Cinéclub Podcast

Cinéclub Podcast number 26 is a conversation with Charlotte Ross about Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Charlotte has been programming a season entitled 80 Years of Martin & Lewis at the Cinema Museum in London, taking a chronological approach to the film output of the sensational comedy double act with lovingly curated introductions and other extras included. Full information is in the show notes below.These screenings are also linked to a fundraising campaign for the Cinema Museum, who have an opportunity to finally buy their building and establish a forever home and with it some much-needed certainty for the future. The Cinema Museum is situated in a building that was once the Lambeth Workhouse where Charlie Chaplin lived and worked, and is just an amazing place altogether and deserves your support. As I record this, a recent post on their Crowdfunder page says they are now £100,000 away from their goal of £500,000 and a little under a month get there, so there is everything to play for. Charlotte and I discuss the links between Martin & Lewis’ stage act and their film work, the homoerotic nature of their on-screen relationship, their collaborations with Frank Tashlin, the sad end to the double act, and much more.You can also find this episode on…* Apple Podcasts* Pocket Casts* I will no longer be uploading podcasts to Spotify and have removed all previous episodes of the podcast from that platform. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, because Spotify is a transparently evil company that delights in ripping off musicians, promoting AI slop, and enabling genocide in Palestine.Show notes* Upcoming screenings in the 80 Years of Martin & Lewis season* The Cinema Museum’s Crowdfunder page* Articles by Charlotte on Martin & Lewis for Intervals* On The Caddy* On Living It Up and You’re Never Too Young* The Donkey Serenade from My Friend Irma* Weirdly I can only find this on TikTok!* The Important Cinema Club podcast episode on Norman Taurog* Buy issue 2 of the Cinéclub fanzine* 44 pages w/ articles on Conrad Rooks’ bizarre, star-studded countercultural artifact Chappaqua, some shorter pieces on punk and film, and an essay linking Bertrand Tavernier’s 1974 film The Watchmaker of St. Paul (also known as The Clockmaker of St. Paul) to Paul Vecchiali’s La Machine from 1977. DIY and sold on a not-for-profit basis at a cost that just covers the cost of printing: £2.50 plus postage. Shipping internationally.* Issue 1 is also still available, and you can buy both as a bundle. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cineclub.substack.com

Cinéclub Podcast number 25 is a conversation with Nathan Gelgud. Nathan is the cartoonist behind the comic strip Reel Politik, which he posts on his Instagram page before the publisher Drawn and Quarterly collects them into beautiful books. The first eponymous collection was released last year and the second, entitled No Concessions is, as this podcast is released, hot off the presses: it came out yesterday.I asked Nathan to explain the strip in his own words at the beginning of the conversation, but for me it is an affectionate and very funny send-up of of radical leftist politics and rabid cinephilia, loaded with plenty of well-deserved jibes at the likes of Letterboxd, the Criterion Closet and mainstream film critics.For this episode we discuss the strip first, before moving into a discussion of Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin’s 1972 film Tout va bien, an example of their radical work under the name the ‘Dziga Vertov Group’, referenced frequently in Reel Politik.You can also find this episode on…* Apple Podcasts* Pocket Casts* I will no longer be uploading podcasts to Spotify and have removed all previous episodes of the podcast from that platform. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, because Spotify is a transparently evil company that delights in ripping off musicians, promoting AI slop, and enabling genocide in Palestine.Show notes* Nathan’s website* Nathan’s Instagram page* Publisher’s info on Nathan’s books (both are also widely available in the UK)* No Concessions * Reel Politik* Other books mentioned in the podcast* A Short History of Cahiers du Cinéma by Emilie Bickerton* The Red Years of Cahiers du Cinéma by Daniel Fairfax (open access PDF)* Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard by Richard Brody* Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy by Colin MacCabe appears to be out of print, but widely available second-hand* We Want Everything: A Novel by Nanni Balestrini* Buy issue 2 of the Cinéclub fanzine* 44 pages w/ articles on Conrad Rooks’ bizarre, star-studded countercultural artifact Chappaqua, some shorter pieces on punk and film, and an essay linking Bertrand Tavernier’s 1974 film The Watchmaker of St. Paul (also known as The Clockmaker of St. Paul) to Paul Vecchiali’s La Machine from 1977. DIY and sold on a not-for-profit basis at a cost that just covers the cost of printing: £2.50 plus postage. Shipping internationally.* Issue 1 is also still available, and you can buy both as a bundle. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cineclub.substack.com

