During Film4 FrightFest, Alex Fitch interviewed producer Eli Roth and director Daniel Stamm about the new ‘mockumentary’ horror film The Last Exorcism, which opens in UK cinemas today and tells a tale of possession, cattle mutilation and murder in a small rural community. Daniel Stamm talks about how using a documentary style to make supernatural movies helps break the fourth wall for the audience to help draw them into events, while Eli Roth talks about how his experience of producing his own movies Cabin Fever and Hostel differs from his more advisory role on this film.
To coincide with the release of the new sci-fi thriller Splice, in which scientists Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley create a dangerous half-human hybrid via genetic manipulation, Alex Fitch talks to director Vincenzo Natali about the film and the other three movies he’s collaborated on with actor David Hewlett – Cypher, Nothing, the cult classic Cube – and his forthcoming adaptation of William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer.
An edited version of this interview was broadcast 23/07/10 on Resonance 104.4 FM as an episode of I’m ready for my close-up.
Unusual images of the Western: Gene Autry comic no. 4; Western Fighters vol.3 no.4; Midnight Cowboy poster; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
In a pair of Q&As recorded at the Electric Sheep Film Club, in the Prince Charles Cinema in London, Alex Fitch talks to BFI programmer Emma Smart about gay themes in Westerns after a screening of Midnight Cowboy and to Ian Rakoff about the crossover between Western-themed comics and movies before a screening of For a few Dollars More.
Ian Rakoff will talk about ‘Magical realism and social realism in comics’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum on 21 July 2010.
Listen to Alex Fitch’s first interview with Ian Rakoff, about writing for The Prisoner and his experiences in the world of film.
On the Silver Globe is an esoteric Polish sci-fi epic directed by Andrzej Żuławski in 1977 – then lost and believed destroyed by the authorities for a decade before its cinema release. In 2009, the film was screened at Tate Modern as part of a mini-season of films titled ‘Polish New Wave – The History of a Phenomenon that Never Existed’. Looking ahead to the release of this film on DVD in the UK, Alex Fitch talks to Andrzej Żuławski about his struggles in getting the film released and the travails involved in making his horror films The Third Part of the Night (1971) and Possession (1981) under the eyes of a communist regime.
Alex Fitch also talks to Polish poster designer Andrzej Klimowski and his wife Danusia Schejbal (famously depicted as the victim of an assassin’s bullet on Klimowski’s poster for Robert Altman’s Nashville) about working on the fringes of Polish filmmaking in the late 1970s and whether the films of the time could be seen as belonging to an artistic movement.
Andrzej Żuławski will be the focus of a retrospective at this year’s Kinoteka festival which runs from 7-28 April 2016.
In the latest Electric Sheep podcast, we’re looking at apocalyptic movies: Virginie Sélavy talks to John Hillcoat, director of the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road in an interview recorded at last year’s London Film Festival, plus Alex Fitch talks to Helen McCarthy, a British expert on manga, anime and Japanese visual culture, in a Q and A recorded before the Electric Sheep screening of Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale at the Prince Charles Cinema.
In the latest Electric Sheep podcast, we’re looking at two films by female directors that deal with issues of absence and loss. Alex Fitch talks to director Sophie Barthes about her film Cold Souls, a Kaufman-esque science fiction comedy about soul-trafficking starring Paul Giamatti, and to Mirjam Van Veelan about her documentary Megumi, about the kidnap of a Japanese girl – Megumi Yokota – in 1977 by North Korea (with thanks to The Barbican for arranging the interview with Mirjam).
Alex Fitch interviews celebrated actress Susannah York about her career, focusing on her performances in war-themed productions and her interest in peace activism. York talks about her narration for the 1987 Channel 4 TV series The Struggles for Poland, writing the wartime drama Falling in Love Again, her iconic role in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and using her reputation and theatre tours to promote the work of the Movement for the Abolition of War.
‘The Struggles for Poland’ screens at the Imperial War Museum, London, on January 16 (Episodes 1-4), 17 (Episodes 5-8) and 23 (Episodes 3-5 and 9) as part of Polska! Year.
Partially broadcast 13/01/10 as part of a ‘Clear Spot’ on Resonance 104.4 FM
For more info about the variety of formats in which you can download/stream this podcast, please visit archive.org
To coincide with the 42nd anniversary of the broadcast of The Prisoner episode for which he wrote the original script, Alex Fitch talks to writer, editor and raconteur Ian Rakoff about his experiences working on the cult 60s series and being an observer of British film culture in the 1970s and beyond. Rakoff talks about the bowdlerisation of his script for ‘Living in Harmony’, his experiences with Lindsay Anderson on such films as If…. and O Lucky , working with Nicolas Roeg, Stephen Frears and John
Boorman and his lifetime interest in comic books.
For more info about the variety of formats in which you can download/stream this podcast, please visit archive.org
In an hour-long Q&A recorded at Cinephila West in Westbourne Grove, London, Sophie Mayer talks to director Sally Potter about her career, focusing on the films Orlando, The Tango Lesson and her new film Rage. Recorded and edited by Alex Fitch.
During Film4 FrightFest, Alex Fitch interviewed producer Eli Roth and director Daniel Stamm about the new ‘mockumentary’ horror film The Last Exorcism, which opens in UK cinemas today and tells a tale of possession, cattle mutilation and murder in a small rural community. Daniel Stamm talks about how using a documentary style to make supernatural movies helps break the fourth wall for the audience to help draw them into events, while Eli Roth talks about how his experience of producing his own movies Cabin Fever and Hostel differs from his more advisory role on this film.
