Cinema Junkie

When you think of Africa on film, what comes to mind? Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in "Out of Africa"? Leonardo DiCaprio in "Blood Diamond"? If so, then here's a fresh take on Africa from a first-time filmmaker from Kenya.

FilmOut, San Diego’ LGBT film festival, kicks off its 18th year Friday and will showcase some 40 films in three days. Cinema Junkie highlights one dark gem, “Downriver.”

The First Folio — the book that gave us Shakespeare — is touring the U.S. so what better time to talk about Shakespeare on film.

Cinema Junkie travels to Egypt by way of an actor described as the "Egyptian Brad Pitt." In other words, he’s a big star even though most Americans don’t know his name, Khaled El Nabawy.

Cinema Junkie serves up two archive interviews featuring Steve Martin and George Takai, both of whom have musicals currently on Broadway that premiered at the Old Globe Theatre.

Cinema Junkie takes you on a pilgrimage to mecca, also known as the TCM Film Festival.

Monsterpalooza, a convention celebrating the art of movie monsters, has grown so big that it has moved from the Burbank Marriott to the Pasadena Convention Center. Cinema Junkie checks in with some of the people at the convention.

The 1922 murder of silent film director William Desmond Taylor inspired playwright Joe DiPietro to write "Hollywood," which has its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in May. Cinema Junkie gets an early behind the scenes look at the play in progress.

Academy Award-winning film editor Alan Heim was at Groovy Like a Movie for a San Diego Filmmakers event on April 12. Cinema Junkie sits down with the veteran craftsman for a master class in how to cut a film.

FilmOut San Diego is screening John Waters' 1977 film "Desperate Living" at 3 p.m. Saturday at the Museum of Photographic Arts. The perfect excuse to dust off a 1997 archive interview.

Cinema Junkie speaks with a veteran filmmaker and a newcomer whose works were featured in this month's San Diego Latino Film Festival.

WonderCon 2016 took place over the weekend in Los Angeles, and KPBS' Beth Accomando took advantage of the event to talk with Seth Laderman of Comic-Con HQ and Ted Adams of IDW Publishing.

"Mad Max: Fury Road" was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar this year and took home more awards than any other film, but none of the stunt people received any recognition from the Academy. Stuntman Jeff Wolfe talks about a rally and petition to get an Oscar category for stunts.

Masked wrestlers, nunsploitation, monsters, and San Diego Latino Film Festival's Un Mundo Extraño — Cinema Junkie looks to extreme Latin cinema with Horrible Imaginings' Miguel Rodriguez.

Turner Classic Movies launches its March spotlight program, Condemned, a look at more than four decades of censorship, the Catholic Legion of Decency, and the film industry.

For almost two decades, starting in the late 1950s, you could count on Hammer Films for breathtakingly lurid Gothic horror tales that served up vampires, werewolves, monsters and luscious ladies. British author Antony Earnshaw talks about the studio and it legacy for the launch of a yearlong film series Get Hammered at the Digital Gym Cinema.

Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer talks about making documentaries from a subjective point of view in "The Act of Killing" and "The Look of Silence," which is up for a Best Documentary Oscar this Sunday.

This year is off to a good start with "Bone Tomahawk" and "The Witch" (now playing throughout San Diego) serving up well-crafted horror tales that challenge expectations about the genre.

"Bone Tomahawk" gets a one-time screening in San Diego on Feb. 21 at the Digital Gym Cinema. Writer-director S. Craig Zahler talks about ramping up his slow-burn horror western.

Film Struck is showcasing eight classics of Blaxploitation Cinema so it's time to revisit the Cinema Junkie Podcast featuring David Walker, writer of the "Shaft" comic books. Walker loves the Blaxploitation films of the 1970s and says we're due for Blaxploitation 2.0.

With "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" reanimating on screens this weekend, the time seems ripe to speak with Doctor of the Dead Arnold T. Blumberg about a recent strain of the undead — the self-aware zombie.

On the heels of Oscar snubbing black actors and filmmakers again, and on the eve of Black History Month, Cinema Junkie sits down with a pair of black San Diego independent filmmakers to talk about some under-appreciated African-American directors whose works are worth seeking out.

The San Diego Black Film Festival reveals the diversity of contemporary black filmmaking.

The screening of a documentary about the Black Panthers at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival this weekend seems oddly appropriate on the heels of the very white Academy Award nominations. Would the Black Panthers be boycotting the Oscars?

Cinema Junkie Podcast is back from a holiday break with a three-part show all about the Oscars.