We are very excited to welcome Prof. Lisa Dombrowski to our podcast! She is a Professor of Film Studies and East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University. She’s the author of the books: The Films of Samuel Fuller: If You Die, I’ll Kill You! (2008), the editor of Kazan Revisited (2011), and co-editor of ReFocus: The Later Works and Legacy of Robert Altman (2022). (Ben worked on that last one!)

We took Lisa’s fantastic film classes and she’s a big reason this podcast exists, and why we talk about movies the way we do. (You can read more about the podcast’s origin story on Patreon!)

Together, we preview a newly restored film showing at the upcoming New York Film Festival and M+ Restored programmes, T’ang Shushuen’s The Arch, which Lisa teaches in her classes. Lisa shares with us the film’s unconventional transnational production context, and we have an in-depth discussion about the film’s groundbreaking use of film form to portray female subjectivity. Eli highlights the film’s use of deep staging, Wilson compares the film with Ann Hui’s A Simple Life (2011), and Ben explains what he means by an “oyako-don” pantheon.

Links:

Read more about and get tickets for the M+ Restored programme

Screening in NYC for NYFF at Film at Lincoln Center

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Timestamps:

00:01:36 Introducing Prof. Lisa Dombrowski

00:06:48 M+ Restored

00:09:39 Context on director Tang Shu-shuen and The Arch

00:11:16 Lisa's relationship with The Arch

00:17:16 General reactions

00:23:30 Adaptation and subjectivity

00:26:06 Subtitles

00:28:06 Female gaze and melodramatic situation

00:30:28 The opening setup

00:33:28 Cinematography context

00:40:28 Love triangle and deep staging

00:43:34 Plum scene

00:52:37 Source material

00:55:28 Cultural context and societal norms

01:00:04 River scene and Mid-Autumn Festival

01:03:39 A Simple Life (2011) sidebar, subjective realism

01:07:25 Confucianism and social conditioning

01:10:29 Loom scene

01:13:04 Editing for meaning

01:16:32 The arch, the ending, the takeaway

01:24:57 Fractured images and liminal spaces

01:30:15 Lisa Lu and casting

01:31:32 The film's reception

01:33:56 Tang's approach

01:39:03 Cultural identity, transnational cinema, aesthetic expectations

01:43:32 Tang's career post The Arch

01:46:05 Outro

We are joined by special guest Alex Heeney, the founder and editor in chief of Seventh Row, to dive into Luca Guadagnino's 2017 coming-of-age masterpiece, Call Me By Your Name. They talk about their deep personal connections to the film, with Alex recounting her experience at the world premiere at Sundance and Wilson sharing his obsessive journey preparing for the New York Film Festival premiere of the film. Eli discusses the film's sensual direction, and Ben explains why he thinks this is Guadagnino’s most mature work.

Links:

Find more of Alex on Seventh Row. They are hosting a summit celebrating queer and trans stories called Living Out Loud. Check it out here.

Mina Le: why does hollywood love an age gap romance?

Ben’s CMBYN meme video

Women around the fountain video

Call us by your name at our FREE patreon, discord server, and our socials @ www.deepcutpod.com

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Intro

00:01:14 Introducing Alex Heeney

00:04:00 Our histories with CMBYN

00:21:50 Masculinity and Romance

00:26:03 Narrative structure

00:32:05 Performances

00:37:39 Scenes and blocking

00:41:00 The statue scene

00:47:44 The parents

00:51:20 The peach scene

01:00:30 Age gap discourse

01:10:42 Homophobia and queerness

01:13:05 Cinematography and Marzia

01:31:00 Editing

01:35:36 The Sufjan element

01:39:15 Outro

We continue our series on Akerman with a double-bill of personal documentaries about her mother, and of home. News from Home immediately follows her seminal Jeanne Dielman, and No Home Movie is the final film of Akerman’s filmography. In this episode, we thread the throughline across Akerman’s career in comparing both films, see the influence of structural and slow cinema, and marvel at her capacity for personal artmaking.

Links:

Celine Sciamma on Chantal Akerman

I Don’t Belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman (No Home Movie BTS footage)

Go home to our FREE patreon, discord server, and our socials @ www.deepcutpod.com

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

05:32 Plot summaries and Reactions

17:15 2015 critical reactions to No Home Movie

21:00 Structural films and emotional responses

27:07 Power of the cut

33:41 Akerman and her mother

40:33 Comparing Akerman with Varda

44:36 Private artmaking

48:33 Akerman's career arc

52:13 Preview for next eps