Cinéclub Podcast number 24 is a conversation with Catherine Wheatley about Claude Chabrol.Chabrol is a favourite of mine and I’ve wanted to do an episode on him ever since the podcast started. Now seemed the right time because the BFI is about to begin a season of films and talks entitled Claude Chabrol: Elements of Crime at the BFI Southbank, with 10 films streaming on BFI Player and a Blu-Ray box set to come next year. Beautifully restored versions of three Chabrol classics, Les Biches, La Femme Infidèle and Le Boucher have also been acquired for the BFI catalogue and are being made available to cinemas nationwide, so even if you can’t get to London for screenings, you may be in with a chance of seeing those.Needless to say, this is extremely exciting for Chabrol fans, especially as many of his films have only been available in DVD quality or lower for many years.Chabrol began his career in film at Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1950s alongside fellow critics and soon-to-be filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer (with whom he wrote a book on Alfred Hitchcock) and Jacques Rivette. Of this group, soon to be dubbed the nouvelle vague or French New Wave, Chabrol was the first to make a feature. He would later deny that the New Wave constituted a coherent artistic movement, and indeed, his career took a different shape to those of his old Cahiers colleagues. Struggling to work in the mid-1960s, he took on a series of jobs as a director-for-hire, making spy comedies and other commercial genre films, emerging towards the end of the decade with a run of films now often seen as signature works: 1969’s Les Biches and the five films that constitute the ‘Hélène’ cycle.There have been quieter stretches in Chabrol’s career, and numerous ‘returns to form’. From the late 1970s onwards he begun to work fruitfully with Isabelle Huppert, and in 1995 she starred alongside Sandrine Bonnaire in La Cérémonie, a late-period masterpiece that kicked off another impressive run. Chabrol’s final film, Bellamy, was released in 2009, and he died a year later, leaving behind an astonishing, sometimes bewildering, oeuvre of more than 60 features.To discuss Chabrol’s films I was joined by Catherine Wheatley. Catherine is a Professor of Film and Visual Culture at King’s College London and the season curator for the upcoming BFI season. You can also find this episode on…* Apple Podcasts* Pocket Casts* I will no longer be uploading podcasts to Spotify and have removed all previous episodes of the podcast from that platform. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, because Spotify is a transparently evil company that delights in ripping off musicians, promoting AI slop, and enabling genocide in Palestine.Show notes* Info on the Claude Chabrol: Elements of Crime season at the BFI Southbank* Richard Dyer’s introduction to Les Biches* My piece on Chabrol’s L’Œil du malin (taken from Cinéclub fanzine issue 1)* Buy issue 2 of the Cinéclub fanzine* 44 pages w/ articles on Conrad Rooks’ bizarre, star-studded countercultural artifact Chappaqua, some shorter pieces on punk and film, and an essay linking Bertrand Tavernier’s 1974 film The Watchmaker of St. Paul (also known as The Clockmaker of St. Paul) to Paul Vecchiali’s La Machine from 1977. DIY and sold on a not-for-profit basis at a cost that just covers the cost of printing: £2.50 plus postage. Shipping internationally.* Issue 1 is also still available, and you can buy both as a bundle. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cineclub.substack.com

Cinéclub Podcast number 23 is a conversation with Brighid Lowe and Henry K. Miller about Lorenza Mazzetti.Mazzetti was an Italian-born filmmaker who met her best-known films, K and Together in London in the 1950s whilst she was an art student at the Slade School of Fine Art. If you know her name it might, as it was for me, be from Ali Smith’s 2020 novel Summer, in which she wrote about Mazzetti’s films and life story. This episode’s guests had a role in that connection, which we’ll explore later.Mazzetti’s debut film, K, is an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s story The Metamorphosis – the one where a man wakes up one day to find he’s transformed into a giant beetle, an idea that Mazzetti approached in