An Excuse to Eat Popcorn

Next up in Ghost Stories, I present to you Ana Lily Amirpour’s 2014 stylish vampire western horror film, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Amirpour evades categorization in her nuanced, intertextual debut feature and successfully creates the perfect desolate atmosphere in the fictional Iranian town, Bad City, for her cool-girl vampire to prey on men. Amirpour challenges both the male and western gaze with her morally complex depiction of a vampire girl.  

Up next in Ghost Stories I am here to present Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 “mind-boggling mixed-media spectacle”, House. Join me in a discussion of this Japanese classic that looks like horror on the surface but evades typical generic categorization. This is not so much of an attempt to analyze a film as absurdly surrealist as this one as it is a chat about the historical "why?" and "so what?".  In this experimentation with the medium using a mixed-media approach, Obayashi captures the attention of a youthful audience thought to be lost to television in a spectacle that uses striking visuals on the surface and grapples with the intergenerational trauma that lies beneath. 

After a little break, we’re back. We ask you to please bear with us as the show goes through some changes and growing pains; nonetheless we are here to present you with our next chapter—Ghost Stories. Join us for today’s episode featuring Víctor Eríce’s 1973 Spanish masterpiece The Spirit of the Beehive (El espíritu de la colmena). Upon first glance this is a story about a little girl discovering the mysteries of life, even the scary ones, but we are to provide you with the historical context to understand its specificity in Spanish culture and the start of Francisco Franco's  brutal 35-year regime. We hope at the very least this episode introduces you to a mesmerizingly spooky movie rooted in real events and national trauma. 

For our final chapter of Love we are talking about Christopher Petzold’s poignant 2014 drama, Phoenix. Petzold cleverly uses the love story between Nelly and Johnny to drive and inform a conversation about postwar Berlin. It’s rooted in emotional realism and is narratively straightforward, but join us to discuss the fantastical tone which haunts it and the complexities of identity within the framework of trauma and reconciliation with a horrifying past. It is suspenseful and its ending is equally climactic and satisfying. We hope that this episode leaves you wanting as much Petzold as you can get, because his oeuvre is worth a deep dive. 

In Episode 3 of Love we present you an official podcast favorite: In the Mood for Love. A movie that not only explores love and desire, but also the way we fit into this universe with other people connected by fate, choice, and chance. Wong Kar-wai's signature dreamy style brings to life that we are only partially privy, and like the protagonists getting to know each other, we have to pay attention. Join us for a conversation about the way these themes fit into Hong Kong's rich history both in terms of cinema and otherwise, and the way the two leave their mark on each frame on the film. 

In Episode 2 of Love we focus on a movie that highlights the voices of two girls in a community whose story has long been erased; Carmen y Lola by Arantxa Echevarría is a first love story between two Romani girls from Madrid. This work of social realism explores the intersectionality of the queer identity, and while tragic, is actually quite hopeful. So far we are 2/2 for tears in this chapter, so we apologize if you are not ready to have your heart broken and put back together in the span of 1 hour and 45 minutes. 

Welcome to our fifth chapter: Love. This is a chapter we could fill infinitely, so picking movies has not been easy, but we decided to start with Wim Wenders' iconic Paris, Texas as it is all-encompassing when it comes to love. It's a structurally perfect story about longing, loss, and memory that drives a journey through the the myth of The American Dream, but what makes it such a nuanced take on love is that its backdrop is the Southwestern United States, and it's a French-German production.  

To finish up our Biopics chapter we are talking about our second movie directed by and highlighting the story of a woman. Frida by Julie Taymor is a productorial feat, led by the will and vision of Salma Hayek. We want to highlight her efforts while also being sensitive to the gravity and trauma of the situation she faced with Harvey Weinstein in order to have it made and distributed. In this episode we discuss the importance of Frida Kahlo and the historical significance of the movie, but we invite you to join us to engage with some of the aspects that may not do Kahlo justice, like the male gaze that plagues it. It’s an episode fueled by passion and emotion, and we can’t imagine a better way to leave Chapter 4. 

In the second half of our Biopic Chapter we are shifting the focus to stories about women, and this one is particularly exciting, because it is also our first discussion of an animation. Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s Persepolis based on Satrapi’s graphic novel of the same name is a refreshing take on a coming-of-age autobiography that is not only rooted in the specificity of a childhood during the Iranian Revolution, but also uses the medium to explore universal themes. Join us to talk about its historical significance, the possibilities of animation in revealing the essence of cinema, and the dualities that form an identity. They demonstrate that the pursuit of truth does not necessarily rely on an indexically sound imitation of this world.   

In Episode 2 of Biopics we take a retrospective look at David Fincher’s The Social Network. While the movie has only been out for 12 years, the hold that Facebook has over the fabric of society has grown and shifted exponentially. In this sense, we discuss the movie and Facebook’s founding, but, perhaps much more importantly, we reflect on how we can understand the movie’s messages within the context of how we understand the entity of the Metaverse today. 

