Episode #75 - Blake Williams (INLAND EMPIRE)

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"When I'm making work it's very important that me that I'm unsure where it's going"

What does it mean to view a stereoscopic image, to see films in a way that's at once closer to our daily life perception while also expanding it beyond anything we could ever see? Blake Williams is one of many filmmakers working in the avant-garde who has been exploring this question—through filmmaking, criticism, and historical research. Williams joins the podcast to trace his lineage as both a critic and a filmmaker, and the very nature of 3D images that has made this such an exploratory visual medium to work in, using it to explore heady concepts in both literal and theoretical terms. Peter and Blake then turn to a narrative filmmaker who created his own long experimental: David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE. The two debate the use of narrative in the film while also examining the nature of its low-grade digital imagery, which can be sublime or absolutely terrifying.

0:00-3:02 Opening

3:40-11:14 Establishing Shots — The Mermaid and Mountains May Depart

11:59-1:10:24 Deep Focus — Blake Williams
1:11:26-1:15:24 Sponsorship Section
1:16:39-1:39:33 Double Exposure — INLAND EMPIRE (David Lynch)

1:39:36-1:41:14 Close 

Visit Blake's film-viewing blog and his filmmaking website.
Watch the films of Blake Williams, including No Signal, A Cold Compress, Coorow-Latham Road, Depart, Many A Swan, Baby Blue, and Red Capriccio.

Read Blake on Cinema Scope and Ion Cinema.

Let Us Now Praise Jacques Rivette

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"I care more about the grace of the actors’ gestures and the quality of their voices than what they actually do or say."

The names of the French New Wave have become staples for both French Cinema and beyond. The critics of Cahiers Du Cinema like Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, and Eric Rohmer all turned to filmmaking to put into practice the meanings they had pulled from their valorization of Hollywood Cinema. But the most passionaite of those critics, and perhaps the most creative of those filmmakers was Jacques Rivette, who passed away on January 29th at the age of 87. In this new podcast, former guests of the show (Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Miriam Bale, and Matt Prigge) join in a roundtable discussion of the critic and filmmaker. They analyze his films, his writings, and his attention to collaboration, all of which made him a wholly unique individual in the history of cinema. Torn between his obsessions with realism and fantasy, Rivette captured the essence of the medium's paradoxical specificity.

0:00-3:33 Opening

3:33-28:18 Rivette Discussion Part 1

29:00-33:09 Sponsorship Section
33:47-1:02:30 Rivette Discussion Part 2

1:02:34-1:05:07 Close / Outtakes

Read Dave Kehr's obituary of Jacques Rivette, and find numerous resources on the filmmaker at this website here.

Out 1 is available on Kino Lorber DVD and Fandor. Le Pont Du Nord is available from Kino Lorber. Duelle, Noroit, and Merry-Go-Round can be found on Blu-Ray in this Arrow Films Box Set. Paris Belongs To Us is available through Hulu+ and The Criterion Collection. L'Amour Fou is on YouTube.

Follow Our Guests on Twitter: Miriam Bale, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Matt Prigge.