an inventive, energetic, and non-literal manner. She was one of the signatories of the Free Cinema manifesto and her next film, Together, played in the first Free Cinema programme at the National Film Theatre in 1956. The film shares the blend of quasi-documentary observation and more lyrical narrative elements of others in that movement, but is also a very personal work of art, an indirect expression of the trauma Mazzetti’s experiences in the Second World War, when she was a teenager, left her with.She later returned to Italy, where she made a few more obscure films, and turned to writing, beginning with her wonderful novel The Sky is Falling in 1961.To discuss Lorenza Mazzetti’s life and work, I was joined by Brighid Lowe and Henry K. Miller. Brighid is an artist, and Professor of Fine Art at the Slade, and is the director of the 2023 documentary Together with Lorenza Mazzetti. She collaborated closely on that project with the film historian and critic Henry K. Miller, who conducted the on-screen interviews, and Henry and Brighid are also co-directors of the Slade Film Department research project. Henry is also writing a book on Lorenza Mazzetti.We discuss Lorenza’s traumatic experiences in the Second World War, her move to London, her approach to adapting Kafka, her involvement in the Free Cinema movement, how Brighid and Henry came to make a documentary about her, how Ali Smith became a fan, and much more.You can also find this episode on…* Apple Podcasts* Pocket Casts* I will no longer be uploading podcasts to Spotify and have removed all previous episodes of the podcast from that platform. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, because Spotify is a transparently evil company that delights in ripping off musicians, promoting AI slop, and enabling genocide in Palestine.Show notes* The BFI’s Blu-Ray, The Lorenza Mazzetti Collection* Together on BFI Player* Info on the beautiful Another Gaze edition of Mazzetti’s novel The Sky is Falling* Mazzetti’s account of her time in London, London Diaries is widely available, including in nice shops like Pages of Hackney and Printed Matter in Hastings* Buy issue 2 of the Cinéclub fanzine* 44 pages w/ articles on Conrad Rooks’ bizarre, star-studded countercultural artifact Chappaqua, some shorter pieces on punk and film, and an essay linking Bertrand Tavernier’s 1974 film The Watchmaker of St. Paul (also known as The Clockmaker of St. Paul) to Paul Vecchiali’s La Machine from 1977. DIY and sold on a not-for-profit basis at a cost that just covers the cost of printing: £2.50 plus postage. Shipping internationally.* Issue 1 is also still available, and you can buy both as a bundle. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cineclub.substack.com

Cinéclub Podcast #22 is a conversation with Neil MacDonald and Dan Magee about skate videos. This is a topic that’s been on my wishlist of episodes for a long time. When I first started Cinéclub as a blog, I wrote a two-part piece entitled Video Days and Memory Screens: Skateboarding on video on film. The idea was certainly not to present myself as some sort of scholar of skate video history: I zoned in on videos that seemed significant or were personal favourites, but omitted many more, either because the piece was already getting very long, or because of my own ignorance. More broadly I was interested in exploring the distinctive grammar of skate videos and the central role video plays in skate culture, but in that piece, I only considered American videos. When it came to shaping my own understanding of skateboarding, videos produced closer to home were far more influential. So, when I saw that Neil Macdonald was releasing a book on the history of UK skateboarding, I thought he’d be a perfect person to invite to revisit this topic and shift the focus onto UK skate culture. Happily we were also joined by Dan Magee who, as you’ll hear, contributed so much to that story, but also made some of those influential UK videos, including Waiting for the World in 2000, First Broadcast in 2001, and Cover Version in 2019.We discuss why video is so important in skate culture, the importance of music in skate videos, the footage in these videos that isn’t skateboarding, how skate videos and skate culture more broadly have been affected by platforms like YouTube and Instagram, and much more.You can also find this episode on…* Apple Podcasts* Pocket Casts* I will no longer be uploading podcasts to Spotify and have removed all previous episodes of the podcast from that platform. