Dario is joined by film lecturer Douglas McNaughton at the Electric Palace to screen Basil Dearden's profound drama Victim (1961), starring the magnetic Dirk Bogarde and the superb Sylvia Sims. In many ways a film ahead of its time dealing with the social implications of homosexuality in a time when it was still illegal and a taboo subject. On its release in the United Kingdom it proved highly controversial to the British Board of Film Censors, and in the U.S. it was refused a seal of approval f...
Mar 21, 2017•1 hr 48 min•Season 1Ep. 96
Neil is joined at Falmouth University's School of Film & Television by Dr Sabina Stent (@SabinaStent) and Dr Felicity Gee (@fiandshoegaze) to discuss feminist surrealism and film. The event took place in front of students, staff and local filmmakers and artists and was a wide-ranging discussion that was invigorating and illuminating. Also, the talk of a personal politics of resistance was much needed in these troubling times. This episode is presented in association with Mubi to coincide wit...
Mar 01, 2017•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 97
Dario is joined by Film Theorist Emre Caglayan at the Electric Palace in Hastings to screen and discuss Georges Franju's classic surrealist inspired horror Eyes Without a Face. A truly influential film Eyes Without a Face is often placed alongside Psycho and Peeping Tom as examples of art-house director exploring the horror genre and the film still possesses a sense of unsettling eeriness. Dario also interview Matt Smith an academic from Georgia State University in Atlanta to discuss the influen...
Feb 21, 2017•1 hr 37 min•Season 1Ep. 98
There's some soul searching in this episode as Neil and Dario try and figure out how and why to watch cinema with the world in such a state of flux. Thankfully, the film under focus is apt for this purpose. Down in Falmouth Neil and Kingsley screen and discuss a seminal childhood film for all involved, a film that seems more prescient that ever: Paul Verhoeven's 80s sci-fi classic Robocop. It seems the enduring relevance of Robocop is on other people's minds at the moment. Check out Abraham Ries...
Feb 11, 2017•1 hr 43 min•Season 1Ep. 99
For this episode, The Cinematologists were invited to cover the Arts Foundations Essay Film prize and an event they are hosting entitled Essay Film Now. Dario interviews the shortlisted filmmakers Charlie Lyne, Marianna Simnett, Samuel Stevens and Sarah Wood about their work and their thoughts on essay film as a cinematic and artistic practice. Dario also talks to the Art Foundation director Shelly Warren and with Sophie Mayer, a writer, poet and film critic about the history, political and phil...
Jan 14, 2017•2 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 100
In this end of year special Neil and Dario ruminate on their highlights and lowlights of 2016s films. To all our listeners we wish you a happy holiday season and all the best for 2017.
Dec 25, 2016•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 101
Neil and Dario are joined by Cornish filmmaker Mark Jenkin at the Newlyn FilmHouse to discuss Joe Dante's riotous comedy-horror Gremlins. The experience of watching in the auditorium is a central topic of conversation as Gremlins seemed to provoke nostalgic feelings of cinema in the 80s. Chrismas films, good, bad and indifferent, are also discussed and Neil speaks to Art of the Title's Lola Landekic in a fascinating interview about the aesthetics and meaning of titles and title sequences....
Dec 17, 2016•1 hr 35 min•Season 1Ep. 102
In this week's episode Neil and Kingsley introduce Pennebaker and Hegedus' observational documentary The War Room. The film covers Bill Clinton's campaign against George H.W. Bush focusing on the role of campaign chiefs James Carville and George Stephanopoulos and, in the wake of the recent election, it remains an extreme prescient work. Neil also interview filmmaker George Amponsah about his recent documentary The Hard Stop. This hard hitting account of the death of Mark Duggan from the perspec...
Dec 07, 2016•1 hr 58 min•Season 1Ep. 103
In this bumper episode Dario is joined by writer, filmmaker and festival director Melody Bridges to discuss Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation starring Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray. The screening took place at the fabulous Kino Theatr in St. Leonard's and features some lively views as to the reading of the film. Also, Neil interview's Violet Lucca the digital editor of Film Comment and presenter of the Film Comment podcast ....
Nov 19, 2016•1 hr 58 min•Season 1Ep. 104
Knowing Sounds is an experimental podcast exploring the possibilities and outcomes of using the podcast medium as a creative practice underpinned by conceptual thought to produce and disseminate academic research. The podcast, which more specifically can be defined as an audio essay, is split into three sections. The first is an experimental collage of music, dialogue and sound effects from a selection of films interwoven with excerpts from audience members who attended The Cinematologists live ...
