 years, publishing in-depth interviews, critical analysis, and feature coverage of mainstream, art-house, and avant-garde filmmaking from around the world. Our podcast is a weekly space for critical conversation about film, with a look at topical issues, new releases, and the big picture. Film Comment is a nonprofit publication that relies on the support of readers. Support film culture and subscribe today.
Episodes
April 24, 2020 • 58 min
It’s been a while since we did a new episode in our Film Comment Podcast: at Home series. Let me assure you that’s not because we’ve stopped watching movies or even left the house for that matter. So FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold got together again with my colleagues to talk about the latest selection of home viewing that’s been occupying our pandemicized brains. We discussed the shock of the present moment and how it’s changed...
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April 13, 2020 • 64 min
In more normal times, this week’s podcast might have been a Rep Report, reviewing some of the riches screening in New York’s art-house theaters. I’ve spent more happy hours than I could possibly count at those theaters, with certain years defined by landmark retrospectives and rare screenings of one sort or another. Film Comment has been lucky to count many of the programmers at these theaters as contributors to the magazine and th...
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April 8, 2020 • 59 min
We’re always happy to welcome two outstanding scholars to the Film Comment Podcast, and you’ve probably already read their criticism or heard them on a DVD or streaming commentary. David Bordwell last joined us to discuss his book Reinventing Hollywood, and of course his books are staples of film studies courses and his regular film blog with Kristin Thompson is a sharp and inquisitive resource. Critic Imogen Sara Smith is our othe...
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April 7, 2020 • 52 min
An inspiring development during the pandemic has been watching people pull together to help one another and especially those hit hardest. One such effort was the Cinema Worker Solidarity Fund, which raised nearly $80,000 in 10 days for out-of-work movie theater employees. For our latest edition of The Film Comment Podcast at Home, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold caught up with programmer-critics Ed Halter and Nellie Kil...
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April 6, 2020 • 54 min
We begin another week with The Film Comment Podcast at Home, keeping ourselves distracted and hopefully our listeners too. One big way the crisis is affecting the movie business is that it’s also another week without new theatrical releases. That might be the least of our concerns, but it’s definitely been food for thought among critics and other moviegoers. On this episode, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief talked to our weekly critic,...
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April 2, 2020 • 60 min
Right now, movie theaters are temporarily closed, and we’ll have to wait a while before we can all sit together again and look up at the big screen. But before the curtain dropped on moviegoing, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold made his annual pilgrimage to the True/False Film Fest. True/False is a reliably energizing festival of nonfiction film, curating the best from around the world. It’s also a place to take the Film...
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March 31, 2020 • 54 min
Staying at home is a global phenomenon in these difficult times, as we all find ourselves with a lot more indoors time and anxiety on our hands. For our latest daily edition of Film Comment Podcast at Home, we go to Brazil. Critic and programmer Ela Bittencourt wrote our interview feature on Bacurau in our March-April issue, and now, the film’s story of collective action, state of siege, and inequality feel ever more urgent. Film C...
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March 30, 2020 • 46 min
For our latest daily edition of the podcast, we reached out again to a filmmaker for a report from another corner of the world. Nadav Lapid is the director of The Kindergarten Teacher, The Policeman, and most recently, Synonyms, which played in The New York Film Festival and before that won the top prize at Berlin. Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold interviewed Nadav about The Kindergarten Teacher at its premiere in Cannes...
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March 27, 2020 • 53 min
In an article in The New York Times, the critic Manohla Dargis wrote about what we’re missing right now: “There is nothing like watching a movie, leaving the world while being rooted in it alongside friends, family and everyone else.” It’s a feeling that means so much to all of us, and on this podcast, we’ve been doing our best to stay virtually connected with each other and with movies. We’ve had the pleasure of welcoming Manohla ...
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March 26, 2020 • 47 min
On the past few episodes we’ve posed the same essential question to critics, a filmmaker, and a curator: what’s the view from where you’re sitting? That’s come to mean a couple of things: what are you watching these days, but also what’s life like from your perspective of the film world? For this installment, we looked within our own organization, Film at Lincoln Center, and spoke with our colleague, Eugene Hernandez. Eugene is the...
