Speaker 1: Oh is, folks, it's showtime.
Speaker 2: People say good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater, they are cold
Speaker 3: sodas pop popcorn in no monsters.
Speaker 4: In the Projection Booth, everyone for tend podcasting isn't boring?
Speaker 5: Got it off?
Speaker 2: Hey, folks, Welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Mike White. On this episode, I am
Speaker 2: talking with Sam Degan and Andrew Nettie. What those are
Speaker 2: co hosts? What are they doing being interviewed by me? Well,
Speaker 2: I'll tell you. They are the co editors of the
Speaker 2: New Film Revolution in thirty five millimeter Political Violence and
Speaker 2: Resistance and Cinema from the art House to the Grindhouse
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty to nineteen ninety. This book is in my
Speaker 2: sweet spot. There are so many movies surrounding nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: nine May sixty eight, just the late sixties turmoil, early
Speaker 2: seventies turmoil, obviously turmoil all the way from nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: to nineteen ninety. I do have to say that I
Speaker 2: have an essay in this book, so take that with
Speaker 2: a green of salt, though I don't talk about it
Speaker 2: too much in this interview. Wrote a little bit about
Speaker 2: Peter Watkins and people hunting people films. If you want
Speaker 2: to hear more about people hunting people films, well check
Speaker 2: out our Turkey shoot episode with mister Netti. That's coming
Speaker 2: out pretty darn soon, I believe in October. And of
Speaker 2: course Sam has been on so many episodes as well
Speaker 2: as Andrew, but this is also in Sam's sweet spot
Speaker 2: of post World War two world cinema. You know that
Speaker 2: Sam is quite a cinephile as well as Andrew and
Speaker 2: will recommend movies that I've never heard of, and that's
Speaker 2: pretty good. This is another book that's going to put
Speaker 2: a lot of titles on your wish list, on your
Speaker 2: watch list. I imagine somebody is going to go out
Speaker 2: and make a list of all of the movies that
Speaker 2: have been covered in this book and throw that onto
Speaker 2: letterbox if they do. If somebody's got that kind of
Speaker 2: time on their hands, boy oh boy, I will be
Speaker 2: the first one to link to it. Definitely check out
Speaker 2: this book. It is available via PM Press. Can also
Speaker 2: get it wherever finer books are sold. If they don't
Speaker 2: have it at your local bookstore, hopefully you have a
Speaker 2: local bookstore, they can order it for you. Thanks. So
Speaker 2: much for listening, and I hope you enjoy this interview
Speaker 2: Andrew Netti Sam Deagan, the co editors of Revolution in
Speaker 2: thirty five millimeter. I have my beautiful copy of it
Speaker 2: right here. I am so thrilled with this book, and
Speaker 2: even more that you guys asked me to be a
Speaker 2: part of it. How did this project come about?
Speaker 4: I knew that I wanted to I ate something book
Speaker 4: length about political valence in cinema, but I didn't know
Speaker 4: exactly what that project might look like. And I was
Speaker 4: picking Andrew's brain about working with PM Press, and I
Speaker 4: think how it happened was I described the project and
Speaker 4: you were like, I'll be a co editor, and that
Speaker 4: was pretty much that, right.
Speaker 1: I'll just invite myself into your book.
Speaker 6: That's right.
Speaker 1: Yes, you had that idea, which I mean was a
Speaker 1: great idea and sink to the couple of things I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about. And I thought it would be a
Speaker 1: good project for PM. And PM do beautiful books, and
Speaker 1: this one is they do beautiful, full color books. They
Speaker 1: certainly do the kind of books that I would never
Speaker 1: be able to do in Australia. So I pitched it
Speaker 1: to Ramsey Keenan who's the sort of head hon show
Speaker 1: at PM Press, And he said, yes, so give a supposal.
Speaker 1: That was that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I'm I'm so glad that I didn't try
Speaker 4: to do a book like this on my own, Like
Speaker 4: I think for a lot of different reasons, it makes
Speaker 4: sense as.
Speaker 7: A group project with like different.
Speaker 4: People writing different essays. And I don't know, it's just
Speaker 4: I think, sure someone could do a solo book like this,
Speaker 4: but I think it's just so much better the way
Speaker 4: that it turned out.
