In today’s episode, we speak with our Dennis Claxton and his daughter Miranda about their personal histories of film viewing. Both are Angelinos who have taken advantage of the still existing film culture of Los Angeles (small cinemas, revivals of older films and other lovely things).

There isn’t a fixed film under review but Hithcock’s The Birds and Vertigo make prominent appearances.

Enjoy.

This episode began as a thought months ago, not long after the Oct 7, 2023 Hamas attack. At that time, we anticipated violence - there’s a long history of Israeli assaults on the Palestinian people. We did not, however, anticipate a genocidal campaign and widening regional war. It’s a wide ranging talk between Dennis and Dwayne since Charles was unable to join us this time.

Our conversation does not have the structure of our usual shows. There is a film, Farha, at the heart of things and we do discuss it but more as a point of reference than to critique or review. We’ll talk about Farha at greater length on a subsequent show.

The links shared with the show notes will point you to information resources we’ve found helpful in sorting through this unfolding disaster.

Resources

Farha

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farha_(film)

The Great Book Robbery

The Great Book Robbery is a powerful and poignant chronicle of cultural destruction. It tells the story of the 70,000 Palestinian books that were looted by the newly formed State of Israel in 1948. The film weaves together a range of storylines to create a dramatic, engaging, and deeply emotional structure.

https://bbrunner.eu/movie/the-great-book-robbery/

Leila Khaled Interview: Palestine is an International Liberation Struggle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BBvzyKL-G4

A Life in Struggle: Exclusive with Leila Khaled, Icon of Palestinian Resistance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSv0Vqk_ILg

Solidarity with Palestine: Free Resources and Further Reading

https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/solidarity-with-palestine-free-resources-and-further-reading?_pos=4&_sid=e479de814&_ss=r

The 1948 Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé

https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/jps/vol36-141/vol36-141_b.pdf

Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappe

https://www.jadaliyya.com/Author/4114

Gaza An Inquest into Its Martyrdom by Norman Finkelstein

https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520318335/gaza

The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World

by Antony Loewenstein

https://www.versobooks.com/products/2684-the-palestine-laboratory

In today´s episode, we speak with Amrita De, Postdoctoral fellow in the Center of Humanities and Information at Penn State University about All That Breathes, a 2022 documentary film directed by Shaunak Sen. Let me read a bit about Amrita from her page on the Penn State University website:

Amrita´s research focuses on global south masculinity studies and affect theory. Her works have been published in NORMA, Boyhood Studies, Global Humanities and are forthcoming in other edited collections. She is also working her way through her first novel centered around contemporary Indian Masculinities.

Here's the synopsis of All That Breathes from the film´s Wikipedia page:

All That Breathes is a 2022 documentary film directed by Shaunak Sen. It is produced by Shaunak Sen, Aman Mann and Teddy Leifer under the banner of Rise Films. The film follows siblings Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad, who rescue and treat injured birds in India.

The film had its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2022, where it won Grand Jury Prize in World Cinema Documentary Competition. It also had a screening at the Cannes Film Festival in the special screening section, where it won the Golden Eye. It was later nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film.

Two brothers Saud and Nadeem were raised in New Delhi, looking at a sky speckled with black kites, watching as relatives tossed meat up to these birds of prey. Muslim belief held that feeding the kites would expel troubles. Now, birds are falling from the polluted, opaque skies of New Delhi and the two brothers have made it their life’s work to care for the injured black kites.

[...]

This was an excellent conversation and we were very glad to have Amrita as a guest. I hope, you enjoy.

All That Breathes - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_That_Breathes

Amrita's webpage:

https://www.amritade.com/home

Variety Interview with the film makers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbLoQ8GPxeA

ASAP Connect Interview with Mohammad Saud and Salik Rehman

https://youtu.be/I5kL2YMb4Vk?si=I4Zx5RFMtsE-tNFs

In this brief annoucement, I talk about our September break, Ghost in the Shell (the 1995 release) and some of the things you can look forward to in upcoming shows including discussions of cinematic depictions of our home towns, Italian westerns of the 1960s and 70s, films from outside of the Hollywood orbit and more guests.

