Today's episode features a raft of interviews recorded a Filmstock12 , the Luton film festival organised by Neil with his long-time collaborator Justin Doherty, which returned this year after a 10-year hiatus. Fiercely proud of his Luton roots, Neil talks to Dario about the origins of the festival, the programming ethos, why it came back this year, and what it represents as a cultural marker for Luton. While Neil and Justin were organising and presenting the festival Dario acted as roving interv...
Dec 14, 2019•1 hr 56 min•Season 10Ep. 93
In another first for the Cinematologists, we are hugely excited to present The Lobster with a live score from the classical group the Solem Quartet and in association with Picturehouses cinemas. Live cinema events featuring musical accompaniments are becoming more prevalent as part of the auditorium experience; they echo cinema's past but also a look to the future as audiences seek out material experiences that go beyond or add onto traditional screenings, and perhaps look for a break from the d...
Dec 04, 2019•57 min•Season 10Ep. 92
In our first episode from Filmstock 12 - the Luton based film festival organised by Neil in collaboration with Justin Doherty - we are delighted to welcome back on the podcast director Mark Jenkin. In this live Q&A Mark talks to Dario about his incredible year and the success of Bait, which has been met with universal critical acclaim and considerable box office success. That a black and white hand-processed experimental film about Cornish fisherman has become the stories of the year in film...
Nov 29, 2019•1 hr 35 min•Season 10Ep. 91
For episode 90 Dario and Neil go old school for the film and the format. In this classically structured episode the focus of attention is on the 1994 action classic Speed, screened for the Film at Falmouth 2019 Freshers audience at The Poly in Falmouth. The discussion ranges across contemporary and classic action movies and stars including Harrison Ford, Arnie, The Stath, Cruise, Aliens, Dredd and much more, as well as the film as in service of pure spectacle, the uniqueness of Keanu and the spe...
Nov 15, 2019•1 hr 53 min•Season 1Ep. 90
When we heard that a documentary about the art of film sound was being released we simply had to check it out. Fortuitously, the film was playing at this year's London Film Festival and we were lucky enough to be able to interview the film's director Midge Costin. Midge has an unbelievable C.V. herself as a sound editor working on many of the big action movies of the 80s and 90s including The Rock, Armageddon, Days of Thunder and Crimson Tide. As a graduate of the University of Southern Californ...
Nov 01, 2019•1 hr 31 min•Season 10Ep. 89
While the London Film Festival is fresh in the mind, The Cinematologists bring you this round-up of some of the best films in this year's event. In order to help with this task, we have enlisted two smart and articulate young film critics to give their in-depth, considered opinions. Dario talks to Savina Petkova ( MubiNotebook , Electric Ghost Magazine, Girls on Tops Tees ) and James Maitre ( Director's Notes , Albums in the Attic) about their festival highlights. Before that Dario also talks to...
Oct 16, 2019•1 hr 37 min•Season 10Ep. 88
We’re back with the second of our double bill of episodes from the Film-Philosophy Conference held at the University of Brighton in July. Hosted by our very own Dario Llinares the event boasted an internationally renowned line-up of keynotes and delegates. Both episodes are made up of interviews we managed to grab as the conference progressed and, we hope gives you a sense of the eclectic mix of themes, methodologies and films that were discussed. As with part one, Neil and Dario are joined on i...
Oct 06, 2019•1 hr 51 min•Season 1Ep. 131
Season 10 of the Cinematologists podcast kicks off with a double bill of episodes from the Film-Philosophy Conference held at the University of Brighton in July. Hosted by our very own Dario Llinares the event which boasted an internationally renowned line-up of keynotes and delegates. Both episodes are made up of interviews we managed to grab as the conference progressed and, we hope gives you a sense of the eclectic mix of themes, methodologies and films that were discussed. Neil and Dario are...
Sep 19, 2019•2 hr 5 min•Season 10Ep. 87
This repost features director Mark Jenkin whose new release Bait opened last Friday (29th August 2019) to almost universal praise. Back in February 2016 Mark joined Dario at the Electric Palace in Hastings to screen and discuss the film. The story of a young man striving to provide a home for himself, his pregnant girlfriend and their unborn child, Bronco's House is an aesthetic meditation on property, power and the future. Like Bait the film is shot on a clockwork camera, using 16mm black and w...
Sep 03, 2019•1 hr 44 min
It's our final episode of the season and in response to a request from one of our listeners Andrew Peirce ( www.thecurb.com ), we discuss the powerful outback western Sweet Country. Directed by Warwick Thornton and inspired by the true events, the film is a brutal indictment of the colonial terrorism that forged modern Australia and the specific impact on Aboriginal existence, identity and culture. The film invokes the mythos of the Western in aesthetic terms yet it is also a revisionist project...
