Film Forum Podcasts

BURMA VJ: Burma, September 2007: after weeks of protests by students and activists against the country’s cruel dictatorship, thousands of Buddhist monks take to the streets. While 100,000 people protest a repressive regime that has held the country hostage for over 40 years, foreign news crews are banned and the Internet is shut down. Burma is closed to the outside world. The Democratic Voice of Burma, a collective of 30 underground video journalists (VJs) record these dramatic events on handycams and smuggle the footage out of the country, broadcasting it worldwide via satellite. Risking torture and life imprisonment, the VJs vividly document the brutal clashes with the military and undercover police — and then they themselves become the targets of the authorities. This podcast is a recording of the Q & A with the Venerable U Gawsita, Venerable U Agga Nyana & Venerable U Pyinyar Zawta, recorded May 22, 2009, at Film Forum.

20,000 YEARS IN SING SING: Taken from Warden Lawes’ memoir, Curtiz’s semi-doc treatment coupled prison reform pleas with the melodrama goods: Spencer Tracy (replacing Cagney, in the throes of a salary fight) takes the rap for moll Bette Davis’ self-defense killing. This podcast is a recording of the Q & A with DAWSON BROWN, acting Superintendent of Sing Sing Correctional Facility, recorded May 13, 2009, at Film Forum.

TREELESS MOUNTAIN: FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE ACCLAIMED FEATURE, IN BETWEEN DAYS, comes this gentle and restrained semi-autobiographical account of two little girls. At age 6, Jin is the elder, and when mom leaves the girls to their diffident aunt in order to seek out her missing husband, Jin is forced to discover the emotional resources needed to survive. The story is told from a child’s perspective, its twists and turns made profoundly believable by the extraordinarily subtle per formances of the two young leads. A portrait of childhood as a time of delicate growth, unforeseen sadness and charming surprises. This podcast is a recording of the Q & A with writer/director SO YONG KIM, recorded April 22, 2009, at Film Forum.

VALENTINO: THE LAST EMPEROR: MATT TYRNAUER, LONGTIME VANITY FAIR EDITOR AND WRITER, TAKES ON HAUTE COUTURE ICON VALENTINO, a man whose fabulous gowns have graced the bodies of the world’s most glamorous women for nearly five decades. The film was shot over two years — in Paris, Rome, London, NY, Gstaad, and aboard Valentino’s yacht — during a period when rumors of the designer’s retirement were swirling about him and partner Giancarlo Giammetti. The filmmaker had extraordinary access to these men, partners in both business and life, whose arguments over the need for more ruffles or the appropriateness of sand dunes for a runway show are inevitably reduced to the intimacy and warmth that are the bedrock of their relationship. This podcast is a recording of the Q & A with filmmaker MATT TYRNAUER & VOGUE Editor at Large ANDRE LEON TALLEY, recorded, March 19, 2009, at Film Forum.

COSTA-GAVRAS’ Z: Police general Pierre Dux (later head of the Comédie Française) lectures sunglassed-indoors cohorts on ideological mildew — “isms” — now “infecting” society; then, as Mikis Theodorakis’ music throbs, Dux’s helmeted and truncheoned police studiously look elsewhere as a raging, chanting mob fills the city square awaiting the emergence of charismatic deputy Yves Montand from his SRO ban-the-bomb address — but what are those two punks doing careening in on that three-wheeled kamikaze? “Just an accident” exhales legal honcho François Périer as he leaves it to tinted-eyeglassed magistrate Jean-Louis Trintignant (Best Actor, Cannes) to wrap things up nicely. But the crowds are painting big white Z’s in the street... Too much of a hot potato for French producers, Greek expat Costa-Gavras’s adaptation of Vassili Vassilikos’s novel of the real-life Lambrakis case was skillfully filmed on a shoestring in Algeria (doubling for Greece), and utilizing a pulsating score pieced together from previous Theodorakis works (with the composer’s blessing: he was under house arrest in Greece) and an incredible cast including Renato Salvatori (Rocco and his Brothers) and Marcel Bozzuffi (soon to be the shot-in-the-back poster boy for The French Connection) as the two punks; and the iconic Irene Papas, the only actual Greek in the cast, who’s told “He’s gone” by New Wave camera legend Raoul Coutard, cameoing in a break from his breakneck documentary-style shooting. All of which, combined with Costa-Gavras’ bullet-quick editing, gave Z an immediacy, authenticity, and excitement, that, along with perfect timing — premiering so soon after the right-wing colonels’ takeover in Greece — made it a worldwide smash and the winner of both the Cannes Jury Prize (awarded unanimously) and the Best Foreign Film Oscar (it was the official entry from Algeria). This podcast is a recording of the Q & A with director COSTA-GAVRAS, recorded March 8, 2009, at Film Forum.

