K.J. Relth-Miller on the VardaVerse + Melvin Van Peebles + Pat Rocco + More

The latest episode the podcast is here! Plus articles I wrote by watching cows in boots

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

On the latest episode of the podcast, I was very pleased to chat with K.J. Relth-Miller of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. We talked about the terrific Academy Museum series that’s spanning work by Agnès Varda and feminist filmmaking in the 1970s. Her recent viewing takes us through filmmakers that have shown at the museum such as Pat Rocco and Melvin Van Peebles.

This is still just a fraction of the museum’s programming, and Relth-Miller also teaches contemporary film at CalArts, which brings Neptune Frost into the mix. And there’s some fun Los Angeles location-spotting. An absolute pleasure to record!

Thank you as always to all the supporters who make The Last Thing I Saw possible!

Onward,

Nic

THE PODCAST

K.J. Relth-Miller on the VardaVerse, Neptune Frost, Pat Rocco, and more (Ep. 170)

K.J. Relth-Miller shows movies at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and teaches film at CalArts. The VardaVerse series discussed on the podcast can be found here along with other Academy Museum programs.

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are also available at podcast places such as Spotify.

For more information on the podcast’s opening and closing music by The Minarets (gratefully used with permission), follow the band on Instagram:

@theminaretsmusic

RECENT WORK

For The New York Times, I watched comedy clips with Quentin Dupieux, who directs off-the-wall movies such as Mandibles, Deerskin, and now Smoking Causes Coughing. This absolutely required me to re-watch Police Squad! and Top Secret! for reasons that Dupieux’s list of clips makes clear.

For the mighty Screen Slate, I interviewed Charles Mudede, longtime staff writer at The Stranger and director of one of my favorite films of the 2000s, Police Beat. I wrote about Police Beat when Anthology gave it a run then, and I still love it now, so we talked!

And also for The New York Times, I reviewed Amanda Kim’s Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV, a documentary that through archival clips puts us in the restless company of this pioneering video artist. Which I liked.

By the way, there’s still one more screening of Synecdoche, New York on 35mm at the Roxy Cinema in New York!

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Delectable selections for home viewing.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (HBO MAX)

Where Eagles Dare (HBO MAX) Clint Eastwood + Richard Burton

Bound (Criterion)

Faya Dayi (Criterion)

Terror’s Advocate (MUBI)

C’était un Rendez-vous (Vimeo) Vroom

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold.

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, Artforum, Filmmaker, 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 past programming, 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. There 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 by the National Society of Film Critics (an honor historically given to the Museum of Modern Art and other institutions).

Feel free to get in touch re: writing, editing, moderating, programming, podcasting, etc.

nicolas.rapold@gmail.com