Film Forum Podcasts

FULL BATTLE RATTLE: THE US MILITARY HAS BUILT A BILLION-DOLLAR MIDDLE EAST VILLAGE IN THE MOJAVE DESERT: A SIMULATED IRAQ, complete with hundreds of Iraqis employed to play civilians and insurgents, terrorist suspects, grieving mothers and innocent shopkeepers. The filmmakers take a smart fly-on-the-wall approach to much of the action, as in-training Army recruits enter “Medina Wasl,” trying to quell uprisings and cajole locales. FULL BATTLE RATTLE observes Army officers explaining local customs to a confused force, under orders to bring “peace and stability” to a place they know nothing about — and one that appears to be disintegrating before their eyes. The movie could be read as a surreal, hilarious goof on the military if the play-acting failures of the troops didn’t look so realistic and if thousands of real lives weren’t on the line halfway around the world. This podcast is a Q & A with co-directors Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss, recorded July 9, 2008 during their in person appearance at Film Forum opening day

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: THE SPIDER, THE MISTRESS AND THE TANGERINE: Introduction by MoMA curator DEBORAH WYE (Recorded July 2, 2008)

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: THE SPIDER, THE MISTRESS AND THE TANGERINE: This podcast is the introduction and Q & A with co-director AMEI WALLACH (Recorded June 30, 2008)

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: THE SPIDER, THE MISTRESS AND THE TANGERINE: This podcast is Introduction by co-director AMEI WALLACH, recorded June 27, 2008

YOJIMBO: (1961, AKIRA KUROSAWA) Met in a seemingly deserted village by a stray mutt sauntering past with a severed hand in its jaws, unemployed Toshiro Mifune realizes a skilled yojimbo (bodyguard) could sure rake in the ryo in this town. And after checking out the saké merchant’s thugs squaring off against the silk merchant’s goon squad, twice as much, if he hires out to both sides — but then he nearly meets his match in Nakadai’s pistol-waving killer (their confrontations are “like a face-off between John Wayne and Elvis Presley” – Stuart Gailbraith). This podcast is a clip from an onstage interview with TATSUYA NAKADAI at Film Forum, 6/24/08; moderator: Michael Jeck; interpreter: Catherine Cadou

HARAKIRI: (1962, MASAKI KOBAYASHI) At an Edo clan mansion, ronin Nakadai, so penniless that ritual suicide is the only honorable way out, asks for a haven to commit seppuku, and three named samurai as his seconds. But as retainer Rentaro Mikuni relates the horrific outcome of a similar recent request, each of the seconds call in “sick” — and Nakadai begins to tell his story, leading to a climactic battle that’s “as exciting as any action-movie addict could wish” (Terrence Rafferty, New York Times). Winner, Cannes Jury Prize. This podcast is the Q & A with star TATSUYA NAKADAI and his interpreter Ms. Cadou, when they appeared live at a screening of the film at Film Forum on June 20, 2008.

MASCULINE FEMININE: (1966) “This film could be called ‘the children of Marx and Coca-Cola.’” Literary lion-wannabe Jean-Pierre Léaud chases budding yé yé star Chantal Goya, then gets a job as an unlikely opinion pollster. A portrait of youth and sex, with the story repeatedly interrupted: a woman blows away her husband; a scene in the Métro paraphrased from LeRoi Jones’ Dutchman; Brigitte Bardot rehearsing in a bistro; a Swedish artfilm-cum-sexfilm-within-a-film, etc., topped by Léaud’s probing off-camera questioning of “Miss Nineteen.” This podcast is the live introduction by author RICHARD BRODY, when he appeared live at a screening of the film at Film Forum on May 25, 2008.

LA CHINOISE: (1967) Philosophy student Anne Wiazemsky (Au Hasard Balthazar, later Mme. Godard), actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, and friends, crashing at an apartment lent to them for the summer, form a Maoist cell; and then... Godard’s tour de force of idealism, naïveté, and flat affect includes red accents in nearly every shot; self-referential, Brechtian alienation; slogans, quotes, aphorisms on walls, posters, book jackets, and screen-filling title cards; and bizarre digressions. This podcast is Introduction by author RICHARD BRODY, when he appeared live at a screening of the film at Film Forum on May 14, 2008.

