Time travel, donkeys, Tolstoy, and new nonfiction
Two podcasts and some new articles for your delectation
Dear The Last Thing I Saw friends,
Once again, I present two new episodes of The Last Thing I Saw! I talked with Margaret Barton-Fumo and Fun City Editions founder Jonathan Hertzberg about a few intriguing films, mostly from the ’80s. And fresh from a trip to the international nonfiction fest IDFA, I talk about a few highlights with Eric Hynes.
There’s also a bumper crop of new writing, including interviews with two filmmakers with a century and a half of experience between them. Topics in the articles include Tolstoy, directing donkeys, time travel, and how to make a movie with actors who are not in the same room.
And with Thanksgiving around the corner, I am grateful to all my readers and listeners, with a special big thanks to all the wonderful supporters of The Last Thing I Saw. I’m also simply thankful to be doing the work I’m doing!
Your faithful host,
Nic
THE PODCAST
Eric Hynes on IDFA 2022: Apolonia, Apolonia and beyond! (Ep. 147)
This episode is also available on Spotify, Soundcloud, and other podcast places.
Every year I take in a new crop of nonfiction films from around the world at IDFA (the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam). I select a few highlights with Eric Hynes, curator of film at the Museum of the Moving Image, who is also a regular IDFA attendee. Among the films we discuss is the top prize-winner of the international competition, Apolonia, Apolonia, which was 13 years in the making.
Fun City with Margaret Barton-Fumo and Jonathan Hertzberg: Morvern Callar, Heartbreakers, Cutter’s Way, Married to the Mob, and More (Ep. 146)
This episode is also available on Spotify, Soundcloud, and other podcast places.
Jonathan Hertzberg is the founder of Fun City Editions, a label focused on reissues of film and music.
Margaret Barton-Fumo is the host of “No Pussyfooting,” an online radio show on www.kpiss.fm. She has interviewed such directors, actors, and musicians as Brian De Palma, James Gray, Harry Dean Stanton, and Paul Williams, and has contributed to Senses of Cinema and Film Comment. She is the editor of Paul Verhoeven: Interviews.
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 WRITING
For The New York Times, I spoke with Frederick Wiseman, the master documentarian, who directed a fiction film, A Couple, featuring Sophia Tolstaya reflecting on her bittersweet marriage with Leo Tolstoy.
For Filmmaker, I interviewed the director of the outstanding EO, Jerzy Skolimowski, a lion of the golden-age art-house cinema in the 1960s and 70s. EO, as you may have heard, follows a donkey on his travels, and I talk with Skolimowski about how he made it.
I reviewed There There, an ingenious, superbly acted multi-chapter film directed by Andrew Bujalski (Support the Girls, Computer Chess), setting new challenges for himself. Critic’s Pick!
Also for Filmmaker, I interviewed the director of Incredible But True, Quentin Dupieux, a delightfully original comedic voice. I spoke with Dupieux at the Berlin film festival earlier this year, and the movie is receiving a streaming and Blu-ray release by Arrow, but no theatrical run, so not many people are aware it’s out there!
THIS CRITIC’S PICKS
Delectable selections for home viewing.
The Assassin (MUBI)
American Movie (Criterion)
The Act of Killing (Kino Cult)
Daisies (Criterion) Here’s a 2012 feature I wrote about the film and Vera Chytilova’s amazing work.
The Twentieth Century (MUBI) Fun. I reviewed this for The New York Times.
This Gun for Hire (Criterion)
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 a podcast, I’m a writer and an editor. My features, interviews, festival dispatches, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Sight & Sound, Artforum, Filmmaker, and W Magazine (and have appeared in dearly departed publications such as The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine).
I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment, where I was for 15 years. There I assigned and edited both web and print editorial, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks and screenings, learned from brilliant writers, curated Film Comment Selects, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment was subsequently awarded the Film Heritage Award by the National Society of Film Critics (an honor historically awarded 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