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, because Spotify is a transparently evil company that delights in ripping off musicians, promoting AI slop, and enabling genocide in Palestine.Show notes* Info on Neil’s book, Elsewhere: The Story of UK Skateboarding, 1987-2002* Some suggested skate shops to buy the book from* Native* Focus* Slam City Skates* UK skate video archive at Neil’s website, Scienceversuslife* Dan Magee’s videos * Waiting for the World (2000)* First Broadcast (w/ Adam Mondon, 2001)* Lost and Found (2005)* Make Friends with the Colour Blue (2010)* Cover Version (w/ Kevin Parrott, 2019)* Info on the Skate 50 exhibition at the South Bank Centre* Other videos mentioned in the podcast, in the order they are mentioned * Questionable (Plan B, 1992)* Zoo York Mixtape (1998)* Eastern Exposure (1993)* Mind Field (Alien Workshop, 2009)* Public Domain (Powell Peralta, 1988)* Footage (Gordon & Smith [G&S, 1990])* Unapromo (Unabomber, 1998)* Headcleaner (Unabomber, 2001)* Ban This (Powell Peralta, 1989)* Art Bars: Subtitles and Seagulls (Foundation, 2001)* Memory Screen (Alien Workshop, 1991)* Mosaic (Habitat, 2003)* Photosynthesis (Alien Workshop, 2000)* GX1000 * Endless Beauty (Sci-fi Fantasy, 2025)* Cherry (Supreme, 2014)* Blessed (Supreme, 2018)* The Sixth Sense (Transworld Skateboarding, 1998)* BOBCBC (Quasi, 2025)* Atlantic Drift Episode 11: Tom Knox (2021)* Untitled (2022)* My two-part article on skate videos, Video Days and Memory Screens: Skateboarding on video and film* Part 1* Part 2* Buy issue 2 of the Cinéclub fanzine* 44 pages w/ articles on Conrad Rooks’ bizarre, star-studded countercultural artifact Chappaqua, some shorter pieces on punk and film, and an essay linking Bertrand Tavernier’s 1974 film The Watchmaker of St. Paul (also known as The Clockmaker of St. Paul) to Paul Vecchiali’s La Machine from 1977. DIY and sold on a not-for-profit basis at a cost that just covers the cost of printing: £2.50 plus postage. Shipping internationally.* Issue 1 is also still available, and you can buy both as a bundle. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cineclub.substack.com

Cinéclub Podcast number 21 is a conversation with Nico Bruinsma, usually known as Nico B., of the Blu-Ray label Cult Epics. Nico’s name has come up on the show before, because he released restored versions of Marleen Gorris’ first three films, which were discussed in episode 17 with Sue Thornham. On that podcast I said that I wanted to do more on Dutch cinema, and later it occurred to me that Nico would be the ideal person to ask, since he has put out so many great Dutch films on Cult Epics. We decided to focus on Scorpio films, the production company formed by directors Wim Verstappen and Pim de la Parra in 1965, and discuss a number of titles from across their output.Verstappen and de la Parra were both students at the Nederlandse Filmacademie which opened in 1958, and were on the editorial board of the film magazine Skoop, published from 1963. Scorpio’s first feature, Verstappen’s De minder gelukkige terugkeer van Joszef Katus narr het land van Rembrant (1966), was made for a tiny budget of 10,000 guilders. The success of 1969’s Obsessions was eclipsed two years later by Blue Movie, which tapped into a newly sexually enlightened audience. Over 2 million people saw it, and it energised the moribund film industry in the Netherlands. Paul Verhoeven, whose Wat zien ik? was released the same year, said that 1971 was “the year that Dutch cinema was reborn.”The frank sexuality of Blue Movie and other Scorpio releases doesn’t tell the whole story, however. Wim Verstappen followed Blue Movie with VD in 1972, a pitch-black satire that provocatively frustrates the anticipated sex sequences with abrupt cuts to graphic slaughterhouse footage. Pim and Wim also made more personal films: Verstappen’s Dakota (1974), a story about an obsessive longer pilot, was filmed on the island of Curacao where the director grew up. Similarly, Pim de la Parra made Wan Pipel (1976), the first film to be made in his home country of Suriname after the country won independence from the Dutch. Both of these films went over budget, and both tanked at the box office. Scorpio never recovered, and declared bankruptcy in 1978.Nico and I discussed Dutch cinema before Scorpio, Blue Movie’s blend of arthouse cinema and sex, the gear change of VD, the financial failure and artistic success of Dakota and Wan Pipel, the legacy of Pim and Wim in the Netherlands, and much more.You can also find this episode on…* Apple Podcasts* Pocket Casts* I will no longer be uploading podcasts to Spotify and have removed all previous episodes of the podcast from that platform. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, because Spotify is a transparently evil company that delights in ripping off musicians, promoting AI slop, and enabling genocide in Palestine.Show notes* Cult Epics website* Articles on Pim and Wim at the Eye Film Institute website* Pim and Wim: Scorpio Films* Skoop and Skrien: A New Wind* Dutch Film Academy* Article on the troubled production of Dakota at Nostalgia Kinky* Stream Pim de la Parra’s Rubia’s Jungle (1970) for free at Eye Film Player* Buy issue 2 of the Cinéclub fanzine* 44 pages w/ articles on Conrad Rooks’ bizarre, star-studded countercultural artifact Chappaqua, some shorter pieces on punk and film, and an essay linking Bertrand Tavernier’s 1974 film The Watchmaker of St. Paul (also known as The Clockmaker of St. Paul) to Paul Vecchiali’s La Machine from 1977. DIY and sold on a not-for-profit basis at a cost that just covers the cost of printing: £2.50 plus postage. Shipping internationally.* Issue 1 is also still available, and you can buy both as a bundle. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cineclub.substack.com

The BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas series ran from 1971 to 1978, and there are just eight episodes. But there is also a whole constellation of other films that have a similar strange, unsettling atmosphere. This episode explores three such examples.My guest is Ray Newman, and our conversation was prompted by a blog post he wrote, listing a series of these A Ghost Story for Christmas-esque films. From this post we chose three films: 1979’s Casting the Runes, directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, the main man behind the BBC series; Baby, an episode of Nigel Kneale’s 1976 series Beasts; and The Woman in Black from 1989, also written by Kneale and directed by Herbert Wise.Ray really knows his ghost stories, and recently published a second collection of his own, Intervals of Darkness, which we discuss at the end of the episode. Links to book, along with Ray’s original blog post and more can be found in the shownotes below.You can also find this podcast on…* Apple Podcasts* Pocket Casts* I will no longer be uploading podcasts to Spotify and have removed all previous episodes of the podcast from that platform. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, because Spotify is a transparently evil company that delights in ripping off musicians, promoting AI slop, and enabling genocide in Palestine.Shownotes* Buy issue 2 of the Cinéclub fanzine* 44 pages w/ articles on Conrad Rooks’ bizarre, star-studded countercultural artifact Chappaqua, some shorter pieces on punk and film, and an essay linking Bertrand Tavernier’s 1974 film The Watchmaker of St. Paul (also known as The Clockmaker of St. Paul) to Paul Vecchiali’s La Machine from 1977. DIY and sold on a not-for-profit basis at a cost that just covers the cost of printing: £2.50 plus postage. Shipping internationally.* Ray’s website* The infinite supply of BBC ghost stories for Christmas (also here as a list on Letterboxd)* Info on Intervals of Darkness* Ray’s previous appearance on the Cinéclub podcast in 2024, discussing Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter and the relationship between film and his writing.* Derek Johnson’s book chapter The British Ghost Story at Christmas from his book Haunted Seasons: Television Ghost Stories for Christmas and Horror for Halloween - the source I used for background reading on the association between ghost stories and Christmas This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cineclub.substack.com

Cinéclub Podcast number 19 is a special episode because it’s a tie-in with the release of the second edition of the Cinéclub fanzine. This issue features an article on Conrad Rooks’ bizarre, star-studded countercultural artifact Chappaqua, with a focus on the long saga of its production, some shorter pieces on punk and film, and an essay linking Bertrand Tavernier’s 1974 film The Watchmaker of St. Paul (also known as The Clockmaker of St. Paul) to Paul Vecchiali’s La Machine from 1977. It’s £2.50 plus postage, shipping internationally, and you can buy a copy here.It’s the latter film we’ll be focusing on in today’s episode, and to do so I was joined by Nick Newman. Nick is Managing Editor at The Film Stage, a freelance programmer, and most recently he launched a podcast, Emulsion, which I heartily recommend. As Nick mentioned in our conversation, I knew he was a fan of La Machine because he Tweeted about it around the time of Paul Vecchiali’s death in 2023. His Tweet stuck with me because this film is so often overlooked, even amongst the filmography of a still neglected director like Vecchiali. In the past few years, a few of Vecchiali’s films have been restored and re-released: in this episode we mention L’Etrangleur from 1970 and Rosa la rose, fille publique from 1986, recently reissued in the UK on Blu-ray by Radiance Films, but La Machine remains difficult to see. If you would like to see it, see the show notes