Speaker 2: Where did the idea of taking this around the globe
Speaker 2: come from? Was that right there at the original pitch
Speaker 2: as far as we want to look at revolution on
Speaker 2: film around the entire world, because you cover obviously not
Speaker 2: every single country, but a lot of them, that's for sure.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we tried.
Speaker 4: I guess to me where it came from was when
Speaker 4: I first started writing, I got pretty pigeonholed into writing
Speaker 4: about horror genre films, and it made me feel frustrated
Speaker 4: because it's one note to just be writing about one
Speaker 4: genre or subgenre again and again. And I started thinking
Speaker 4: about representations of violence in film that are not in
Speaker 4: horror films, and it's just something I've started thinking about
Speaker 4: more and more over probably the last decade, and so
Speaker 4: when we talked about turning it into an actual edited
Speaker 4: collection of essays, it was we might as well, what's
Speaker 4: the widest go And I think that part was the
Speaker 4: hardest to narrow down.
Speaker 7: It's like what do you leave out? Because there's so much.
Speaker 1: For my part, I had co editor reread books with
Speaker 1: PM Press previously, and they were looking at aspects of
Speaker 1: pulp and popular publishing over the period that for one
Speaker 1: of the better word a lot of people call, or
Speaker 1: certainly learn of academics called the long sixties, which is
Speaker 1: that notion that the sixties really have their generous genesis
Speaker 1: obviously in the nineteen fifties, and the sort of political,
Speaker 1: social economic changes that happened in the sixties reverberate all
Speaker 1: the way really into the nineteen eighty. So this book
Speaker 1: was a good fit with that. And I was a
Speaker 1: bit sick of writing about hope and popular fiction. I
Speaker 1: was actually quite keen to see something different, and I
Speaker 1: was really interested to do something on film. And Sam
Speaker 1: was certainly someone whose work I had admired for a
Speaker 1: long time, and so it was great to work with
Speaker 1: her on this, and it was great to do something
Speaker 1: which stretched me in terms of writing about film for
Speaker 1: a book project and writing about a whole lot of
Speaker 1: films and I was really interested in which I hadn't
Speaker 1: written about before. And as Sam said, there were many
Speaker 1: complicated aspects of the book, but one of them was
Speaker 1: how you narrow it down because there is so much
Speaker 1: so you had to have We had to have the
Speaker 1: sort of the key ones we have to have, got,
Speaker 1: we have to have Guillo, Pontecorvo, cost discover Us films
Speaker 1: like Z. Those are your basic ones that you just
Speaker 1: can't avoid having and you should have them. But then
Speaker 1: there's also a huge slath of material that then became
Speaker 1: quite difficult to short through and what we include and
Speaker 1: what we don't include. Yeah, that was a sort of continual,
Speaker 1: a good dynamic tension in the project right up almost
Speaker 1: until we submitted the manuscript.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was like towards the end there it was
Speaker 4: like what final essays can we shoehorn into this book?
Speaker 4: Because we both just kept finding stuff that we're genuinely
Speaker 4: really excited about, which is the best feeling for a
Speaker 4: book project, rather than being like what else do we
Speaker 4: have to include?
Speaker 1: And also a sort of truncating our desire, the possibility
Speaker 1: that you could just pretty much do the entire book
Speaker 1: on Italy, and within that you could almost do the
Speaker 1: entire book on Gamor of volentatous spirit animal of the book,
Speaker 1: because he's in so many of the film that we
Speaker 1: wanted to do and really trying to. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of there's a lot of Volantai in the book,
Speaker 1: which is a good thing.
Speaker 2: I haven't spoken to both of you about a Valente.
Speaker 2: I'm sure that, Yeah, he is right there on the
Speaker 2: cover of So how did you determine that size of
Speaker 2: the box as far as what was going to go
Speaker 2: into this and what wasn't.
Speaker 4: Something that I have trouble reckoning with in my writing
Speaker 4: in general, is like more mainstream cinema, which I often
Speaker 4: find to be a lot of It is just like
Speaker 4: capitalist propaganda cleverly spun into something else, like at least
Speaker 4: if you're talking about political violence and films. So once
Speaker 4: we figured out, okay, we could do art house movies
Speaker 4: and other like marginal things like different types of genre cinema.
