The Nitrate Picture Show! Plus: Interviews About a Nigerian Thriller, Married Artists, the Civil War, and French Schoolkids
All of the above subjects are indeed covered in these interviews!
Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,
The Nitrate Picture Show takes place every year at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York: an entire film series projected from nitrate prints. The super-vivid images make for a movie-going experience that can be—in the words of my latest guest on The Last Thing I Saw, programmer David Schwartz—“life-changing.” Have a listen and hear all about what was screened!
I’m also catching up with sharing a bunch of writing, plus the usual array of streaming picks. Thanks again to all the supporters of The Last Thing I Saw!
Yours, &c.,
Nic
THE PODCAST
The Nitrate Picture Show 2024 with David Schwartz: Meet Me in St. Louis, The Strawberry Blonde, The Plow That Broke the Plains, and more
David Schwartz is an independent film programmer and writer, and curator-at-large at Museum of the Moving Image, where he worked for many years as Chief Curator. He also programmed and managed the Paris Theater in Manhattan. He recently interviewed Agnieszka Holland for MUBI Notebook.
Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are also available at many other podcast places.
RECENT WRITING
Claire Simon’s Our Body was a critical favorite last year, and for MOMI’s Sloan site, I was lucky enough to interview her about her latest, Elementary (aka Apprendre), a lovely documentary about schoolchildren which premiered in Cannes.
I realize I haven’t shared my Filmmaker interview with Roberto Minervini about his latest, The Damned, which also premiered in Cannes. It’s a fiction film set during the Civil War, so a bit of a departure, but not really, considering how Minervini’s documentaries (e.g., The Other Side) often confront volatile feelings bubbling up in American society.
For The New York Times, I interviewed Nigerian filmmaker Daniel Oriahi about his slow-burn in-law thriller The Weekend, which premiered in the Tribeca Festival. I don’t think I shared a recent Times review assignment either: a Beach Boys doc.
A good day for sharing documentary interviews: here’s another, with the directors of Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other, a lived-in look at the relationship between photographer Joel Meyerowitz and writer Maggie Barrett. It would be cool if this were to have a prominent New York premiere this fall.
THIS CRITIC’S PICKS
Selections from streaming
Roubaix, Police Department, Ordinary Business (OVID) A true discovery – one in a series of documentaries about police investigators by Mosco Boucault. The final sequence with a couple questioned about a crime is an instant all-timer
The Conformist (Kino Film Collection) Worth poking around on here!
No Bears (Criterion) No idea why No Bears gets no respect! I exaggerate in the name of witty word play, but Jafar Panahi’s movie truly doesn’t come up enough.
Vengeance Is Mine (Criterion) Worth watching for the opening take alone. Directed by Michael Roemer, though I didn’t get a chance to ask him about it
Flight of the Red Balloon (MUBI) H! H! H!
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, editor, and programmer. 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.