KATYN: FROM POLAND’S GREATEST LIVING DIRECTOR, ANDRZEJ WAJDA, comes the story he has waited a lifetime to tell: Katyn is the name of the forest where the Soviets secretly murdered 15,000 Polish officers, intellectuals and professionals over a 3-day period in 1940 (Wajda’s father among them). Stalin’s purpose was to destroy those elements of the population who would be most resistant to Soviet control following WWII. For decades the truth was obfuscated, with the Nazis often blamed for the atrocity. Half a century later, in 1990, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev admitted his nation’s responsibility. In this elegant production, Wajda recreates war-torn Poland and the stories of both the perpetrators and their victims. An Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film in 2008. This podcast is a recording of the Introduction by Polish Cultural Institute Director MONIKA FABIJANSKA, recorded February 18, 2009, at Film Forum.

OUR CITY DREAMS: CHIARA CLEMENTE’S AFFECTING LOVE LETTER TO THE CITY STRINGS TOGETHER THE SELF-TOLD NARRATIVES OF FIVE WOMEN ARTISTS (ages 30 – 80), each of whom has a passion for making art inseparable from her devotion to New York. Swoon, the youngest, exhibits cut-outs directly on city walls and subways, and exudes idealism and energy while carrying a two by four the way some women would a briefcase. Cairoborn Ghada Amer mixes media — embroidering with painting — to confront sexual taboos that cross cultural boundaries. After experiencing The New York Dolls in San Francisco, Kiki Smith realized she needed the energy of the big city to create her wildly influential paintings and sculptures; Marina Abramovic, originally of Belgrade, is a performance art pioneer who often uses her own body as a canvas. And Nancy Spero returned from Paris with artist-husband Leon Golub in 1964, to meld art and activism during the Vietnam War and become, in her own words, "a woman warrior.” Ronnie Scheib in Variety writes that the film is “exquisitely crafted” and “ranks as a work of art itself." This podcast is a recording of the Q & A with director CHIARA CLEMENTE & artist MARINA ABRAMOVIC, recorded February 12, 2009, at Film Forum.

OUR CITY DREAMS: CHIARA CLEMENTE’S AFFECTING LOVE LETTER TO THE CITY STRINGS TOGETHER THE SELF-TOLD NARRATIVES OF FIVE WOMEN ARTISTS (ages 30 – 80), each of whom has a passion for making art inseparable from her devotion to New York. Swoon, the youngest, exhibits cut-outs directly on city walls and subways, and exudes idealism and energy while carrying a two by four the way some women would a briefcase. Cairoborn Ghada Amer mixes media — embroidering with painting — to confront sexual taboos that cross cultural boundaries. After experiencing The New York Dolls in San Francisco, Kiki Smith realized she needed the energy of the big city to create her wildly influential paintings and sculptures; Marina Abramovic, originally of Belgrade, is a performance art pioneer who often uses her own body as a canvas. And Nancy Spero returned from Paris with artist-husband Leon Golub in 1964, to meld art and activism during the Vietnam War and become, in her own words, "a woman warrior.” Ronnie Scheib in Variety writes that the film is “exquisitely crafted” and “ranks as a work of art itself." This podcast is a recording of the Q & A with director CHIARA CLEMENTE and artists SWOON & GHADA AMER, recorded February 4, 2009, at Film Forum.

PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK: That’s the little triangle at the intersection of Broadway and 72nd St. (aka Sherman Square, adjacent to Verdi Square) and Shootup Central for West Side drug addicts, and where decent Midwesterner Kitty Winn is headed from the moment she spies artist boyfriend Raul Julia making a connection with small-time crook and pusher Al Pacino. Scintillating star debut for Pacino (Paramount execs green-lighted him for The Godfather only after Coppola screened Panic for them) as the Boyfriend from Hell — and an equally smashing debut for Winn, granddaughter of General George C. Marshall: she won the Best Actress award at Cannes for her performance. Stark, music-less, near-documentary treatment of drug life — and an offbeat love story — with scenes shot (by Polish DP Adam Holender) on Gotham streets (B’way & 69th doubled for the real Needle Park), and with Pacino often improvising from the solid basis of Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne’s screenplay (based on the book by James Mills). Only the second film from photographer Schatzberg (already renowned for his fashion work and Bob Dylan images, including the iconic Blonde on Blonde cover), Panic established him as a distinctive stylist. With Richard Bright as Pacino’s thief brother, the unsung Alan Vint as the narc (setting new records for low-key delivery) and Paul Sorvino cameoing as a john. This podcast is a recording of the Q & A with JERRY SCHATZBERG, KITTY WINN & JOAN DIDION, recorded January 30, 2009, at Film Forum.