below.Nick and I start by discussing Vecchiali’s background and his production company, Diagonale. We then get into the film, exploring its approach to genre, its representation of mass media, what it has to say about the death penalty, the reasons why the film still resonates today, and much more. I started by asking Nick about the broader post-New Wave cinema landscape in France and how this generation of filmmakers differed from the nouvelle vague that preceded them.Chapters00:02:39 - post-New Wave / post-1968 French cinema00:11:18 - Paul Vecchiali00:23:04 - Diagonale00:27:43 - La Machine and the crime genre00:37:55 - La Machine as commentary on the death penalty00:46:48 - the courtroom sequence00:51:14 - why La Machine still resonates todayYou can also find this podcast on…* Apple Podcasts* Pocket Casts* I will no longer be uploading podcasts to Spotify and have removed all previous episodes of the podcast from that platform. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, because Spotify is a transparently evil company that delights in ripping off musicians, promoting AI slop, and enabling genocide in Palestine.Shownotes* Buy issue 2 of the Cinéclub fanzine* 44 pages w/ articles on Conrad Rooks’ bizarre, star-studded countercultural artifact Chappaqua, some shorter pieces on punk and film, and an essay linking Bertrand Tavernier’s 1974 film The Watchmaker of St. Paul (also known as The Clockmaker of St. Paul) to Paul Vecchiali’s La Machine from 1977. DIY and sold on a not-for-profit basis at a cost that just covers the cost of printing: £2.50 plus postage. Shipping internationally.* Watch La Machine (I am sharing these links as, to the best of my knowledge, the film is not currently commercially available)* On YouTube (no English subtitles)* Via Google Drive * Nick’s writing, and episodes of his Emulsion podcast, at The Film Stage* Some useful articles on Paul Vecchiali* Essay on Rosa la rose, fille publique by Steve Macfarlane for Metrograph* Notebook Primer: Diagonale and Co. by Patrick Preziosi for Mubi Notebook* Diagonale and Us by Axelle Ropert for Screen Slate* Paul Vecchiali, a Cinematic Franc-Tireur by Daniel Fairfax for Senses of Cinema This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cineclub.substack.com

Cinéclub Podcast #18 is a conversation with Will Sloan. You may know Will from his own podcasts: The Important Cinema Club which he co-hosts with Justin Decloux and Michael and Us, which he does with Luke Savage, which is a broader politics and culture podcast. In this episode, though, we’re focusing on Will’s new book, a study of the notorious Ed Wood, which is called Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood, USA. If you’re not familiar at all with Ed Wood, it’s probably best to first acknowledge that he is mostly famous for being a bad director and known particular for Plan 9 from Outer Space which is a common contender for worst film ever made. However he also has a cult following of admirers and even his own Hollywood biopic, directed by Tim Burton in 1994.Will’s book makes the case for Wood as an auteur, a filmmaker with a strong and distinctive creative voice despite, or in some cases maybe because of, the limited resources with which he worked and his limited ability to follow the accepted conventions of Hollywood film. Will writes the following to summarise a typical Ed Wood film: it is “ a pastiche of narrative/stylistic elements from other films; attempts to tell a story at a scale far beyond what its production value can accoomondate; features a case comprised of noth veteran former stars and unknown, awkward newcomers; and attempts natrualisim, but misses the mark, achieving instead an uncanny or dreamlike ambience.”Will and I discussed the personal nature of Wood’s debut, Glen or Glenda; the otherworldly, dreamlike quality of Jail Bait, his attempt at a film noir; the distinctive authorial voice in The Beauty and the Beast, every bit an Ed Wood film despite being directed by somebody else; the uncanny, atmospheric nature of Plan 9 from Outer Space, the self-awareness of The Sinister Urge, the invented happy ending of Tim Burton’s affectionate biopic, and the unexpectedly fun and upbeat feel of his late-period sexploitation film Take It Out in Trade, and much more.Chapters* Glen or Glenda (1953) - 00:07:46* Jail Bait (1954) - 00:15:07* The Bride and the Beast (Adrian Weiss, 1958) - 00:19:33 * Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957) - 00:24:10* The Sinister Urge (1970) - 00:27:26* Later career: sexploitation, pornography, novels - 00:31:39* Ed Wood (Tim Burton, 1994) - 00:35:12* Take It Out in Trade (1970) - 00:40:20You can also find this episode on…* Apple Podcasts * Pocket Casts* I will no longer be uploading podcasts to Spotify and have removed all previous episodes of the podcast from that platform. