Buñuel in Mexico! Discoveries from "To Save and Project"! The fatal grip of The Iron Claw!
A Museum of Modern Art Film Department deluxe episode + Rotterdam + Cinema Scope :(
Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,
The past few weeks have seen some choice revivals and retrospectives in New York, and so on the latest episode, I talked with MoMA film curators Dave Kehr and Josh Siegel about two such series. Both took place at the Museum of Modern Art: Buñuel in Mexico (which still has some screenings left) and To Save and Project, the annual festival of film preservation.
Then in another episode, I caught up with standouts from the International Film Festival Rotterdam with critic and programmer Jordan Cronk. We also take a moment to lament the news about the essential film magazine Cinema Scope, which just published its final issue in print. Plus: we contend with The Iron Claw.
That’s it... for now. Thank you as always to all the supporters of The Last Thing I Saw who make the podcast possible!
Nic
THE PODCAST
A MoMA Double: Dave Kehr on Buñuel in Mexico + Josh Siegel on To Save and Project (20th Anniversary Edition)
A Curator in the Department of Film, Dave Kehr joined the Museum of Modern Art in 2013 after a long career as a film journalist, including stints at the Chicago Reader (1974–85), the Chicago Tribune (1985–93), the New York Daily News (1993–98) and the New York Times (1999–13). His work has been collected in two anthologies, When Movies Mattered and Movies That Mattered. He has served on numerous juries and selection committees, and he was a founding member of the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress in 1988 and remains on the board today.
Josh Siegel, Curator in MoMA’s Department of Film, has organized more than 150 film, media, and gallery exhibitions, and is the founding director of To Save and Project: The MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, now in its 20th edition. He also serves on the selection committees of the annual festivals New Directors/New Films and Doc Fortnight, and is the co-editor and author of Frederick Wiseman and Modern Contemporary: Art at MoMA since 1980, and the monographs Baby, It’s Cold Outside: A History of Finnish Cinema, and The Łodź Film School of Poland: 50 Years.
Jordan Cronk on Rotterdam 2024, Cinema Scope magazine, The Iron Claw
Jordan Cronk is a film critic and programmer based in downtown Los Angeles. He’s the founder of Acropolis Cinema.
Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are also available at other podcast places such as Spotify.
THIS CRITIC’S PICKS
Streaming selections
Unrest (Criterion) Interviewed the director, Cyril Schäublin, for the mighty Screen Slate
Birth (Criterion)
MLK/FBI (MUBI) Interviewed Sam Pollard for the NYT and I do believe our interview took place on January 6, 2021
Woman in Hiding (Criterion)
Heaven Knows What (MUBI) Critic’s Pick-ed this one for the NYT back in the day
RECENT WORK
Things I wrote
The director of 20 Days in Mariupol, Mstyslav Chernov, is getting deserved attention with an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature and now an award from the Directors Guild, so here’s my podcast interview with him from summer 2023.
My latest interview for W Magazine is with Mia McKenna-Bruce, the star of the wrenching How to Have Sex.
And for The New York Times, I reviewed a zippy sci-fi rom-com called Molli and Max in the Future starring Zosia Mamet and Aristotle Athari.
THE END
Here I may end with a song.
ABOUT ME
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. Feel free to get in touch re: writing, editing, moderating, programming, podcasting, etc. by writing me at nicolas.rapold[at]gmail.com
Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer and an editor. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Los Angeles Times, and W Magazine. (Plus dearly departed publications such as The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) For notes on my superfun programming experience, drop me a line.
On the editorial side, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.