See you soon!

Oh and here's a link to the Wiki entry about Ghost in the Shell for the curious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell

Hello everyone, this is Dwayne Monroe, one of the hosts, alongside RC Charles Roberts and Dennis Claxton, of the Film Conversations podcast. In today’s episode, we are very happy to welcome Mary Wild to the show to talk about Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece, Vertigo. On her Twitter page (I refuse to call that platform, X) Mary describes herself as a ​​Freudian cinephile and feminine jouissance maximalist, which is both a marvelous phrase and fantastic declaration. Mary is the creator of the Projections lecture series at the Freud Museum, London, co-host of the Projections Podcast, contributor to Evolution pod and the host of her own podcast on Freud, film and related topics. I’m happy to say I was a guest on Mary’s podcast a few months ago to talk about how AI is treated as a topic in film.

A note about this episode… We originally recorded an episode with Mary on August 6. Unfortunately, there was a technical problem that caused the loss of the entire recording. Very kindly, Mary agreed to come on again to re-record. We’re very glad and grateful that she did not only because it gives us a chance to talk with Mary about Vertigo but also, because it gives us a chance to more fully explore her Freudian approach to the film.

There will be links to all the references in the show notes. This was a great conversation which we looked forward to for some time; Vertigo is a brilliant film that rewards rewatching and Mary is a brilliant person to walk us through it. I hope you enjoy.

Links

Mary Wild Podcast

https://www.patreon.com/marywild

Freud Museum London

https://www.freud.org.uk

Projection Series at the Freud Museum

https://www.freud.org.uk/tag/projections/

Projections Podcast

https://open.spotify.com/show/2O5n4yhnRGpreyTS7tDfLm

Evolution of Horror Podcast

https://www.evolutionofhorror.com

In today's episode, my co-hosts and I will be talking about the work of Douglas Sirk, one of the great film directors of the 20th century. In the course of gathering notes for this episode and this introduction, I found an intriguing bio of Sirk, posted at the 'Senses of Cinema' website (link in show notes). I'll just read the first few paragraphs to set the stage.

"Douglas Sirk was one of the 20th century cinema’s great ironists. And perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of the films he made in Europe and America is the way they are able to create a gulf between how his characters see themselves and our view of them.

Sirk’s characters grapple with the same problems that have always afflicted men and women and parents and children, to do with love, death and social circumstance. In some cases, they do so in a world of melodrama – as in films as various as Schlussakkord (1936), La Habanera (1937), There’s Always Tomorrow (1955) and Imitation of Life (1958). In others, it’s a world of colour and music – as in the trio of comedy-musicals he made during the 1950s, Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1951), Meet Me at the Fair (1952) and Take Me to Town (1952), part of a series he had planned about small town America. In others, it’s the excitement of mystery, romance or adventure – in films such as Lured (1946), Taza, Son of Cochise (1953, shot in 3-D) and Captain Lightfoot (1954).

But Sirk adds another layer to the shape of the films and to his characters’ struggles within them. All around, but beyond the reach of their vision, are forces which define the parameters of their lives. These are evident at the most basic level, in the way that the plots almost always hinge on problems for which the only solution becomes a convenient miracle, a deus ex machina."

We will talk about Sirk's work and life broadly and more specifically, we will use his 1956 melodrama masterpiece, 'Written on the Wind' as the focus of our discussion. I hope you enjoy it.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Sirk

Interview with Sirk (1978)

https://www.filmcomment.com/article/sirkumstantial-evidence/

Sense of Cinema Bio: https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2004/great-directors/sirk/

Douglas Sirk Remembers (in German)

https://youtu.be/a0YfrQMoJIw

In today’s episode we speak with Dr. Isabel Millar, Author of The Psychoanalysis of Artificial Intelligence (published in 2021 - which I highly recommend). Dr. Millar is Associate Researcher at Newcastle University Department of Philosophy and both Fellow and Faculty at the Global Centre for Advanced Studies, Institute of Psychoanalysis.