After a little break, we are back with our fourth chapter: Biopics!!  We are certainly not easing into things with Shaka King’s powerfully revolutionary Judas and the Black Messiah. It is the newest film we have discussed on the podcast, and the first to have a simultaneous theater and steamer release, but it is also one of the most complexly historically rooted. In this episode, we dive into King’s stylized framing of Fred Hampton’s murder as a crime thriller, and most importantly, the way he demands an active viewer for both the duration of the film and beyond, as the racist American portrayed by King is still the America we know today. We hope that you watch and start conversations about the racist systemic and cultural core of the United States.   

There is no better way to close our first Deep Dive chapter than with Agnès Varda’s Faces Places. This is the first documentary we have talked about on the podcast, and it is also one of the most heart-wrenching. We went in not knowing what to expect and came out absolutely delighted with life, and we want to share this experience with you now! So, please, we implore that you watch and join us for a chat about how Varda, at 89, created one her most eternally youthful works, that opens up a conversation that will ensure that her legacy of love lives on forever. 

The title of our third episode of Agnès Varda is the actually the French title, which we find much more poignant for her 1985 film, Vagabond. This marks the halfway point in her prolific career, and it is clear that after 30 years Varda has mastered the interweaving of her fascination between narrative filmmaking and documentary style. She continues her contemplation of people and places with a darker, cautionary approach. Mona, the protagonist, is a drifter whose lifestyle is ultimately incompatible with the society that traps her. Watch the movie and then join us for a discussion about the ways her forever refreshing and innovative style reflects Mona’s inevitable demise through a series of slowly revealing pseudo-interview sequences. 

Hello and welcome to Episode 2 of our Agnès Varda Deep Dive! It is clear that La Pointe Courte is a useful starting point for exploring her filmography, because it sets the tone for not only her love for people and places, but also her deep connection to the medium itself. However, Cléo de 5 a 7 uses a very different lens,  as it offers an exciting perspective about a beautiful French singer in a period so saturated by men auteurs and also their speculations about women. While Cléo’s blind vanity makes her a pretty unlikeable character, it is still a pleasure to watch. Join us to discuss the way Varda both relies on and subverts a dependence on temporality to frame her feminist exploration of existentialism.  

We present to you our beloved third chapter, a Deep Dive with Agnes Varda. Varda, a life-long learner and pioneer, has long been considered the mother of the Nouvelle Vague, yet her work was long viewed on the margins of the movement. In this retrospective exploration, our goal is to understand why there were always terms that went along with her acceptance. Episode 1 is meant to situate us within the context of 1950's French cinema and an industry on the brink of a radical shift, so you can join us for an informed chat about Varda’s unintentionally innovative film, La Pointe Courte. After being historically established, we chat about what Varda teaches us about love and relationships, her infectiously tender care for her subject matter, and how even if she did not intend to teach, we learned .  

In this episode we close our Forbidden Film chapter with Kinji Fukasaku’s infamous and unexpectedly refreshing, Battle Royale. Join us in a discussion about authority, violence intergenerational trauma, and mistrust of youth. While, yes, these themes are universal, a deeper dive into the film’s historical roots reveals its specificity and basis in reality. It's hard to pick favorites, but this one is definitely up there. 

Today in Forbidden Films we discuss Stanley Kubrick's infamously shocking, A Clockwork Orange. Neither of us had seen it before this episode, and we had no idea what to expect going in, really only knowing that it had been widely banned for its unprecedented depiction of violence. If you have not seen it and would like to watch, we do not want you to have the same experience. In all honesty, it is incredibly difficult due to its graphic depictions of violence, specifically sexual violence enacted on women. This time, we try to analyze the paradoxical ideological stance of a film that unpleasantly surprised us.   

Hello and welcome to Episode One of our second chapter—Forbidden Films. In this chapter we discuss movies from across space and time that have, at some point, been governmentally banned. We think Vera Chytilova’s anarchistic film, Daisies, is a particularly explosive way to dive in. Daisies is not meant for the closed minded; in fact, we request that you go into the viewing experience with a high tolerance for ambiguity and having left all of your expectations about what cinema should be behind. Join us in an attempt to break down what is now labeled as a feminist landmark of the Czech New Wave as we discuss how to approach the experimental, allusions to major feminist works, and the reconciliation of the dualisms embedded in this work.     

Welcome to the final episode of our Water chapter where we discuss Luca Guadagnino's beloved film, Call Me By Your Name, that was so important to many of us in the beginning of our own coming-of-age journeys. In some ways this was a difficult episode for us to record, because it is just so personal, but it was equally as exciting for that very reason. Join us as we talk about growing up with Call Me By Your Name, the shattering of our rose-colored glasses, the thrill of Guadagnino's realism, and the power of vulnerability. 

Welcome to Episode 3 of Water where we highlight Barry Jenkins' history-making, Oscar-winning masterpiece, Moonlight. We feel grateful as spectators to be invited into something so raw and personal, and we hope that if you have not seen it yet, you will give it your most careful watch. Join us as we discuss the power of its astonishingly evocative three acts through the lens of water, hyper-masculinity, identity, and the systemic racism that exists both within and outside of this film.