Episode #122 - Marie-Louise Khondji (Birth)

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"Films deserve to be bought, but they also deserve to be seen.”

Nothing is more frustrating in our streaming era than turning on any specific app and suddenly staring hundreds of movie posters with only an algorithm trying to decide what you might like (especially if such product is actually made by the company to help its margins). But what if there was a streaming site that only offered a single movie a week, and maybe not even a feature but a short or medium-length feature? And what if it had circulated ultra-rare films by Claire Denis, Hong Sang-Soo, Matias Piñeiro, Jonas Mekas, and fascinating filmmakers you had never heard of? That's the promise Marie-Louise Khondji has brought to her site Le Cinéma Club. Marie sits down to talk about growing up with her father (the cinematographer Darius) and how she moved into management through distribution and production before starting a site to help filmmakers showcase work that needed an outlet and created to be accessible for all. Finally, the two talk about the wonderful Jonathan Glazer film Birth, and how it seems to capture a certain timeless stasis of its upper elite New York culture.

0:00–6:27 Opening
7:40-11:32 OVID.TV Sponsorship
12:17–45:51 Deep Focus — Marie-Louise Khondji
46:40–51:15 MUBI Sponsorship Section
52:31–1:03:47 Double Exposure — Birth (Jonathan Glazer)
1:04:12–1:06:42 Close 

Notes and Links to the Conversation
—Check out Le Cinéma Club and follow them on Twitter
—Watch a MasterClass with Darius Khondji
—The Distribution Company Celluloid Dreams and the Production Company Iconoclast
—Watch Simon Killer and Heaven Knows What
—I referenced a bit of the idea around a personal curator, thinking of Eric Allen Hatch and Beyond Video
—Information about Claire Denis's Keep it For Yourself
—Bingham is Bingham Bryant, who was interviewed here.
—James Shamus discussed a bit about Keep it for Yourself here.
—Watch Alien: Resurrection
—I have attempted to trace what Glazer and others have meant by the "silver nitrate" print that has shown a few times since its Venice premiere. It is obviously not a nitrate print in the same way as those of first half of the 20th century (ie. it is not flammable). One article here says that the some 35mm prints were "printed with the bleach bypass process, retaining silver nitrate in the emulsion and keeping high contrast in the highlights."

Theme Music: “Forward” by Northbound

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