BATTLE FOR HADITHA (2007) Veteran British documentarian Nick Broomfield strides into narrative filmaking with this gripping dramatization of the events leading to the November 2005 massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians at the hands of U.S. Marines. Using ex-Marines as actors and basing the chain of events on eyewitness testimonies from both Iraqis and Marines, Broomfield tackles his controversial subject in the verité tradition of BATTLE OF ALGIERS, plunging us headfirst into the action as he cuts among the stories of the American soldiers, a group of insurgents, and the Haditha villagers. Many of the actors had seen combat in Iraq, including Elliot Ruiz, a former U.S. Marine Corporal who was badly injured during an insurgent attack in Tikrit, and Eric Mehalacoupoulos, who did two tours of duty. BATTLE FOR HADITHA considers the humanity of the full spectrum of war’s victims: civilians caught in a maelstrom not of their making and young soldiers, themselves traumatized by the chaotic violence synonymous with this seemingly endless conflict. This podcast is Q & A with filmmaker Nick Broomfield and actor Elliot Ruiz, when they appeared live at a screening of the film at Film Forum on May 7, 2008.

BREATHLESS(1959) Lip-stroking pug Jean-Paul Belmondo on the run, shooting cops and stealing cars — and cash from the handbag of Herald Tribune-hawking girlfriend Jean Seberg; with the couple engaging in boudoir philosophy, staring contests, sous blanket tussles and plenty of le smoking. The start of JLG’s decade of supreme hipness and seemingly compulsive, often outrageous innovation. This podcast is the Introduction by agnès b, when she appeared live at a screening of the film at Film Forum on May 2, 2008.

LONG GOODBYE: (1973, Robert Altman) Raymond Chandler Altman style, as Elliott Gould’s Philip Marlowe—in 70s L.A., but still driving a ’48 Lincoln—encounters Sterling Hayden’s boozy novelist, mysterious Nina Van Pallandt and director Mark Rydell’s Coke-bottle-wielding hood, while searching for pal (ex-Yankee pitching ace and Ball Four author) Jim Bouton. This podcast is the introduction byJIM BOUTON, recorded April 30, 2008, when he appeared live at a screening of the film at Film Forum.

COMING HOME: (1978, Hal Ashby) Square army wife Jane Fonda, volunteering at a local veterans’ hospital while hubby Bruce Dern goes on active duty, meeting bitter paraplegic Jon Voight—and her first orgasm (in the most talked about scene)—in one of Hollywood’s first treatments of returning Vietnam vets. Oscar-winner for Best Actor (Voight), Actress (Fonda) and Original Screenplay (Waldo Salt, Robert C. Jones, Nancy Dowd). This podcast is the introduction by producer JEROME HELLMAN, recorded April 22, 2008, when he appeared live at a screening of the film at Film Forum.

STALAGS: It was one of Israel’s dirty little secrets. In the early 1960s, as Israelis were being exposed for the first time to the shocking testimonies of Holocaust survivors at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a series of pornographic pocket books called Stalags, based on Nazi themes, became best sellers throughout the land... The books told perverse tales of captured American or British pilots being abused by sadistic female SS officers outfitted with whips and boots. The plot usually ended with the male protagonists taking revenge, by raping and killing their tormentors... The Stalags, a peculiar Hebrew concoction of Nazism, sex and violence, are re-emerging in the public eye. – Isabel Kershner, The New York Times (Sept. 6, 07). Ari Libsker, a grandson of Holocaust survivors, explores this phenomenon by interviewing the men who wrote the Stalags, as well as Israeli survivors and cultural critics who consider how fantasy may seep into public consciousness and become indiscernible from the historical record. This podcast is of the live Q & A with STALAGS director ARI LIBSKER, recorded April 9, 2008 when he appeared live at a screening of the film at Film Forum.

BLIND MOUNTAIN: Modern-day slavery in China: an attractive, urbane young woman travels to a remote village in mountainous Shaanxi province for a job she has been promised. Instead she is kidnapped, drugged, and sold into marriage. Huang Lu gives a stirring performance as the unwitting bride whose increasingly desperate and ingenious attempts to escape pit her against a corrupt community and its government enablers. Controversial Chinese filmmaker Li Yang (who exposed criminal scams in the Chinese mining industry in BLIND SHAFT) was inspired by the horrific reality of human trafficking for this riveting thriller. Real-life kidnapped brides were cast in several roles. This podcast is the live Q & A with director Li Yang translated by William Phuan, recorded March 12, 2008.

A FACE IN THE CROWD (1957, ELIA KAZAN) Guitar-plucking hobo Andy Griffith’s Lonesome Rhodes rockets from an Arkansas jail to TV stardom, thanks to Patricia Neal’s coaching, but then . . . Biting satire on advertising, the boob tube, and the marketing of politicians, from the On the Waterfront team of Kazan and Budd Schulberg, with a pre-grumpy Walter Matthau as a nice-guy writer and a baton-twirling Lee Remick, in her debut. Following the screening, film historian Foster Hirsch will interview legendary screenwriter/novelist Budd Schulberg and actress Patricia Neal on this and other high points of their long careers. This podcast is the live event with FOSTER HIRSCH discussing the film with BUDD SCHULBERG and PATRICIA NEAL, recorded March 5, 2008.