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March 25, 2020 • 59 min
Last weekend, the box office report for new releases looked very different: it was glaringly empty. As with so much of the world, the pandemic has left its mark on film: for now, new theatrical releases are in a kind of holding pattern. Our latest guest on The Film Comment Podcast at Home series is regular contributor Nick Pinkerton, and he’s been wondering how this cinematic break is affecting film culture and the very idea of con...
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March 24, 2020 • 49 min
Every year, the New Directors/New Films festival introduces audiences to fresh and adventurous cinema from around the world. It’s presented by Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, and for many New York moviegoers, it’s a lovely prelude to the spring. This year, the 49th edition has been postponed, and so we thought it would be nice to sit down with MoMA’s chief curator of film, Rajendra Roy, for another installment ...
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March 23, 2020 • 64 min
For the past week we’ve been doing a special daily edition of the podcast where we talk about what we’ve been watching at home. It’s a new week now and the world still seems to get a bit scarier every day, so we’re going to keep doing this to distract anyone who needs distraction. For this episode, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold was joined by Assistant Editor Devika Girish, Digital Editor Clinton Krute, and a very spec...
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March 20, 2020 • 51 min
In case you’re just joining us, this is another edition of the Film Comment Podcast at Home. Every day we’re talking about what we’re watching. For this episode, we check in with Sheila O’Malley, one of our regular columnists, who writes the Present Tense column. FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold joined digital editor Clinton Krute to talk with Sheila about a classic Hollywood star she’s been returning to: Jean Arthur, well known f...
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March 19, 2020 • 59 min
Today we continue our special homebound version of the podcast, as we all do our best to stay connected and stay sane. As before, we’re talking about what we’ve been watching and how being stuck at home is leading us to try some new movies as well as return to comfort food. We hope you enjoy our latest selection, and we'd love if you watched along with us—you'll find links below to titles under discussion. For our latest ep...
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March 18, 2020 • 50 min
“NO NEW ‘MOVIES’ TIL INFLUENZA ENDS“ read the October 10, 1918, headline in The New York Times, during the global flu pandemic one century ago. Then as now, theaters nationwide were temporarily closing, leaving moviegoers without any movies to go to. “WE MISS OUR MOVIES” went another newspaper headline that same October, atop an article that marveled at the impact of this young popular art form: “In a few years, and so gradually as...
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March 17, 2020 • 36 min
You don’t need us to tell you that we’re living in extraordinary times, and consequently, many of us are spending our time indoors these days. And with all that extra time inside, we’ve been talking with folks and hearing that it might be nice to listen to some friendly talk about movies—and maybe give us something else to think about. So we will be doing special editions of The Film Comment Podcast where we talk about what we’ve b...
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March 13, 2020 • 43 min
Bacurau is the new film from Brazilian filmmakers Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, and it has a pulp thriller premise with a radical heart: a small rural community becomes the target of a mysterious, heavily armed group of foreign white tourists. But the Bacurau residents don’t give up, and the result is what Ela Bittencourt calls, in our March-April issue, “a blistering portrait of resistance.” You might know the filmm...
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March 11, 2020 • 22 min
First Cow is the movie on the lovely cover of our March-April issue, directed by Kelly Reichardt. The setting of the movie is an Oregon frontier town in the 1820s, when newcomers are busily trying to get a foothold in life and in business. Two such newcomers are at the center of First Cow, a cook named Cookie and a fugitive he befriends named King Lu. It’s another chapter in Reichardt’s richly imagined vision of America, a portrait...
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March 6, 2020 • 52 min
In the cover story of our March-April issue, out now, Film Comment Digital Editor Clinton Krute writes “Kelly Reichardt’s deceptively modest epic First Cow opens with a wide, static shot of a barge, heavy with consumer goods, pushing down the Columbia River. Like the story that follows, this shot is deceptively straightforward, gesturing toward one of the themes—nature vs. society, with the human being somewhere in-between—that the...
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