The Film Comment Podcast

At this year’s Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, Film Comment participated in a fascinating experimental event called “A Long Night of Dreaming about the Future of Intelligence.” Curated by Rafael Dernbach, a researcher at the Università della Svizzera italiana, the event began at sunset on August 9 and ended at sunrise on August 10, and involved a series of talks and workshops about the many connotations of “intelligence,” how A.I. is changing our relationships to ourselves and the world, and how dreams may offer up keys to our future. The event was co-hosted by Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish. This week’s episode is an excerpt from her moderating shift, featuring a lecture and Q&A with Shane Denson, a Stanford University scholar who explores the terrain of “post-cinema”—the brave new world of digital images untethered to classical notions of time, space, and reality. Check back next week for another episode from “A Long of Dreaming about the Future of Intelligence,” featuring A.I. scholar Andrea Rizzoli and critic Kevin B. Lee.

Over the course of his storied career, filmmaker Steve James has delved into the many ways in which individuals—frequently residents of his native Chicago—are subject to the whims of history, society, and life itself. Whether detailing the struggles of young athletes in his watershed 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams, the heroic efforts of anti-violence activists in 2011’s The Interrupters, or the daily experience of high schoolers in his 2018 series America to Me, James has combined sharp social analysis with striking warmth and sympathy for his subjects. His latest documentary, A Compassionate Spy, might seem on the surface to be a departure. The film tells the story of Ted Hall, a physics prodigy who, at age 18, was invited to join the Manhattan Project. Perceptive beyond his years, Hall found himself haunted by the implications of his work and, in 1944, made the decision to share nuclear secrets with the Soviet Union. As compelling as this tale of espionage is, James’s film becomes, in the director’s words, “a love story,” with Ted’s widow Joan taking center stage as she recounts their life together, sharing the burden of her husband’s secret. For today’s episode, Film Comment editor Clinton Krute called up the director to discuss the impetus behind A Compassionate Spy, the film’s surprising use of recreations, and how Ted Hall’s fascinating story might complement—or offer a counter to—the themes of a certain summer blockbuster about atomic weapons. (Hint: it’s not Barbie.)

If you’re a follower of contemporary world cinema, chances are, you’re a fan of Franz Rogowski. Known for his distinctive screen presence and extraordinary physicality, the German actor has blazed a trail through some of the most well-regarded movies of the last few years, including Michel Haneke’s Happy End, Christian Petzold’s Transit and Undine, Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life, Angela Schanelec’s I Was At Home, But…, to name only a few. His latest role is as the lead in Passages, a new film by Ira Sachs. Rogowski stars Tomas, a diva-esque filmmaker and very indecisive queer man, who vacillates erratically between his husband, played by Ben Whishaw, and a new love interest, played by Adele Exarchopoulos. It’s a role of chaotic contradictions that seems made for Rogowski: Tomas is self-absorbed, brilliant, repulsive, sexy, vulnerable, and malicious all at once—and Rogowski brings to him a truly unselfconscious, combustible sense of humanity. For today’s episode, Film Comment co-editor Devika Girish called up Rogowski on Zoom to chat about his inspirations as an actor and how he crafted his firecracker performance in Passages. Please note that because Rogowski is not a member of SAG-AFTRA, he is not currently on strike.

Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster Oppenheimer, a biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the key leaders of the Manhattan Project, has sold out movie theaters all over the country. With its three-hour runtime, notoriously large 70mm IMAX reels, and star-stuffed cast, it is nothing less than an epic. The film spans nearly four decades, from Oppenheimer’s days as a physics student in Europe, to his time teaching at UC Berkeley during World War II, to his days developing the atomic bomb at the Los Alamos Laboratory, and, subsequently, to the investigation into his possible communist ties during the McCarthy era. Amid all that plot is plenty of awe-inspiring spectacle and musings on the ethics of war and the perils of genius. On today’s episode, Film Comment Co-Deputy Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute are joined by Film at Lincoln Center programmer Madeline Whittle and critic Mark Asch for a discussion about Nolan’s opus. The group was evenly split between fans and skeptics, and the result was a lively conversation—which, of course, is what the movies are all about.

Last February, the magazine The New Republic invited a host of film critics to participate in a new poll, curated by esteemed critic and longtime Film Comment contributor J. Hoberman: a list of the 100 Most Significant Political Films of All Time. Not best or favorite political films, mind you—most significant. The New Republic unveiled the results of the poll on June 22, along with an essay by Hoberman analyzing the results. Topped by The Battle of Algiers, the final list is both a fascinating snapshot of what political cinema means to critics today, and the limits of such exercises in ascertaining consensus. On today’s podcast, we invited Jim for a deep-dive into the impetus behind the poll; the surprises, disappointments, and notable entries in the list, from The Birth of a Nation to La Chinoise to Hour of the Furnaces to All the President's Men; and how notions of political cinema have changed over time. For show notes and a list of the movies discussed, go to filmcomment.com/podcast.