MADE IN USA: “Walt Disney with blood.” Trench-coated Anna Karina arrives in Atlantic City (apparently a provincial French town) to track down boyfriend Richard P… (phone, plane or car noise constantly blots out the last name), only to find... And then the bodies start dropping, amid encounters with the mysterious, height-challenged M. Typhus, his nephew David Goodis (a character, not the Shoot the Piano Player author), Goodis’s singing Japanese girlfriend Doris Mizoguchi, characters named “Richard Nixon” and “Robert McNamara,” while being shadowed by Jean-Pierre Léaud and László Szabó’s “Paul Widmark,” with a break for a Hegelian bull session in a bar, punctuated with the real Marianne Faithfull warbling “As Tears Go By.” Made as a favor to his cash-strapped producer Georges de Beauregard, and filmed simultaneously with Two or Three Things I Know About Her, this ostensible adaptation of a story by American crime writer Donald Westlake was Godard’s farewell to his muse/ex-wife Karina, never filmed more glamorously, as she changes from one colorfully Mod ensemble to another, posed against starkly colored backgrounds and shot (by New Wave legend Raoul Coutard) in a succession of giant, haunting close-ups. But it’s simultaneously an extremely metaphorical and narratively disjunctive treatment of the notorious disappearance/murder — still unsolved — of exiled Moroccan leftist Mehdi Ben Barka and Godard’s own way of suggesting a vast Cold War conspiracy. Dedicated to “Nick [Ray] and Samuel [Fuller], who taught me about image and sound” and virtually unseen in this country due to rights issues, this is Made in U.S.A.’s very first U.S. release in 35mm. “The many shots of Anna Karina, with their wide variety of mood — each a different pose, angle, expression — serve as a catalogue of remembrances. The close-ups are the most expressive ones in color that Godard has made to date.” – Richard Brody. This podcast is a recording of a Q & A with co-star LASZLO SZABO, recorded January 9, 2008 at Film Forum.

BABY DOLL: “Possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture that has been legally exhibited,” tsked Time, while the ads bragged, “Condemned by Cardinal Spellman!” Sicilian interloper Eli Wallach, steamed when his new cotton gin goes up in smoke, decides to revenge himself on suspect Karl Malden by seducing his thumb-sucking child bride Carroll Baker—who’s “not ready for marriage.” Incandescently directed and acted black comedy, expanded from two of his own one-act plays by Tennessee Williams. Following the screening, legendary co-stars CARROLL BAKER and ELI WALLACH joined author/historian Foster Hirsch for an onstage conversation. This podcast is a recording of that event, recorded December 22, 2008, at Film Forum.

THEATER OF WAR: MERYL STREEP IS AN UNFORGETTABLE MOTHER COURAGE in Tony Kushner’s adaptation of the Brecht masterpiece, presented by The Public Theater/NY Shakespeare Festival in Central Park during summer 2006. filmmaker John Walter’s earlier documentary, HOW TO DRAW A BUNNY, explored the psychological ramifications of the life and art of Ray Johnson. His new movie could easily have been a star vehicle for Streep and Kevin Kline. Instead he digs deeply into Brecht’s motives and politics, unearthing the playwright’s famed (and famously clever) testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (the day after which he quit the United States). THEATER OF WAR is about theater and war, capitalism and Marxism, the postwar anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s, and one literary genius’s ability to make art from them all. This podcast is the Q & A with filmmaker JOHN WALTER, recorded December 27, 2008, during his appearance at Film Forum.

HARVARD BEATS YALE 29-29: HARVARD STADIUM, NOVEMBER 23, 1968: for the first time since 1909, the football teams of Harvard and Yale are undefeated as they meet for their final game. Yale is heavily favored, with Brian Dowling, its captain and quarterback, satirized in classmate Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury strip. Harvard’s lineman is Tommy Lee Jones — Al Gore’s roommate. Kevin Rafferty (ATOMIC CAFÉ) intercuts original footage with the hilarious, suspenseful recollections of the 50 men who played in what has become one of college football’s most famous games. This podcast is the Q & A with director KEVIN RAFFETY, 1968 Harvard player RAY HORNBLOWER and 1968 Yale player MICK KLEBER, recorded November 19, 2008, during their appearance opening night of the film at Film Forum.

GARLIC IS AS GOOD AS TEN MOTHERS: Hymn to the Stinking Rose — in Aromaround! — complete with guide to cultivation, savory dishes, and massive consumption. “Better than any dry martini as an aperitif.” – Time Out (London). This podcast is the introduction by director LES BLANK, recorded November 14, 2008, during his appearance at a screening of the film at Film Forum.

ALL IN THIS TEA: “I imagine things like walking through a forest. There are leaves on the ground. It just has rained. The rain has stopped. It’s damp, and you walk… and somehow that’s all in this tea.” – Werner Herzog. From plant to package, tea importer David Lee Hoffman scours China, battling mass-production-crazed bureaucracy along the way, in search of the real stuff. Co-directed by Gina Leibrecht. This podcast is the introduction by director LES BLANK, recorded November 14, 2008, during his appearance at a screening of the film at Film Forum.