Speaker 4: You know, the subtitle is from the art House to
Speaker 4: the Grindhouse. It's like that still alone could be like
Speaker 4: ten volumes, but at least it now married it a
Speaker 4: little bit.
Speaker 1: A lot of it's also about with these projects, it's
Speaker 1: what you want and what you can find people to
Speaker 1: write about. We were paying contributors that they weren't being
Speaker 1: paid huge amount, and so to get people who can
Speaker 1: write well, write the kind of stuff we wanted in
Speaker 1: the book, but also something that they wanted to contribute it.
Speaker 1: And that was a bit of a push and pull too,
Speaker 1: which is a good thing us approaching people and saying
Speaker 1: do you want to write about this, but also people saying, oh, look, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure about that, but I'd be quite interested.
Speaker 1: I've got an idea to do this, and then shaping
Speaker 1: that idea is important. And I think also with this material,
Speaker 1: and this is a sort of commonality with the books
Speaker 1: I'd done for PM Press about polp and popular fiction.
Speaker 1: We did one book, I did one book with all
Speaker 1: three of those were done with a friend of mine
Speaker 1: in Melbourne called Ian McIntyre. And one book we did
Speaker 1: was about representations of youth devancy and popular culture and
Speaker 1: pulp and popular fiction. And we also did a book
Speaker 1: on how the Long sixties, in terms of revolutionary countercultural
Speaker 1: movements work were depicted in pulp and popular fiction, and
Speaker 1: we didn't went on science fiction as well, on radical
Speaker 1: science fiction. But the difficulty is that the material is
Speaker 1: I don't want to say those words hasn't aged well
Speaker 1: or as controversial or as problematic, because they're all massive
Speaker 1: weasel words and I absolutely hate them, and there is
Speaker 1: no mention of any of those terms in the book.
Speaker 1: But it takes a certain skill to write perceptively and
Speaker 1: sensitively about materials that a lot of people find easy
Speaker 1: to dismiss because it's exploitative, or it's got a lot
Speaker 1: of violence in it, or it's got a lot of
Speaker 1: sex in it, or there's sexual violence or all those things.
Speaker 1: So you've got to be able to write about it
Speaker 1: in such a way that you're paying that material its respects,
Speaker 1: looking at why it came out and the roots of
Speaker 1: that material, and good in that material, and what's interesting
Speaker 1: in that material, but also what's what can be difficult
Speaker 1: in that material, but in a way that it's not
Speaker 1: looking down on the material. It's hard to write about
Speaker 1: some of that culture well, I think in a non
Speaker 1: sneering way, in not an overly academic way, in a
Speaker 1: way that recognizes this material as connected to radical directors
Speaker 1: or for the most part, and radical movements or even
Speaker 1: just radical milliures or is influenced by that, even if
Speaker 1: it's sometimes unconsciously influenced by that.
Speaker 4: Annie rose Melmett wrote this chapter about rap revenge films,
Speaker 4: especially the rep revenge films focused around like girl gangs,
Speaker 4: and tied it to politics and to second wave feminism
Speaker 4: in such an interesting way where I definitely feel like
Speaker 4: she's the only person who could have written that chapter
Speaker 4: in that way, because to have someone write about rep
Speaker 4: revenge films and take them seriously while also not trying
Speaker 4: to spin them into something bigger than they actually are
Speaker 4: or weightier than they actually are their exploitation movies, but
Speaker 4: to connect it with these more very angry, violent, at
Speaker 4: least in terms of language, feminist writers and feminist movements,
Speaker 4: to me, it just that's really I think sums up
Speaker 4: what we are going for, is like people who take
Speaker 4: the political content seriously but can also write about films,
Speaker 4: whether it's an art house film or a low budget
Speaker 4: exploitation movie, with the same level of respect. And I
Speaker 4: feel like you did a very similar thing with your
Speaker 4: essay about these films from Peter Watkins and from other
Speaker 4: people too, where you have all these sort of futuristic
Speaker 4: humans hunting humans and it being broadcast on television. Like,
Speaker 4: I've definitely read some online writing about those films that
Speaker 4: is so disrespectful of them, and I think everyone who
Speaker 4: contributed to the book had a similar level of taking
Speaker 4: the subject matters seriously and being not to use the
Speaker 4: same war twelve times in one paragraph, but respectfully.