Musician, filmmaker, and  wearer of (many) hats Boots Riley has a new series streaming on Amazon Prime Video, called I’m a Virgo. It’s as bizarre, serious, and original as his breakout feature, 2018’s Sorry to Bother You, a workplace comedy set in a telemarketing office that unfurls as a scathing satire of life under late capitalism. I’m a Virgo is also about the urgent need to redistribute wealth, though it begins as a strange, sweet coming-of-age tale about a 13-foot-tall Black man named Cootie, played by Jharrel Jerome. Having been raised in hiding by his protective aunt and uncle, Cootie stumbles, in the series's opening, into a world of drugs, sex, and radical politics with a ragtag crew of youngsters, navigating an Oakland that is only slightly more dystopian than reality. Riley draws on a wide range of sources, from comic books and superhero movies to T.V. commercials and socialist propaganda, for a tale that is as much a furious critique of the failures of capitalism as it is a rollicking joyride. (There’s also cameo from Slavoj Zizek.)  Riey joined us for a wide-ranging conversation that touched on the CIA funding of Abstract Expressionism, the history of the Communist Party of the USA, the Writers Guild of America strike, and the challenge of making politically engaged art in an industry dominated by corporations.

This week, we take a peek into the world of Robert M. Rubin, a New York–based collector of film scripts. An architectural and art historian by trade, Bob began buying rare and historical significant screenplays seriously in the 1990s, and has now amassed an archive of what he calls “exformation”—that is, the ephemera that was often discarded in the process of moviemaking, but now reveals hidden and forgotten histories.  Film Comment editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish sat down with Bob and bibliographer Erin McGuirl, who manages the collection, to leaf through some of these treasures. These include variant copies of classics like Citizen Kane and Notorious, editor Louis Lombardo’s working scripts for Robert Altman’s films, Ben Gazzara’s personal copies of the script for The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and much more. They delved into the ways in which this material—with its pictures, notations, and scribbles—challenges our understanding of auteurism and sheds light on the crucial roles played by script supervisors, secretaries, and writers in Hollywood. Stay tuned for supplementary photos of the collection, included in this week’s edition of The Film Comment Letter. Subscribe here: https://www.filmcomment.com/newsletter-sign-up/

You may know Trinh T. Minh-ha from her groundbreaking films, like Reassemblage (1982) and Sur Name Viet Given Name Nam (1989); from her foundational books, like Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality on Feminism (1989) and When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender and Cultural Politics (1991); or her wide-ranging scholarship and multimedia projects, which have been presented at museums and institutions worldwide. In a body of work spanning decades, the multi-hyphenate theorist and artist has challenged and reshaped how we think of documentary, visual culture, feminism, nationalism, and race. A new artist book by Minh-ha, titled The Twofold Commitment, traces all of these threads in her film Forgetting Vietnam, which was released in 2015, 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War. Published by Primary Information, the book features the film’s script, paired with creatively arranged stills, as well as conversations between Minh-ha and various scholars. To mark the launch of The Twofold Commitment in May, Minh-ha joined us on the podcast for a rich discussion about the genesis of the book; the different functions of voice, text, and image in her practice; how she turns familiarity and alienness into productive ways of looking at the world; and more.

If you've been following the podcast and the Film Comment Letter, you'll know that for the last two weeks, we've been reporting from the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Before the festival ended last Sunday, Devika Girish, Co-Deputy Editor of FC, gathered Justin Chang, Dennis Lim, and Rachel Rosen—all of whom serve on the selection committee of the New York Film Festival—for a look back at the Cannes that was. As experienced festival veterans, the three reflected on the trends of this year's festival, including the preponderance of long films, experiments with historical representation, and hybrids of fiction and documentary. They also discussed some of the festival's late premieres, including films by Catherine Breillat and Hong Sangsoo. We hope you enjoy the conversation—and keep your eyes on filmcomment.com for more Cannes wrap coverage, coming later this week: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/category/festivals/cannes/cannes-2023/

Cannes 2023 has wrapped—and as news of standing ovations and walkouts, throwaway raves and pans, spit takes and hot takes flood the feed, we’ll be reporting on all the cinematic goings-on, with our on-the-Croisette crew of Film Comment contributors ready to cut through the noise with a series of thoughtful dispatches, interviews, and podcasts. As the tide of cinema ebbs from the shores of the Riviera, FC Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish was joined by Frédéric Jaeger (editor at critic.de and programmer), Caitlin Doherty (editor at the New Left Review), and critic James Wham to discuss later-day standouts including Alice Rohrwacher’s La chimera, Ken Loach’s The Old Oak, Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses, Tran Anh Hung’s The Pot-au-Feu, and more. Subscribe to the Film Comment Letter today for a steady stream of Cannes coverage, providing everything you need to know about the 2023 edition: www.filmcomment.com/newsletter-sign-up/