True/False 2016

One might not expect much from a film festival right in the dead center of America's Heartland, but for thirteen years, True/False has been changing the way to think about the micro-film festival as well as the form of cinema in major ways. In this dispatch from Columbia, Missouri, Peter sits with critics Sam Adams, Tim Grierson, and (eventually) Scott Tobias to look at how the documentary-oriented festival puts aesthetics into the conversation while remaining politically engaged. While the subjects can be galvanizing—the US prison system, delinquent teenage girls in Tehran, Chinese miners, the fall of Iraq—the films continually break the mold for how one thinks about the format by exploring the relationship between the filmmaker and their subject. Plus, a discussion about Concerned Student 1950, a student-made documentary addressing the issues of the University of Missouri protests in 2015, and what its premiere could mean for the future of the festival.

0:00-2:50 Opening
2:50-8:00 Concerned Student 1950

8:00-49:35 True/False Favorites

50:47-54:16 Sponsorship Section
55:05-1:19:05 True/False Favorite Scenes

1:19:08-1:20:47 Close

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Read more about True/False at their website.

Follow Our Guests on Twitter: Sam Adams, Tim Grierson, and Scott Tobias.

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Episode #75 - Blake Williams (INLAND EMPIRE)

"When I'm making work it's very important that me that I'm unsure where it's going"

What does it mean to view a stereoscopic image, to see films in a way that's at once closer to our daily life perception while also expanding it beyond anything we could ever see? Blake Williams is one of many filmmakers working in the avant-garde who has been exploring this question—through filmmaking, criticism, and historical research. Williams joins the podcast to trace his lineage as both a critic and a filmmaker, and the very nature of 3D images that has made this such an exploratory visual medium to work in, using it to explore heady concepts in both literal and theoretical terms. Peter and Blake then turn to a narrative filmmaker who created his own long experimental: David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE. The two debate the use of narrative in the film while also examining the nature of its low-grade digital imagery, which can be sublime or absolutely terrifying.

0:00-3:02 Opening

3:40-11:14 Establishing Shots — The Mermaid and Mountains May Depart

11:59-1:10:24 Deep Focus — Blake Williams
1:11:26-1:15:24 Sponsorship Section
1:16:39-1:39:33 Double Exposure — INLAND EMPIRE (David Lynch)

1:39:36-1:41:14 Close 

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Visit Blake's film-viewing blog and his filmmaking website.
Watch the films of Blake Williams, including No Signal, A Cold Compress, Coorow-Latham Road, Depart, Many A Swan, Baby Blue, and Red Capriccio.

Read Blake on Cinema Scope and Ion Cinema.

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Let Us Now Praise Jacques Rivette

"I care more about the grace of the actors’ gestures and the quality of their voices than what they actually do or say."

The names of the French New Wave have become staples for both French Cinema and beyond. The critics of Cahiers Du Cinema like Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, and Eric Rohmer all turned to filmmaking to put into practice the meanings they had pulled from their valorization of Hollywood Cinema. But the most passionaite of those critics, and perhaps the most creative of those filmmakers was Jacques Rivette, who passed away on January 29th at the age of 87. In this new podcast, former guests of the show (Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Miriam Bale, and Matt Prigge) join in a roundtable discussion of the critic and filmmaker. They analyze his films, his writings, and his attention to collaboration, all of which made him a wholly unique individual in the history of cinema. Torn between his obsessions with realism and fantasy, Rivette captured the essence of the medium's paradoxical specificity.

0:00-3:33 Opening

3:33-28:18 Rivette Discussion Part 1

29:00-33:09 Sponsorship Section
33:47-1:02:30 Rivette Discussion Part 2

1:02:34-1:05:07 Close / Outtakes

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Read Dave Kehr's obituary of Jacques Rivette, and find numerous resources on the filmmaker at this website here.

Out 1 is available on Kino Lorber DVD and Fandor. Le Pont Du Nord is available from Kino Lorber. Duelle, Noroit, and Merry-Go-Round can be found on Blu-Ray in this Arrow Films Box Set. Paris Belongs To Us is available through Hulu+ and The Criterion Collection. L'Amour Fou is on YouTube.

Follow Our Guests on Twitter: Miriam Bale, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Matt Prigge.

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Episode #74 - Ryland Walker Knight (The Awful Truth)

"I'm always seduced by language and curious how the word and image interact"

Can movies think? Or how could we think through the movies? Highly influenced by the work of Stanley Cavell, Ryland Walker Knight has explored the possibilities of thinking and language in cinema, whether it be a work from a beloved art house master or a brash and loud Hollywood blockbuster. Ryland discusses his childhood raised on double features, his critical work, his recent short film, Inside Voices, and his latest project, a video essay series exploring some of the imagery and hidden narratives in the work of Michael Mann (with a little help from Beach House). Finally, the two turn to The Awful Truth, and discuss how Le McCarey's attention to how voices sound and bodies move create some of its most indelible humor, and intelligent insights.

