The Cinematologists Podcast

It's our season finale and we were delighted to get back into a cinema for a live screening and podcast recording, our first one since Covid. The venue was the spectacular Garden cinema in Covent Garden, a beautiful art-deco retro venue where we hope to be holding regular screenings in the autumn. As part of their celebrating Film Noir season, we screened and discussed the 1962 psychological noir...

In episode 144, Neil and Dario discuss a few recent films viewed with a critical eye with regards to how they fit into film culture and more broadly how they reflect (or don't) current political attitudes.  Dario wrote in detail about the star persona of Tom Cruise in the most recent Patreon newsletter, and both Neil and Dario reflect on the experiential pleasures and reductive nostalgia of Tom Gu...

In this episode, Neil records an audio diary from the 2022 International Festival de Cannes. He reflects on being part of the team presenting Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men to the world, the weirdness of Cannes, and some of the films he saw while there. Titles discussed are Patricio Guzmán’s My Imaginary Country, Mia Hansen' Løve’s One Fine Morning, the 1972 anthology film about the Munich Olympics Vision...

The latest episode is another first for the podcast as this episode marks the first time we have gone back to talk about a filmmaker we’ve already dedicated an episode to. The reason for this landmark is Hannah Strong’s new book on Sofia Coppola for Abrams Books, Sofia Coppola: Forever Young . The book is the first in the Abrams series to see a female filmmaker given such lavish treatment. Neil ta...

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 w...

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 visi...

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 ab...

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...

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...

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 (...

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, bu...

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 int...

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 consciousnes...

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 singula...

In the latest episode, Dario talks to poet and activist So Mayer about their work on the recent Raising Films survey ‘ How We Work Now’ about the impact of Covid-19 on those working in the screen industries whose lives also involve caring responsibilities of various shades. So and Dario discuss how vital this work is on its own terms but also as part of a broader landscape of rethinking how the fi...

A Tale of Two Sisters, 2003, Editor Lee Hyeon-mi In this episode, Neil talks to one of Horror Cinema’s leading scholars and all-round creative force of nature, Dr. Alison Peirse. Alison teaches film at Leeds (and is an old colleague of Dario’s!) where she is an associate professor. She writes a brilliant newsletter called The Losers Club and is finding success on the film festival circuit with her...

The second episode in our coverage of the London Film Festival is a bumper one with Dario and Neil discussing a ton of new movies from all over the world. They are joined by regular visitor to the pod Savina Petkova, who Dario talked to at the festival itself as it wound down, who added discussions about new films by Joanna Hogg, Terence Davies and Julia Ducournau to the mix. Neil waxes lyrical ab...

The first episode in our coverage of the London Film Festival. Dario and Neil discuss the blended format of the festival and the context by which one comes to watch specific films at certain moments because of festival serendipity. Under the spotlight for this mid-festival check-in are: The Storms of Jeremy Thomas (Mark Cousins, 2021) Memory Box (Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige, 2021) Luzzu (Ale...

In this slightly longer than normal episode, Neil indulges his love of magazines by having conversations with editors of print magazines with a varying focus on film about setting up print enterprises in the digital age. He talks to Maria J Pérez Cuervo about her folk horror magazine Hellebore , Gabriel Solomon s about illustrated film magazine Beneficial Shock and Cathy Lomax & Lucy Bolton about...

For the season 14 premiere Neil and Dario discuss one of 2021’s best releases, Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s dark and magnetic psychodrama Rose Plays Julie starring Ann Skelly, Orla Brady and Aidan Gillen. Neil talks to the filmmakers about their unique, exploratory process, growing as filmmakers, working with actors and timing. Elsewhere Neil and Dario catch up about some recent watches and w...

To close out an epic season this final episode just finds Neil and Dario talking to each other, and responding to listener questions. This special episode, and the Patreon bonus episode, runs the gamut from the future of cinema, the death of horror cinema (or not?), lockdown viewing strategies, platonic male relationships, Strictly Ballroom, the BBC film Together, facial hair, celebrity lookalikes...

In the latest episode, Neil talks at length to critic, editor and podcaster Nicolas Rapold about his podcast The Last Thing I Saw, as well as podcasting in general, the benefits of direct-to-subscriber content via Substack and, a favourite topic of Neil and Dario's, film culture in 2021 in general. Elsewhere, Neil and Dario ponder ideas around conversation and podcasting, inclusivity and good fait...

In this episode, Dario talks to visual artist Janis Rafa about her sensuous, enigmatic first feature, Kala Azar. Set in a nameless Southern European wasteland, a stoic young couple exist in a semi-feral periphery, they survive by collecting and cremating deceased pets for owners who need the fantasy of ritualized passing. But they also cannot help but clean up the number of dead animals which they...

For this episode we are honoured to be joined by the wonderful filmmaker Caroline Catz to discuss her brilliant debut feature film Delia Derbyshire: the Myths and Legendary Tapes, which Catz wrote, directed and stars in, as Derbyshire. It’s a unique music doc/drama hybrid that is well worth the time and is currently on the BBC iPlayer in the UK. The conversation covers Caroline’s process for the f...

We are really excited to focus an episode around the BFI Blu-ray release of Chris Petit's existential British road movie Radio On as it's a film that we had talked about for a long time. Alongside this, it gave us the perfect excuse to bring on one of our original supporters and true friend of the show, Mark Jenkin. Mark kindly took the time out from editing his new feature Enys Men, to explore wh...