Nov 10, 2016•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 105
The first screening of season 4 at the University of Brighton, Hastings campus is Richard Linklater's romantic drama Before Sunrise starring Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. Dario is joined on-stage by screenwriter and lecturer Rob Greens (@robgreens) and by Digital Film alumnus James Calver (@jammycalver) who are both big fans of the film and Linklater's style of filmmaking. Dario also interview's freelance film reviewer Ren Zelen who gives her take on some of the main releases at the London Film F...
Oct 17, 2016•1 hr 51 min•Season 1Ep. 106
We return with season 4 featuring a freshers week choice at Falmouth University with Christopher Nolan's complex, existential neo-noir Memento getting the nod. Neil is joined on stage to introduce the film once again by Kingsley Marshall. Neil and Dario also discuss how to engage to the fullest extent with all the possibilities of film culture that are out there.
Sep 27, 2016•1 hr 38 min•Season 1Ep. 107
Our second summer episode is our London debut where we took the podcast to the Curzon Bloomsbury to screen Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces. Perhaps not his most highly lauded film Broken Embraces does however, offer an opportunity to discuss Almodovar's relationship to cinema itself through the film's meta-cinematic structure and constant allusions to how we see the world cinematically. This episode also features an interview with Jose Arroyo from the University of Warwick who has written abou...
Aug 24, 2016•1 hr 30 min•Season 1Ep. 108
In this summer interlude Dario and Neil cover a large range of subjects including the state of cinema, Bret Easton Ellis' film podcast, fandom and online culture, the Cary Grant Festival in Bristol, the joys and ills of academic conferences, and various films they have seen. Show notes: Bret Easton Ellis podcast Death Foretold is not Death - Neil's article in Director's Notes Creators, fans and death threats: Talking to Joss Whedon, Neil Gaiman and more on the Age of Entitlement - LA Times artic...
Aug 04, 2016•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 109
Dario is joined by Neil at the Electric Palace in Hastings once again to screen Kelly Reichardt's poetic road movie Old Joy. A rainy afternoon in a fern-carpeted forest. Two old friends, Mark and Kurt (Will Oldham), drive up into the mountains near Portland, and get lost trying to find the hot springs. Resounding with sustained images and sounds given the time to reverberate, unarticulated tensions course through the film like a hidden creek. Finally at the turn-off to the springs, we see the sk...
Jun 26, 2016•1 hr 50 min•Season 1Ep. 110
In our penultimate episode of the season Dario is joined by film Scholar, writer and podcaster Alex Fitch to present a classic of the American new wave: The Last Detail (1973) directed by the under appreciated Hal Ashby and starring Jack Nicholson. Two hard-boiled petty officers, Buddusky and Mulhall, are detailed to take a young sailor, Meadows, to a Naval Prison to serve an eight-year sentence for a trivial offense, and they decide to show him a good time on the way. They narrowly escape a bar...
Jun 01, 2016•1 hr 35 min•Season 1Ep. 111
Dario returns to the School of Film and Television at Falmouth University to host a screening of Alex Garland's Sci-Fi drama Ex_Machina. He is joined on-stage by Dr Verena Von Eicken who selected the film and they discuss its potential to be read as a metaphorical critique of gendered power relations and the male gaze. Neil and Dario also discuss issues around the narrative structure of film, Alex Garland as a writer director and other recent examples of hard Sci-Fi such as Her (2013) and Under ...
May 14, 2016•1 hr 45 min•Season 1Ep. 49
Neil and Dario meet up in Falmouth to discuss the Nick Cave music 'documentary' 20000 Days on Earth directed by Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth. Neil also interview British film director Kieran Evans about the fundamental relationship between music and film.
May 07, 2016•1 hr 47 min•Season 1Ep. 112
Dario is joined on-stage at the Electric Palace by two final year Digital Film students studying at the University of Brighton - Kathryn Bessant and James Calver - to discuss George Miller's 1979 Ozploitation action fest Mad Max. Mel Gibson takes the title role as Max Rockatanski, the fearless cop waging war with kill-crazy bikers who target his family. It is a road-scorching, neo-punk, take-no-prisoners combat set in the lawless Australian outback. Neil and Dario expand on themes from the film ...
Apr 24, 2016•1 hr 35 min•Season 1Ep. 113
Cinematologists contributor Kingsley Marshall picks Blue Steel to discuss his research on the work of director Kathryn Bigelow and Neil interviews British film director Kim Longinotto about her work. Dario and Neil also discuss whether films can have real social or political impact. Kim Longinotto's Dreamcatcher, official site. Kim Longinotto talks to fellow Cinematologists interviewee Jeanie Finlay for The Talkhouse....