Jun 28, 2019•47 min•Season 9Ep. 86
The latest episode sees The Cinematologists going deep on some of the central conversations in contemporary film culture, joined by the peerless So Mayer & Girish Shambu. Coinciding with So's 'A Queer Toolkit for Blowing Up The Canon' talk at HOME in Manchester, and Girish visiting the UK for the Queer & Feminist Cinephilia Workshop at the University of Birmingham, Neil talked to them both about canons, cinephilia and the responsibility of cinephiles in the current moment. Following that...
May 30, 2019•2 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 85
Scott Barley makes sublime, juddering, immersive, multi-sensory films. They drift across an experimental, nature doc, slow cinema axis - sometimes with brute force and sometimes with an aching tranquility. In a few years he has amassed a formidable filmography of short film work and in 2017 presented his debut feature, Sleep Has Her House , to the world. In late 2018, Scott travelled to the School of Film & Television at Falmouth University where he and his film held the audience rapt. That ...
May 11, 2019•1 hr 49 min•Season 9Ep. 84
Both Neil and I are avid users of the typewriter so when we got the chance to speak to Doug Nichol the director of the 2017 documentary California Typewriter, it was a great chance to wax lyrical about the virtues of this 'obsolete' technology. On the surface, the film could have been overly nostalgic or, heaven forbid, dripping with retro hipsterism, but following the owner and staff of a repair shop originally opened in 1949 in Berkeley, a more profound story of how technological change affect...
Apr 20, 2019•1 hr 6 min•Season 9Ep. 83
The year is 2027, the world has collapsed but Britain soldiers on. Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men has seemingly only increased in significance and appreciation since its release in 2006. Based loosely on a P.D. James novel Cuarón imagines a world that has lost hope because of human infertility but this only the narrative starting point for an aesthetically and thematically layered dystopian nightmare. Discussion of the film's many social, cultural and political elements sometimes takes away fr...
Apr 09, 2019•1 hr 33 min•Season 9Ep. 82
Dr Racquel Gates is assistant professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the College of Staten Island. She is the author of Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture (Duke, 2018). For the latest episode, Racquel talked to Neil about her book and a number of other topics including contemporary black screen art and criticism, Eddie Murphy, Halle Berry, Whoopi Goldberg, Black cultural scholarship and the Academy, Empire, Reality TV, Sorry To Bother You and lots more. Racquel was very toler...
Mar 29, 2019•1 hr 52 min•Season 1Ep. 81
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 performances. This episode was envisaged as a joyous journey into screen comedy and our guests have p...
Mar 07, 2019•2 hr 6 min•Season 9Ep. 80
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 well as a section of his chat with Kim Longinotto, whose film Shooting The Mafia Neil and Dario disc...
Feb 23, 2019•1 hr 37 min•Season 9Ep. 79
(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 , Megan Christopher and Steph Watts . Finally, the episode also features Neil’s in the moment reflect...
Feb 20, 2019•1 hr 30 min•Season 1Ep. 130
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 coverage. Dario made a last minute decision to go for the opening weekend. So this first episode consis...
Feb 16, 2019•57 sec•Season 9Ep. 77
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 with the audience. Prior to the event Ryan also wrote a blog over at the New Statesman about the fil...
Feb 02, 2019•1 hr 44 min•Season 1Ep. 129
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 audience for the continued support. We look forward to discussing more cinematic delights in 2019. D...
Dec 30, 2018•1 hr 50 min•Season 8Ep. 75
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 Falmouth of Groucho and Co’s classic 1933 satire Duck Soup . The episode also includes Neil in conversation...
Dec 14, 2018•1 hr 57 min•Season 8Ep. 74
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 linked to conversations we have been having on the podcast recently. The film taps into concerns aroun...
Nov 29, 2018•1 hr 44 min•Season 1Ep. 73
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 Marshall at the School of Film & Television, Falmouth University . The episode also sees Dario ...
Nov 14, 2018•1 hr 29 min•Season 8Ep. 72
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 majority of the large audience - the beauty of the shared experience feels palpable on the tape, and we hope...
Oct 26, 2018•1 hr 18 min•Season 8Ep. 71
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 piece for his now long-running website, which is always worth checking out along with the regular i...
Oct 24, 2018•52 min•Season 8Ep. 70
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, feminism and more. In the episode itself Dario gives his astute views on Campion’s work and her most widely...
Sep 29, 2018•1 hr 40 min•Season 1Ep. 128
In the second in our early season doubleheader, we present a live Q&A from the Duke of York's Picturehouse in Brighton with Dario talking to the director of American Animals Bart Layton. The discussion touches on the amalgamations of fictional and documentary aesthetics (linked also to Bart's previous Bafta award-winning film The Imposter, the development of a script that changes over time, actors playing real-life characters who also appear in the film, and the current social and political ...
Sep 15, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 127
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 the MAI journal and discusses her own research particularly her analysis of Sofia Coppola as a femi...
Sep 15, 2018•1 hr 46 min•Season 1Ep. 126
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 between McQueen and Serota, and Dario and Neil’s discussion of McQueen as a filmmaker and visual artist. Steve’s...
Jul 10, 2018•2 hr 6 min•Season 7Ep. 65