Speaker 2: Well, tell me about some of your other contributors.
Speaker 4: We have an interesting mix of fiction writers, academics, film critics,
Speaker 4: Like we have Matthew Kowalski writing about Yugoslavian cinema and
Speaker 4: the Yugoslavian Black Wave, and he's a really wonderful academic
Speaker 4: who has contributed to some Blu Ray releases. I know
Speaker 4: he did something for Working Class Goes to Heaven for
Speaker 4: the Radiance release, But mostly he's an academic who focuses
Speaker 4: on Eastern Europe and Soviet Union and is just so
Speaker 4: knowledgeable in that area, but also is somebody with communist
Speaker 4: radical politics, so it's like when he writes about it,
Speaker 4: you could tell that he's super super passionate.
Speaker 1: Another contributor, someone I know from Melbourne, is that he
Speaker 1: is a fiction author called Christos Chalkis. His parents were
Speaker 1: Greek immigrants to Australia in the nineteen sixties. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure he's gay, comes from a working class Greek migrant family,
Speaker 1: and I knew that he was really interested in the
Speaker 1: work of Costa Gambraus, so I asked him if he
Speaker 1: would be interested in looking at what is Gambras's most
Speaker 1: famous film, which is z or Z depending on which
Speaker 1: part of the world that you come from, and he did.
Speaker 1: He was keen to do it, and he did a
Speaker 1: really interesting take on that film, which I hadn't read
Speaker 1: anywhere else, actually, about how it intersected with his own
Speaker 1: awakening as a queer person, and also basically how it
Speaker 1: intersected with his own working class politics coming up in
Speaker 1: radical Greek sort of communist movements in or nineteen, which
Speaker 1: is really good.
Speaker 4: There's also Michael Gonzalez who wrote his piece is similar
Speaker 4: to Christosi's in the way that they both feel really personal.
Speaker 4: So he wrote this great essay about the spookou sat
Speaker 4: by the Door, which you know, you couldn't have a
Speaker 4: book like this without covering that film, and he talks
Speaker 4: about what it was like to grow up watching it,
Speaker 4: and it strikes this really great balance between being a
Speaker 4: more journalistic piece about the history of this incredible film
Speaker 4: that got buried and also just what it meant to
Speaker 4: him as I think he grew up in Baltimore, Is
Speaker 4: that right?
Speaker 1: I grew up in New York in Brooklyn. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure it was Brooklyn, but he now lives in Baltimore here.
Speaker 4: That's I think that's where I was getting that mixed up.
Speaker 4: But like talking about his experience watching it as a
Speaker 4: young black kid growing up, seeing it especially present themes
Speaker 4: so differently than the stereotypical black playation movies, and who
Speaker 4: else do we have. We've also got Robert Skvarla, who
Speaker 4: specializes he does some film writing, but he is mostly
Speaker 4: a kind of journalistic writer about conspiracy theories. Like he's
Speaker 4: written a lot about the CIA's involvement in popular culture
Speaker 4: and things like that. And he wrote about the Killing
Speaker 4: of America, which is this Mondo movie from the early eighties,
Speaker 4: and just this history of the Mondo films as being
Speaker 4: this weird mashup of pseudo documentary and exploitation movie, and
Speaker 4: a lot of them really focus on violence as being
Speaker 4: this sort of foundational component of American society.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another one was Kimberly Limberg's, who is another US based
Speaker 1: screens writer, sort of film critic whose work quite liked
Speaker 1: for a long time.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: She's great, and she did a terrific chapter on films
Speaker 1: that look at sort of American campus revolt films from
Speaker 1: the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies, particularly focusing
Speaker 1: on Antonioni's A Briski Point in nineteen seventy, which is
Speaker 1: both another one of those films that you can't do
Speaker 1: a book like this without doing a Briski Point, and
Speaker 1: I think that, interestingly, a film I had seen ages
Speaker 1: ago and hadn't really cared very much for. But when
Speaker 1: I read kimberlyze writing on this film, and she actually
Speaker 1: writes about half a dozen other films as well as
Speaker 1: A Briskie Point. She also does the Strawberry statement getting straight.
