Film Graze Phil Graves

Join us as we take a look at this decade's version of the BFI Sight & Sound official canon, which saw 1600 critics submitting their top ten films. This year's pair of lists - hundreds of directors are polled separately - sees some surprise reshuffles, old favourites make their debuts, some losers left gone with the wind and some truly bizarre submissions from the world's most beloved filmmakers. Stay tuned till the end to hear our own unsolicited submissions.

Featuring a cover of 'Out of Site' by Built to Spill.

Emmett's top ten:

CELINE & JULIE GO BOATING
JOHNNY GUITAR
WAGON MASTER
SHANGHAI EXPRESS
PLAYTIME
Z
WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES
AU HASARD BALTHASAR
STRAY DOGS
SINGIN' IN THE RAIN

Sam's top ten:

SAMBIZANGA
TROPICAL MALADY
EUROPA (1933)
ASH IS PUREST WHITE
YOU, THE LIVING
THE CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH
BARBARA
AMERICAN TORSO
DIAMONDS OF THE NIGHT
LA COMMUNE, PARIS 1871

Episode Art by Sam

The Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time Critics' Poll 2022: https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/greatest-films-all-time

The Directors' Poll:
https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/directors-100-greatest-films-all-time

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Produced by Emmett Cruddas

This episode takes the form of a trip around all the corners of London (besides the West), revisiting the highlights of 2022’s calendar of rep screenings, film clubs, retrospectives, festivals and rescorings in an attempt to prove we haven’t not been participating in film culture while the podcast feed’s been a little quiet. Inside are looks at a bunch of old favourites, new discoveries and some wild programming.

Featuring a cover of 'Big Railroad Blues’ by Cannon’s Jug Stompers (arr. The Grateful Dead)

Institutions visited:

The BFI Southbank
The Garden Cinema
Sands Films
Kennington Bioscope
The 5 to 9 Film Club
The Barbican
The Goethe Institute
Godardmageddon
The Prince Charles Cinema
Picturehouse Cinemas

Screenings Discussed:

Shoot the Piano Player
The Last Metro
Jules et Jim
Wings of Desire
Alice in the Cities
Mothra
The Baby of Macon
The Draughtsmans Contract
Satantango
Werckmeister Harmonies
A Brighter Summer Day
La Regle Du Jeu
All That Jazz
Les Vacances de m Hulot
The Scarlet Empress
Make Way For Tomorrow
Every Revolution is a Roll Of The Dice
Sicilia!
Six Bagatelles
The Death of Empendocles
Cezanne
Les Carabiniers
Something Different
Okraina
Divine
Street Scene
Ball of Fire
Les Affaires Publiques
Foolish Wives
The Wedding March
Dragnet Girl
The Gold Diggers
Destiny
Vampyr
Casque D’Or
The Mother and the Whore
The Grateful Dead: Tivolis Koncertsal 04/17/72

Episode Art by Sam

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Produced by Emmett Cruddas

For the first in an end-of-year extravaganza of episodes, we're back to discuss the work of legendary Chilean documentary filmmaker Patricio Guzman. 


Active since the early '70s, Guzman started out as a chronicler of the Allende years, capturing the right-wing backlash and subsequent coup on camera before going into a decades-long exile in Europe. Since then, his films have dealt almost exclusively with the painful memory of the junta and its victims, the violent injustices of the Pinochet years and the condition of his homeland, turning away from the conventional third-cinema documentary form of his early work towards something increasingly poetic, metaphorical and personal.


With Guzman's latest film, MY IMAGINARY COUNTRY, having its UK premiere at LFF 2022, and THE CORDILLERA OF DREAMS (the final part of a trilogy alongside NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT and THE PEARL BUTTON) also going on general release this year, we (belatedly) take the opportunity to appraise his seminal filmography.


Featuring covers of Victor Jara's El Cigarrito (Sam) and Manifesto (Emmett)


Episode art by Sam. 


FILMOGRAPHY


The Battle of Chile (1975-79)

Chile: Obstinate Memory (1997)

Galaxy of Problems (2010)

Nostalgia For The Light (2010)

The Pearl Button (2015)

The Cordillera of Dreams (2019)

My Imaginary Country (2022)


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Patricio Guzman, 'Politics and Documentary in People's Chile' (1977) in Cinema and social change in Latin America: conversations with filmmakers, ed. Julianne Burton (Austin, 1986).


