Screen Slate Podcast Screen Slate

Filmmaker Jacqueline Castel joins us to talk about her feature debut My Animal, which unites Amandla Stenberg and Bobbi Salvör Menuez in a haunting, queer werewolf story set in a small town in Northern Ontario. A veteran music video director best known for her many collaborations with Sacred Bones artists like Zola Jesus and Pharmakon along with musician-directors such as Jim Jarmusch and John Carpenter, Castel speaks about the elements that aligned to make her first film. We get into casting, getting hooked up with screenwriter Jae Matthews of Boy Harsher, scouting the perfect eerie town,  shooting the breathtaking moon photography, and the unexpected fitness documentary that influenced the film.

My Animal trailer & screenings
Jacqueline Castel website
My Animal opens in select theaters Sept. 8 and is available to buy on digital Sept. 15
Support the showThe Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts from partners like Criterion and Posteritati, event invitations, and more.

Ira Sachs visits the pod to talk about his new film Passages, in which the marriage of a gay couple (Franz Rogowski & Ben Whishaw) is thrown into disarray when one of them begins a passionate affair with a woman (Adèle Exarchopoulos). The stylish, sexy drama is one of the hottest films of the summer, not least for its expert direction and impeccable cast. Sachs talks to Screen Slate’s Jon Dieringer about mentorship, his strategy of not rehearsing with actors, the influential films on his cinematic “cheat sheet,” censorship, and filming heated love scenes.
Support the showThe Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts from partners like Criterion and Posteritati, event invitations, and more.

Mary Bronstein visits Screen Slate HQ to talk about Yeast, her bracingly funny, often excruciating, and authentic 2008 portrait of toxic female friendship, which has had a recent string of sold-out repertory screenings in Los Angeles, New York, and London. On this episode we discuss how the cast and crew came together, channeling anger into creativity, and how the film is in many ways a response to the insular, male-centric mumblecore scene of the late 2000s and early 2010s. We also hear some exciting info about Mary’s second feature, due to shoot later this year.

Yeast is streaming for free on Le Cinema Club (www.lecinemaclub.com), co-presented by Mezzanine, June 9-15. For a full-length bonus episode with Mary that gets deeper into the late 2000s indie film scene, Kim’s Video, and our favorite late-period Clint Eastwood movies, visit patreon.com/screenslate.
Support the showThe Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts from partners like Criterion and Posteritati, event invitations, and more.

Recorded live from the Screen Slate Villa at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, this pod features Roxy Cinema New York programmer Illyse Singer and filmmaker Jason Lester in a frank discussion about “the different Cannes within Cannes.”
Jason covers the history of the Cannes market and how it’s adapted to changing distribution models. And Illyse talks about being a programmer at Cannes and New York representation at the 2023 festival. We also get into how indie filmmaking functions differently in NY and LA, the festival’s capitulation to TikTok influencer culture, festival director/Judo expert Thierry Frémaux’s run-in with the police, and veteran party crashing tips from Jason’s dad, Commando director Mark L. Lester. Plus discussion of Todd Haynes’s superlative, tabloid-y May December, Jonathan Glazer’s acclaimed The Zone of Interest, and the Friedkin/Ferrara knock-off Black Flies.
Support the showThe Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts from partners like Criterion and Posteritati, event invitations, and more.

New York Magazine/Vulture film critic Bilge Ebiri joins Screen Slate editor Jon Dieringer for a discussion of Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon. In this spoiler free-ish discussion, we cover how the film fits into the Goodfellas crime mold and smartly diverges from the book to center the Osage characters. We also talk about where DiCaprio and De Niro's performances fit within their body of work for Scorsese, and where the film sits in his overarching project of chronicling America through its corrupt institutions.

We also talk about the general themes of tyranny and absolute power running through the 2023 Cannes Film Festival (with shoutouts to the unintentional hilarity of Firebrand) and repertory film culture in Paris, including the joy of watching shitty torrent rips at the Cinematheque Franciase.
Support the showThe Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts from partners like Criterion and Posteritati, event invitations, and more.

In our first Cannes audio dispatch, Screen Slate editor Jon Dieringer speaks to Joanna Arnow about her film The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed, a breakout hit of Quinzine 2023. We cover her shift from documentary self-portraiture to autofiction, casting, and finding the right moment to enter and exit scenes in editing. Plus: the inside scoop on Arnow’s Harry Potter musical and frequent Screen Slate pod co-host John Klacsmann’s place in the Arnow cinematic universe.
Support the showThe Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts from partners like Criterion and Posteritati, event invitations, and more.