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, because Spotify is a transparently evil company that delights in ripping off musicians, promoting AI slop, and enabling genocide in Palestine.Shownotes* Will Sloan’s book, Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood, USA at OR Books* Will’s excellent Substack* The Important Cinema Club podcast* Michael and Us podcast* I’m linking to Pocket Casts, but of course, the podcasts are available on all the platforms you’d expect* The Ed Wood episode of Jonathan Ross’ The Incredibly Strange Film Show (1989)* Andrew Sarris’ Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962* Embarassingly I say this essay is from 1960 in the podcast. The correct year of writing is in the very title of the essay…* Buy the Cinéclub fanzine* 52 pages w/ articles on cinematic representations of the German urban guerilla group The Red Army Faction, Claude Chabrol’s 1962 film The Third Lover’ and some pieces on punks in cinema. DIY and sold on a not-for-profit basis at a cost that just covers the cost of printing: £3.50 plus postage. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cineclub.substack.com

Cinéclub Podcast #17 is a conversation with Sue Thornham on the Dutch feminist filmmaker Marleen Gorris. Gorris made her debut with A Question of Silence in 1982. A provocative feminist film which uses and subverts popular genre conventions, as you’ll hear, it stirred up controversy amongst critics, particularly here in the UK. It was the first in what she envisaged as a series of four films, and was followed by Broken Mirrors, The Last Island and Antonia’s Line. The latter brought Gorris more commercial attention, attracting positive press, widespread distribution and even winning the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 1996. She went on to adapt Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, the first of a string of English-langiage films, but her later work was poorly distributed and fell into obscurity. Until recently, her early work, too, has been largely unavailable. Thankfully, her first three were lovingly restored and reissued by Cult Epics in 2023, and are now available again on DVD and Blu-Ray. Gorris herself has now retired from filmmaking.Sue Thornham is Professor Emeritus at the University of Sussex in Brighton, where she taught for many years and was, in fact, one of my tutors when I studied for my Master there. I mention that because it was in Sue’s Feminism and Film class that I first saw Broken Mirrors, when I was doing my Masters there, so I have her to thank for introducing me to Gorris’ work. In July this year Sue released an excellent book on Gorris. It’s called Marleen Gorris: Practices of Resistance and is published by Edinburgh University Press. Sue and I talked through Gorris’ career, including her tendency to play with genre, why her films rattled critics, themes of communities amongst women and the possibility of resisting patriarchy, the success of Antonia’s Line and the impact it might have had on her increasingly obscure later films, and more.I should warn you that there may be plot spoilers, but I would also say that these are not really the sort of films that rely on conventional plot twists and I don’t think there’s anything in this podcast that could really spoil the films but, now you know.Chapters* A Question of Silence (1982) - 00:09:39* Broken Mirrors (1984) - 00:16:49* The Last Island (1990) - 00:25:06* Antonia’s Line (1995) - 00:30:59* Mrs. Dalloway (1997) and The Luzhin Defence (2000) - 00:37:39* Carolina (2003) - 00:41:30* Within the Whirlwind (2009) - 00:44:01You can also find this episode on…* Apple Podcasts * Pocket Casts* I will no longer be uploading podcasts to Spotify and have removed all previous episodes of the podcast from that platform. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, because Spotify is a transparently evil company that delights in ripping off musicians, promoting AI slop, and enabling genocide in Palestine.Shownotes* Sue Thornham’s book Marleen Gorris: Practices of Resistance* The link has both print editions and the free Open Access PDF and ePub* The restored Marleen Gorris Triology at Cult Epics, including A Question of Silence, Broken Mirrors and The Last Island* Buy the Cinéclub fanzine* 52 pages w/ articles on cinematic representations of the German urban guerilla group The Red Army Faction, Claude Chabrol’s 1962 film The Third Lover’ and some pieces on punks in cinema. DIY and sold on a not-for-profit basis at a cost that just covers the cost of printing: £3.50 plus postage. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cineclub.substack.com