Episode #39 - Phillip Lopate (Charulata)

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"What I've learned from all my writing, is I can take my character and make him be a guide that can go out and fetch the world...and he wanders into my film writing."

Phillip Lopate has been writing for over five decades on a number of subjects - New York, family, marriage, art - but his initial love was the movies. Having seen the New Wave arrive in New York first hand (as well as watch the tide recede), Phillip recounts the stories behind many of his most celebrated essays in this conversation with Peter. He maps out his cinephilia over the years, including finding spirituality through contemplative films, considering the possibility of an essay-film, and thinking through the paradox of making a films about marriage. Finally, the two look at a fascinating work by Indian director Satyajit Ray, Charulata, examining how Ray finds a fascinating tension between East and West in a parable of a tragic housewife, as well as some of the most gorgeously poetic sequences put to screen.

0:00-1:38 Opening 

2:31-9:32 Establishing Shots - Lau Kar-Leung / Donations

10:17-1:03:18 Deep Focus - Phillip Lopate

1:05:53-1:21:26 Double Exposure - Charulata (Satyajit Ray)

1:21:30-1:23:09 Close

Purchase a number of Phillip Lopate's books on Amazon, including Totally, Tenderly, Tragically, American Movie Critics: From Silents Until Now, and The Art of the Personal Essay.

Episode #32 - Richard Peña (Memories of Underdevelopment)

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"What I do is use my position as a programmer is to try and educate in terms of those areas of film history that either need review or need discovery."

Without the help of Richard Peña, Peter would probably have never become interested in directors like István Szabó, Kim Ki-Young, or Souleymane Cisse, among countless others. As a professor at Columbia and the former programmer of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the New York Film Festival, Richard used his years to expand the conversation of film history: as NYFF brought in directors from the cinemas of Iran, China, and Brazil, his yearly programming and classes expanded to search out those histories as well. Now a year out from his time at Lincoln Center, Richard sits down to recount his first curiosities toward cinema, his programming philosophies, and to lament the director he can never convince his students to love as much as he does. Finally, the two discuss Memories of Underdevelopment, a landmark film in Cuban film history, which provides a complex portrait of identity.

0:00-1:42 Opening 

2:48-6:50 Establishing Shots - Alain Guiraudie

8:42-51:03 Deep Focus - Richard Peña

51:58-1:08:09 Double Exposure - Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea)

1:08:14-1:09:53 Close

Richard Pena's home page at Columbia, and an interview with him by Kent Jones on the New York Film Festival.