Dialogic Cinephilia - March 9, 2020

I do not say that my conclusions about anything are true for the Universe, but I have lived in many ways, sweet and bitter, and they feel right for me. ... I have walked in storms with a crown of clouds about my head and the zig zag lightning playing through my fingers. The gods of the upper air have uncovered their faces to my eyes. - Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks On a Road (1942)

Archer, Ina Diane. "An Oversimplification of Her Beauty." Film Comment (March/April 2013)

Girish, Devika, et al. "The Best Movies of 2019." The Film Comment Podcast (December 11, 2019)

Greene, Robert and Larry Fessenden. "Bisbee '17; Depraved." FilmWax Radio (July 11, 2019) [""Bisbee '17" is a nonfiction feature film set in Bisbee, Arizona, an eccentric old mining town just miles away from both Tombstone and the Mexican border. Radically combining collaborative documentary, western and musical elements, the film follows several members of the close knit community as they attempt to reckon with their town’s darkest hour. Then old friend of the podcast, Larry Fessenden, returns to discuss his latest film from Glass Eye Pix, "Depraved" which stars two actor friends of the podcast: David Call & Joshua Leonard. "Depraved" centers on Henry, a field surgeon suffering from PTSD after combat in the Middle East, who creates a man out of body parts in a makeshift lab in Gowanus, Brooklyn. The creature he creates must navigate a strange new world and the rivalry between Henry and his conniving collaborator Polidori."]

Koresky, Michael, et al. "The Decade Project, Part 1." The Film Comment Podcast (December 4, 2019) ["By any measure, the 2010s have been a confusing and turbulent and also exciting time. That goes for both movies and the world at large, and that’s saying a lot after the 2000s. At Film Comment, part of our goal is to offer a critical chronicle of the movies as they’re happening, putting things in historical perspective, pointing out the bold and the beautiful in the art and craft of film, and hopefully offering an insight or two along the way. That’s often hardest to do with contemporary history, and so to grapple with the 2010s, we’re starting a series of Film Comment podcasts we’re calling The Decade Project. We’ll look at the movies from different angles and do our best to map out a vivid but often hard to characterize time. This week, we’ll talk about some of the major shifts and changes that happened over the last ten years, and some of the decade’s pivotal movies. It’s also an opportunity to talk about the big picture in movies, which probably means having a healthy skepticism about thinking in terms of decades altogether."]

Koresky, Michael. "Queer Now and Then: O Fantasma (João Pedro Rodrigues, 2000)." Film Comment (February 26, 2020)

Whitlock, Craig. "'Afghanistan Papers' Reveal How Presidents & Generals Misled the American Public on War’s Progress." Democracy Now (March 9, 2020) ["Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock has just won a George Polk Award for Military Reporting for his in-depth investigation called “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War.” He joins us to describe how, after getting a tip, he fought for three years to get the federal government to release a trove of confidential interviews it conducted with people directly involved in the nearly two-decade-long war. He ultimately obtained more than 2,000 documents that revealed how presidents, generals and diplomats across three administrations had intentionally misled the American public about the longest war in U.S. history."]