Apr 02, 2016•2 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 114
Le Quai Des Brumes is a seminal of French director Marcel Carné. Starring the enigmatic Jean Gabin it epitomises Carné’s poetic realism, often seen as influential to Hollywood film noir, evocating the intense beauty and tragedy of wartime Europe. Capturing the romantic fatalism of the protagonists the film is often defined as critique of the moral and social state of the French nation during World War II.
Mar 19, 2016•1 hr 30 min•Season 1Ep. 115
Neil is joined by colleague Dr Victoria Byard to introduce and discuss Tony Scott's erotic vampire horror The Hunger. Staring Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon and, of course, the late David Bowie the film draws a range of different reactions from the audience at Falmouth's School of Film and Television. On the Episode Neil also interviews film making duo the Blaine Brothers about their recent British Horror release Nina Forever and Dario and Neil cover a range of subjects including cinema's abi...
Mar 04, 2016•2 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 116
For this episode we are back at the Electric Palace in Hastings where Dario talks to Cornish filmmaker Mark Jenkin about his fascinating new film. In Bronco's House a young man strives to provide a home for him, his pregnant girlfriend and their unborn child. The film is an aesthetic meditation on property, power and the future which is shot on a clockwork camera, using 16mm black and white negative stock, and process by hand through and instant coffee based developer. Bronco's House is availabl...
Feb 26, 2016•1 hr 43 min•Season 1Ep. 117
In a wide ranging interview Dario talks to prolific film scholar Murray Pomerance. The discussion touches on everything from Zabriskie Point to The Force Awakes, from The Clouds of Sils Maria to The Bourne Identity, from Marnie to The Dark Knight Professor Pomerance demonstrates an in-depth knowledge, engaging presence and fascinating insights on all things cinema. Murray Pomerance is Professor in the Department of Sociology at Ryerson University, Toronto. His publications include Moment of Acti...
Feb 06, 2016•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 118
Our first screening of 2016 is Orson Welles's at times overlooked classic, The Trial. Adapted from Franz Kafka’s dark novel about alienation, bureaucracy, and the fundamental question of freewill. The Trial stars Anthony Perkins in a role every bit as compelling as his star turn in Psycho and features Welles’s trademark kinetic cinematography which perfectly captures the terror of faceless institutional authority. Read Richard Brody's New Yorker article on The Trial here . This was our first scr...
Jan 25, 2016•1 hr 38 min•Season 1Ep. 119
In a special bonus episode Dario talks to Dr. Catherine Grant, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sussex and founder of the Film Studies For Free online archive. The conversation covers a wide range of areas including Catherine's route in film academia, the current status of film and film studies particularly in the digital context, the Internet & open source publishing, teaching, research and the challenges of higher education for the arts and humanities, video essays, blo...
Dec 28, 2015•1 hr 31 min•Season 1Ep. 120
In one of the highlights of the year The Cinematologists screen Wong Kar-Wai's stylish masterpiece as part of the BFI 'love' season in association with The Poly, Falmouth. A veritable modern masterpiece In the Mood for Love stars Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung in iconic roles as lovers seeking refuge from disappointment, loneliness and the harsh realities of their surroundings. Dario and Neil also discuss their cinematic highlights of the year. The Guardian article by Peter Walker referred to in t...
Dec 09, 2015•1 hr 32 min•Season 1Ep. 121
Dario and Neil discuss Ida Lupino's 1953 film noir The Hitch-Hiker. Neil also interviews writer Jack Thorne about, amongst other things, his up-coming theatre adaptation of Harry Potter. Link to the Film Programme episode discussed in the episode Link to the Senses of Cinema Ida Lupino piece mentioned by Kingsley in the episode
Dec 02, 2015•1 hr 36 min•Season 1Ep. 122
In our first podcast from the University of Brighton's Hastings campus we screen the strangely superb sci-fi thriller Seconds (1966). John Frankenheimer's key themes revolve around paranoia and conspiracy with titles to his credit including The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Seven Days in May (1964). This film takes a faustian theme and links it to social contexts of mistrust in government, consumerism and the increasing loss of identity in the modern age. The episode also features an interview...
Nov 21, 2015•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 123
Neil is joined on stage at Falmouth by Kingsley Marshall to introduce John Hughes' comedy Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987). The influence and persona of John Candy and Steve Martin is discussed along with the career of John Hughes as one the quintessential American 80s directors. The podcast also features an interview with Jeanie Finlay on her surprising and offbeat musical documentary Orion: The Man Who Would Be King (2015).
Oct 26, 2015•1 hr 26 min•Season 1Ep. 124
