we can't go home again: Recent Episodes
lucia salas and christopher small
it's late october and we're at the end of season 1. thanks to everybody who has tuned in for this first run of we can't go home again, a podcast by christopher small and lucía salas. we love and appreciate you all.
more exciting things are in the pipeline. we hope you get a chance to revisit our interviews with dan, rita, and lav while we're on hiatus and listen again to our joyful sparrings on land, judd apatow, and john ford whenever you get lonely these next few weeks. as a treat for those of you who suffer from serious withdrawal, we're rounding this season out with a mixtape of sounds, soundtrack snippets, and music rattling around inside our heads. connections. pathways forward. we could all use a mixtape right about now.
we're back on the airwaves in december. stay tuned!
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This is the Day - The The (in Pedro Costa's O Sangue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF6r1HrU-MA)
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Je Hais Rome - Laura Betti (interpreted by Renaud Legrand in Pierre Leon's Li per li)
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Wishing Will Make It So - Buddy G. DeSylva (in Leo McCarey's Love Affair, interpreted by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvS4scTDhxw)
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En el pozo de María Luiza (interpreted by Sergio Mullet and people in the bar in Ricardo Becher's Tiro de Gracia)
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Street troubadour scene from Spring on Zarechnaya Street by Marlen Khutsiev (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujnI4xRjDMY&t=54s)
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One for My Baby (interpreted by Ida Lupino in Jean Negulesco's Roadhouse)
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Breakfast song in Ernst Lubitsch's The Smiling Lieutenant (interpreted by Maurice Chevalier and Claudette Colbert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5A1Km6GjRA&t=71s)
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Liu Lian by Yao Lee (in Tsai Ming Liang's Goodbye Dragon Inn)
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Грузинская песня by Жанна Бичевская (in Chantal Akerman's D'est
this week we were delighted to speak with filmmaker lav diaz, one of the most significant epic filmmakers of our time and, more recently, winner of the orrizonti best director award at the 77th biennale di venezia for his film lahi, hayop (genus, pan). though this latest work is "only" three hours, diaz is spoken about most often as the maker of long, long films characterised by a glacial pace and a vaguely mystical reverence for the contours of the universe shifting in real time. but in our own investigations into his earlier work we were amazed to find an altogether different diaz to the one that dominates the festival imagination.
for all the obviously "cinematic" attributes of his work—most notably the sense of time passing in staid long shots with little movement within the frame, an experience unique to the cinema—we found that diaz's work is, with all its narrative density and startlingly precise strokes of characterisation, closer to the epic realist novels of the 19th century or to the latin american boom literature of the 60s and 70s. it was in this spirit that we discussed lahi, hayop with diaz after its venice premiere. exploited workers trek across a remote island, hugaw, in the philippines in the late 90s and are eventually driven to violence themselves by desperation. but the journey itself is sketched in vivid detail: every step through the forest is a step further along a road that leads only to dissolution and brutality. yet this is also a film that challenges dominant ideas of in his work: about length, about labour relations and history, and about the simple structure of a narrative, which here is as classical as it gets.
in the latest episode, we pit bong joon-ho's palme d'or and academy award winning work with john ford's largely forgotten 1933 film. the comparison may seem random at first, but putting these two movies up against one another teases out the depths, details, and divergences of these two richly layered and ultimately very overpowering motion pictures. that, of course, sets the stage for a more thoughtful pondering of their makers, each oscar winners for best director.
for this latest episode we were delighted to catch up with dan sallitt, one of our very favourite cinephiles and filmmakers. his fourth feature length film, fourteen, premiered at the berlinale forum in 2019, was met with love and acclaim, and has gone on to have a very successful virtual release via grasshopper film, so we thought it was precisely the occassion to catch up with dan and get into the particulars of the film with him. lucky for us, dan remains one of the most erudite and persuasive thinkers on cinema, and his observational gifts are not limited to other people's work. the joy for us, then, was not only to think through this great, great movie but to share in the experience with its generous maker, whose rigour and lucidity as an artist and thinker should be the model for filmmakers all over the world.
sheffield doc/fest's 2020 retrospective on films about land struggles, rural life, agriculture was curated by our very own christopher small. we figured that our own podcast was a good a place as any to discuss the implications of a land retrospective in, of all years, oh-so-locked-down 2020.
you can find the 12 film online version of reimagining the land here or, if in north and south america, here, at dafilms. use voucher code DAFfield2020 at checkout for a free month of the service.
in 2005, judd apatow released the 40 year old virgin. since then, for better and for worse, american screen comedy has been formed entirely in his image: improvisatory, loungey, drawing from an extended family of performers essentially playing variations on themselves, indifferent to big ideas of structure, vaguely serious-minded. it's easy to see this as a major break with imagined traditions of comedies in american cinema. but in fact, comedy directors of the 1930s, people like leo mccarey or, the other subject of this episode, frank capra, often started from the same basis. what do apatow and capra look like together, rubbing shoulders in 2020?
episode one. the first broadcast from a supplementary country we call cinema. displaced, sometimes dejected, but perennially dedicated and indebted to the work of our guest, the great rita azevedo gomes.
gomes' films, precious few but each among of the most alive and enigmatic of our time, are now available worldwide on mubi.
we wish you happy listening, and don't forget to follow us on facebook and instagram for any and all updates for we can't go home again.