She is currently working on her next book Patipolitics for Bloomsbury Philosophy.

Today’s film is Ex Machina, written and directed by Alex Garland and released in 2014. The film is ably discussed in The Psychoanalysis of Artificial Intelligence from a Lacanian perspective, an appropriate toolkit.

I’ll use the synopsis Isabel provides in Chapter 5, titled What Can I Know? Artificial Enjoyment - from page 138 of her book:

"Ex Machina depicts the attempt of a young, male computer genius Caleb, to evaluate the potential “self-consciousness” of Ava, an embodied Artificial Intelligence, via the fabled Turing Test. Hidden away in a secret bunker in the woods, Caleb is watched over by tech Svengali Nathan, the creator of a series of female AIs who appear—physically at least—uncannily human. Over the course of several days, Caleb meets and talks with Ava and tries to discern what is really going on behind the perfectly beautiful silicone face. Very soon Caleb’s Turing Test turns into a love affair, as Ava implores him to help her escape captivity from her life of subservience at the whims of Nathan. By the end of the film Ava tricks Caleb into believing she wants him, kills Nathan and leaves Caleb for dead. She escapes the concrete bunker alone and, for the first time, steps outside into the lush green natural world."

We were very happy that Isabel granted us a bit of her time to discuss this film and the way it illustrates some of the themes of her book. Check out the show notes for links and references; we hope you enjoy.

The book: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-67981-1

The film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_Machina_(film)

Dr. MIllar’s homepage: https://www.isabelmillar.com

Dialogue between Dr. Millar and Mary Wild on Wild’s podcast (requires a patreon subscription): https://www.patreon.com/posts/56533141

In today’s episode, we speak with Dr. Robert Beshara Assistant Professor of Psychology and Humanities at Northern New Mexico College. He is also the founder of CriticalPsychology.org and a musician and composer. The music you hear in the background is istimtaa from Robert's excellent album, Horny Cricket (link in the show notes) For more information and Dr. Beshara's work, please visit www.robertbeshara.com

Today’s movie is The Killing, directed by Stanley Kubrick and released in 1956. I will read the Wikipedia synopsis for you now…

“The Killing is a 1956 American film noir directed by Stanley Kubrick and produced by James B. Harris. It was written by Kubrick and Jim Thompson and based on Lionel White's novel Clean Break. It stars Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, and Vince Edwards, and features Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., Jay C. Flippen and Timothy Carey.

Johnny Clay is a veteran criminal planning one last heist before settling down and marrying Fay. He plans to steal $2 million from the money-counting room of a racetrack during a featured race. Johnny assembles a team consisting of a corrupt cop, a betting window teller to gain access to the backroom, a sharpshooter to shoot the favorite horse during the race to distract the crowd and keep the winnings from being paid out, a wrestler to provide another distraction by provoking a fight at the track bar, and a track bartender.”

It’s a fantastic film and Robert is an insightful and fun person to talk to so I hope you enjoy.

Wiki entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_(film)

Jim Thompson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thompson_(writer)

Robert Beshara’s album, ‘Horny Cricket’ (we’ll feature music from this album during the show): https://hornycricket.bandcamp.com/album/istimt

American Film Institute Entry: https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/51890

Roger Ebert Review: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-killing-1956

Original Trailer: https://youtu.be/m9wMEDJuGnE

Sterling Hayden Interview: http://www.geraldpeary.com/interviews/ghi/

Making ‘The Killing’: An Auteur and His Writer:

https://vaguevisages.com/2023/03/24/the-killing-essay-stanley-kubrick-movie-film/