The Cinematologists Podcast

Our long-awaited final episode in partnership with the BFI’s Comedy Genius season is finally here and it’s a doozy. Compiled over the last few months as the national season was taking place between November and January, this episode sees a diverse range of film critics, academics, filmmakers and an illustrator (as well as Neil and Dario of course) sharing some of their favourite comedy films and p...

The final episode of our Berlinale trilogy is a continuation of Neil’s travels around the German capital watching films and talking to filmmakers and critics, and a culmination of Neil and Dario’s reflections on the festival and the films they both saw. The pair discuss Andre Hörmann’s Chicago boxing documentary Ringside and the episode also features some of Neil’s interview with the filmmaker as...

(Baracoa, 2019 Pablo Briones, Sean Clark) Part 2 of the Berlinale trilogy sees Neil and Dario discuss film festival podcasting, the films Baracoa and BAIT to coincide with interviews conducted by Neil with the filmmakers behind those films, Pablo Briones and Jace Freeman , and Mark Jenkin respectively. The episode also features Neil’s chats with film critics Elle Haywood , Ella Kemp , Neil Young ,...

We are really excited to put out the first of three special episodes cover the 2019 Berlin Film Festival which both Dario and Neil attended in a kind of tag team configuration. Having applied for a press pass for the Cinematologists, and was taking 40 his students to the festival, Neil had organised a whole raft of interviews with directors and critics which form parts 2&3 of our Berlinale coverag...

The first episode of Season 9 sees Dario and Neil duke it out over the merits and problems of comedy, finding themselves on opposite sides for the first time in a while. They are put in this position by guest programmer Ryan Gilbey whose choice of Amy Heckerling’s 1995 comedy Clueless . New Statesman film critic Ryan joined Neil onstage at The Poly in Falmouth to introduce the film and discuss it...

In our final episode of 2018, we look back over the cinematic year and discuss the movies that have impressed, affected and stayed with us. We came up with the list independently but there are specific films and themes that emerge, particularly the fact that we both chose Lynne Ramsey's You Were Never Really Here as our film of the year. We hope you enjoy this look back and a big thank you to our...

For the last regular episode of 2018 we are teaming up with the BFI and the UK wide comedy genius season for a deep dive into a Marx Brothers classic and a discussion about the craft, calibre and character of comedy. As the official podcast of the BFI Fan Network supported season we are presenting several episodes on film comedy and we kicked proceedings off with a screening at The Poly in Falmout...

  For this episode, Dario was invited to the University of Chichester by Programme co-ordinator of Media and Communications Dr. Adam Locks to screen Spike Jonze's 2013 sci-fi drama Her. The discussion lived up to the reason for selecting the film, throwing up many points of analysis related directly to genre, performance and production design, but also provoking wider philosophical questions that...

On the latest installment of the podcast, Neil shares the stage with one of his filmmaking heroes, director Julien Temple, before and after a screening of Temple’s 2007 film Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten . It’s a film with significant personal meaning for Neil as the episode explains. The film was screened on 35mm at Truro’s WTW Plaza Cinema and was made possible by the support of Kingsley...

For this episode, Neil and Dario were in the room together for the first time in a while and what an occasion it was. David Lowery's modern masterpiece A Ghost Story is one of Dario's favourite films of recent years and Neil was experiencing it for the first time.  The result was an overwhelmingly emotional evening for the hosts (particularly Neil who struggled to hold it together) and the majorit...

The London Film Festival always falls at a tricky time for the Cinematologists, coinciding with the start of the academic year. So in Episode 70 we were delighted that Dario was able to speak to the Editor-in-Chief of Directors Notes Marbelle. Covering the festival every year Marbelle searches out the films and filmmakers who might be slightly below the radar and puts together best of the festival...

The latest episode, and the first of the season from the Falmouth bureau, is a celebration and examination of the work of Jane Campion. Neil is joined on stage by author Ellen Cheshire to introduce a 25th anniversary screening of The Piano , in front of a packed audience of film fans and (new) film students. What follows the screening is a lively debate about the film, problematic viewing, feminis...