Inez Hedges, 'Obstinate Memory: Chris Marker's and Patricio Guzman's Pictures for a Revolution' in World Cinema and Cultural Memory (2015)


Paula Lagos Labbé, 'Political and Affective Shifts in Contemporary Chilean Documentary' in Chilean Cinema in the Twenty-First Century, eds. Carl Fischer and Vania Barraza (Detroit, 2020)


Belinda Small, 'Rethinking the Human, Rethinking the Essay Film: The Ecocritical Work of The Pearl Button' in Beyond the essay film: subjectivity, textuality, and technology, ed. Julia Vassilieva and Deane Williams (Amsterdam, 2020)


Valeria Valenzuela, 'Giro subjetivo en el documental latinoamericano: De la cámara-puño al sujeto-cámara' (2011), https://www.lafuga.cl/giro-subjetivo-en-el-documental-latinoamericano/439

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Produced by Sam Storey and Emmett Cruddas

We’re not the only ones grazing for this episode as we take a look at an intriguing new trend in cinema: the proliferance of feature-length ‘observational’ documentaries about livestock.

Victor Kossakovsky’s GUNDA (2021) and Andrea Arnold’s COW (2021) wring tension, drama and political impetus out of paying £15 to watch a farm animal’s daily life projected 60-feet tall with strikingly different aesthetic approaches, prompting us to revisit a true classic of our time in Michelangelo Frammartino’s Hircine masterpiece LE QUATTRO VOLTE (2010), as well as other cinematic precedents by Georges Franju, Robert Bresson and Béla Tarr. Frammartino’s new film IL BUCO, his first in twelve years and a truly awe-inspiring development of his style, previewed at the London Film Festival last year and will be released by New Wave Films on June 10th.

The soundtrack features a cover of ‘Reincarnation’ by Roger Miller.

Select filmography:
Cow (2021)
Gunda (2020)
Le Quattro Volte (2010)
The Metamorphosis of Birds (2020)
The Turin Horse (2011)
River (2021)
Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
Le Sang des bêtes (1949)

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Produced by Sam Storey

Apichatpong ‘Joe’ Weerasethekul’s new film MEMORIA is the latest piece of an absolutely essential filmography, one that walks in multiple realities, exploring national and personal memory with distinct humour, poetry and a truly transcendental style. It’s also his first feature shot outside his native north-eastern Thailand, and features an all-time great performance from god of cinema/Film Graze bete noire Tilda Swinton.

We look at Joe’s entire oeuvre going back to MYSTERIOUS OBJECT AT NOON, in a conversation encompassing his gallery work, approach to genre, sublime music taste and affinity with hospitals. We also try to situate his work within the larger contexts of both Thai and international cinema (including filmmakers like Bruce Bailie and Anocha Suwichakornpong) and touch upon state censorship and the ways in which Thai filmmakers in the past and present grapple with their national history and contemporary political landscape(s). With discussions of films of endless depth like TROPICAL MALADY and UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES, tune in to find out why Emmett has wanted to do this episode since before the podcast began and exactly how far under their spell Sam fell.

The soundtrack includes Phil Graves’ covers of ‘Love Is A Song’ by DJ Soulscape, ‘Reincarnation’ by Roger Miller, ‘I Would Hurt A Fly’ by Built To Spill and selections from the score to Mekong Hotel.

Films Discussed:

Mysterious Object At Noon (2000)
Blissfully Yours (2002)
The Adventure of Iron Pussy (2003)
Tropical Malady (2003)
Syndromes and a Century (2006)
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)
Mekong Hotel (2013)
Cemetery of Splendour (2015)
Memoria (2021)

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Co-produced by Emmett Cruddas and Sam Storey

With 'Licorice Pizza' out in cinemas and being met with a resolutely split-down-the-middle audience reception, we look at the career of one of the most significant American filmmakers of our lifetimes - Paul Thomas Anderson - featuring several absolute classics like The Master, Magnolia and Inherent Vice. This episode features the first and only use of the word 'talented' on the Film Graze Podcast as we reckon with the San Fernando Valley's favourite son's disconcertingly accomplished juvenalia, the influence of Robert Altman on his entire body of work and his collaborations with some of the most acclaimed musicians of our time like Fiona Apple, Joanna Newsom and Radiohead.

Films discussed:

The Dirk Diggler Story (1988)
Cigarettes and Coffee (1993)
Hard Eight (1996)
Boogie Nights (1997)
Magnolia (1999)
Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
There Will Be Blood (2007)
The Master (2012)
Inherent Vice (2014)
Junun (2015)
Phantom Thread (2017)
Licorice Pizza (2021)

Big thank you to Martin O'Dea of https://hungrysandwich.club/ for our new logo and graphics!!

The soundtrack includes Phil Graves' covers of 'Etude Op. 10, No. 3
('No Other Love')' by Frederic Chopin, 'Let Me Roll It' by Paul McCartney & Wings, 'He Needs Me' by Harry Nilsson, 'Journey Through The Past' and 'Harvest' by Neil Young and '(I'd Like To Get You On A) Slow Boat To China' by Frank Loesser.

Subscribe to Film Graze on your podcast app of choice and give us a positive rating/review if you enjoy the show.

Film Graze 041 on the films of Apichatpong Weerasethekul coming soon.

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instagram.com/film.graze/

co-produced by Emmett Cruddas and Sam Storey