0:00-2:22 Opening

2:56-12:16  Establishing Shots - A War and 13 Hours
13:02-50:52 Deep Focus - Ryland Walker Knight

51:10-53:21 Sponsorship Section
54:04-1:04:18 Double Exposure - The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey)

1:04:22-1:06:00 Close

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Check out Ryland's Posts on MUBI Notebook and The House Next Door, as well as his website. Watch his shorts Inside Voices and Headlands. View the Mann Sparks project.

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Episode #73 - Eddie Muller (Gun Crazy)

"The more people who are involved in this, they'll open the film cans."

If one were to imagine the cinema of the 1940s, the likely images would be of lonely streets, men in trenchcoats, and slender blondes lighting cigarettes while drenched in shadow. The French coined a term for it: film noir, and since then it has been a gateway drug for many cinephiles interested in classical Hollywood's most lurid pictures. Eddie Muller has been called the Czar of Noir, and he deserves the title: he heads programming for Noir City, a San Francisco based film festival that presents the city with the best of noir movies, and then heads the Film Noir Foundation to discover those lost works that no one even knows. Eddie talks about his entrance into the world of film in SF's many rep screenings and his tutelage under avant-garde artists George Kuchar, before turning to writing about the world of grindhouse movies and this lost genre. Finally, Peter and Eddie look at one of the canonical films of this era, Gun Crazy, and explore the strange production story behind one of the most violent-obsessed movies ever made.

0:00-2:36 Opening

3:52-10:40  Establishing Shots - Lewis Klahr's Sixty Six / Garrel Giveaway Winners
11:25-55:06 Deep Focus - Eddie Muller

55:35-59:24 Sponsorship Section
1:00:27-1:22:36 Double Exposure - Gun Crazy (Joseph H Lewis)

1:22:41-1:24:36 Close / Outtake

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Check out Eddie Muller's personal website, as well as the site for the Film Noir Foundation and Noir City.
Eddie's books include Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of Adults Only Cinema, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir, The Art of Noir, and Gun Crazy: The Origin of American Outlaw Cinema.

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2015 Favorites With Keith Uhlich (Part 2)

If you took cinema at its essence, it's simply recorded bits of the present. This includes bits of physical reality, personal psychology, formal techniques through technologies, and projections of possibility. And thus by putting a capstone on the year with this countdwon, Peter and guest Keith Uhlich hope to investigate just a bit of those bits that become the history of film, as well as history itself. Their final picks travel from New York City to 9th Century China to Southern Plantations and the Planet of Arkanar. They emphasize stories of small people in the large waves around them—each one trying to craft their own little spot within their universe. And whether the world goes into the digital ad infinitum or will become covered in shit, it is the human at the center of these films: the joys, the sorrows, all wrapped in one. These are our favorite works of 2015.

Listen to Part 1 Here

0:00-2:32 Opening
3:56-26:41 Choices for #5
28:07-42:29 Choices for #4
44:33-1:04:56 Choices for #3

1:05:46-1:09:21 Mubi Sponsorship and Garrel Giveaway
1:10:28-1:30:18 Choices for #2
1:30:18-1:52:18 Choices for #1

1:52:18-1:55:16 Closing Thoughts / Credits / Outtakes

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Read Keith Uhlich at The Hollywood Reporter and Mubi. 

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2015 Favorites With Keith Uhlich (Part 1)

Another year of movies, another countdown. In this 2015 iteration of The Cinephiliacs countdown, Keith Uhlich once again joins Peter on a cinematic odyssey from big screens and small ones, as well as streaming services even beyond the States. A diverse group of films define this year's crop: things that push the boundaries of digital cinema to the absolute mainstream of Hollywood, new spins on old hat genres, and and new tales from around the world finally given voices. But as it turns out, whatever the story, it's the technique that centers these films: shot-reverse shot, breathtaking long takes, smartly composed compositions, and a deep commitment to humanity. Part II will be up Friday, January 8th.

0:00-7:20 Opening
7:20-33:15 Choices for #10
33:15-47:40 Choices for #9
47:40-1:05:25 Choices for #8

1:067:14-1:09:36 Mubi Sponsorship and Garrel Giveaway
1:10:14-1:29:54 Choices for #7
1:29:54-1:43:40 Choices for #6
1:52:52-2:08:32 Favorite Discoveries of the Year

2:08:35-2:09:56 Close

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Read Keith Uhlich at The Hollywood Reporter and Mubi. 

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