Season 8 of the podcast returns with an episode of discussion from the Philosophy-Conference in Gothenburg which Dario attended over the summer. The theme of the event was Feminist Film-Philosophy which was driven by the festival director Dr. Anna Backman Rogers who discusses her aims for the conference putting female filmmakers and philosophers front and centre, she also talks about her work with...

    To coincide with his exhibition at CAST Cornwall as part of the Groundwork programme, we teamed up with Groundwork and CAST , and the Thomas Dane Gallery in London to record artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen in conversation with Nicholas Serota at the WTW Plaza Cinema in Truro and are honoured to share that conversation with our listeners.   The episode is based around the conversation betwee...

Andrew Kötting is a unique voice in British Audio-Visual culture and after seeing and admiring much of his work it was a great pleasure to welcome him onto the podcast to introduce his enigmatic new film Lek and the Dogs. Loosely based Hattie Naylor's play Ivan and the Dogs, itself the true story of a Russian child abandoned to Moscow streets to be 'raised' by the cities stray dogs, the film is bo...

In this episode, we focus on research from a special themed edition of the Participations journal of audience research looking at the notion of unsocial audiences and non-traditional, extended and disruptive forms of spectatorship. Dario's contribution to the journal was an article on a project examining the potential of second screening as a tool for film analysis and this podcast features his in...

The environment has always been a staple theme for filmmakers as it lends itself to spectacularly cinematic aesthetics, profound statements regarding humanity and nature, and often apocalyptic narratives. Mike Day's new film The Islands and the Whales certainly doesn't lack visual impressiveness but it also carries a combination of subtle storytelling and brutal honestly in its depiction of the co...

The focus of this episode is Ernest Dickerson's still underrated 1992 drama Juice, featuring a young (pre-fame/pre-legendary) Tupac Shakur. The live portion of the show was recorded a little while back at Falmouth University's School of Film & Television but is being released now due to the episode not being based around release schedules, as the previous Claire Denis episode was. The timing thoug...

We are joined for this extended conversation about the work of filmmaker Claire Denis by Dr. Felicity Gee. Felicity, a previous guest of the show, provides some wonderful insight into and thoughts on the work of the French filmmaker whose new film Let The Sunshine In is released by Curzon/Artificial Eye this Friday, April 20th. The episode covers a range of topics including aesthetics and feminism...

*We apologise for the poor sound quality of the live segments of this episode. We are still working out the optimum way to record the live events for the show. Please stick with it as there are some great interviewees and some really great discussion on this ep.* For our 60th episode we have teamed up with the Right Now Film Festival and one of our Cornwall partner venues The Poly in Falmouth for...

The career of Nicolas Ray boasts many films that are part of the cinematic canon, but it was his 1950 Film Noir In a Lonely Place that cemented his directorial sensibility and his appreciation of the fragile human condition. Starring an ageing Humphrey Bogart, in one of his most complex roles, and Gloria Grahame, who perhaps even surpasses Bogey in a performance that has the wit of Bacall, the emo...

The arrival of a new film by Clio Barnard promises an in-depth and uncompromising study of character and place; Dark River, her new film set in the harsh and beautiful Yorkshire farming landscape, is no exception. The northern locale links to her previous films The Arbor and The Self Giant, as does the bleak and brutal tragedy of the human stories. However, this rural tale, based on the Rose Trema...

The recent release of Paul Thomas Anderson's eighth narrative feature film Phantom Thread has the film world abuzz. No one is more excited than us here at The Cinematologists as it gives us a long-awaited chance to go deep on one of our favourite filmmakers and someone we believe to be one of, if not the greatest American filmmakers currently working. This first episode of the new season sees Neil...

We’ve been compiling this episode for about 6 months now and we’ve conducted interviews in New York, Bristol, The Shetland Islands and via Skype. We hope our delve into film criticism is worth the wait. Thank you firstly to our participants, so generous with their time and thoughts. A huge thank you also to our roving reporter Charlotte Crofts for the amazing interview with Tara Judah featured in...

The fallout from the Harvey Weinstein revelations has been seismic, dramatically exposing the well-known but largely silent culture of sexism in the film industry. Various high profile names have followed in being accused of historic and recent abuses in what could prove to be a watershed moment, not only for Hollywood but Western culture more broadly. In this episode, Dario and Neil discuss the p...