Speaker 1: But when I read her piece and read what she
Speaker 1: was saying about a Briski Point, I went back and
Speaker 1: revisited it and got a lot more out of it
Speaker 1: this time, which is one of the things I also
Speaker 1: really loved about doing this book, because discovering new films
Speaker 1: but also reading what our contributors had said about the
Speaker 1: films and then going back and visiting them based on that.
Speaker 1: And that's something I also did while we were working
Speaker 1: with Christos on his chapter on Z I went back
Speaker 1: and revisited that silm and that got a lot more
Speaker 1: out of it with the richness of what Christos was
Speaker 1: saying about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's similarly for me, Scott Adlerberg wrote this chapter
Speaker 4: about Brazilian cinema Novo, comparing Glaberosia to Coffin Joe and
Speaker 4: growing up watching Coffin Joe movies like Bootleggs Bad transfer
Speaker 4: VHS tapes to reread something about him in that context
Speaker 4: of his films having this component of political resistance made
Speaker 4: me think about them in a whole new way. Like
Speaker 4: at first when he pitched the essay, because we knew
Speaker 4: we wanted someone to do brazil cinema, like you could
Speaker 4: do a version of this book just focused on Central
Speaker 4: and South American cinema. But his pitch of comparing the
Speaker 4: two of them, in my head, I was like, how
Speaker 4: is he going to make this work? But it works
Speaker 4: and it's such an interesting comparison.
Speaker 2: Along with Central and South America. I'm sure you could
Speaker 2: do a whole book just on Africa in African Cinema.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was one of my sort of rabbit holes
Speaker 4: that I fell down, where I wrote about Sarah Melderer
Speaker 4: and Uzman Semben and also Yusef Shaheen, who's an Egyptian filmmaker.
Speaker 4: Writing those essays closer to when we were finishing up
Speaker 4: the manuscript was a really positive experience because some of
Speaker 4: those films are more hopeful in a lot of ways,
Speaker 4: especially knowing that a lot of these African countries while
Speaker 4: these films were being made, were able to successfully win
Speaker 4: their wars of life liberation and throw off the colonial government.
Speaker 4: So it was a nice thing to dive into after
Speaker 4: writing these depressing European chapters like the New German Cinema ones,
Speaker 4: it's just so doom and gloom. It's like we're being
Speaker 4: repressed by these former Nazis. But having a couple of
Speaker 4: those African essays to write again, you could do a
Speaker 4: whole book on African cinema and probably some African writers
Speaker 4: as well, just like the whole diaspora.
Speaker 1: Even while we've been doing this book, it feels like
Speaker 1: the ground shifted a little bit because Sam and I
Speaker 1: had been talking about how Oh, theok Criterions doing a
Speaker 1: season of these films, and Australian set up with the
Speaker 1: Moving Image did a season of films on em bedding
Speaker 1: earlier this year. So the stuff that we thought was
Speaker 1: very hard to find, he suddenly begin getting a sort
Speaker 1: of a new look, which is nice. So a lot
Speaker 1: of lost film in the book, we're a lot of
Speaker 1: very hard to find film cultures that have been really
Speaker 1: used that the Invot term erased by various things, all lost,
Speaker 1: and a lot of that is obviously in the global South,
Speaker 1: but also in America. There was this really interesting American director,
Speaker 1: I don't know when you've heard of him, Mike called
Speaker 1: Robert Kramer. I wrote an essay quite late in the
Speaker 1: piece about a nineteen seventy Kramer film called Ice, which
Speaker 1: is essentially about this student worker revolution in America in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy. Quite a strange film. But all of Kramer's
Speaker 1: filmography is really hard to find, almost impossible to find
Speaker 1: in some respects, and let's just say that we had
Speaker 1: to get creative in terms of sourcing some other films.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is interesting though, from when we started talking
Speaker 4: about it and initially plotting an outline to now that
Speaker 4: the book is out, it does feel like there's just
Speaker 4: something in the air, because like Criterion has that Yusef
Speaker 4: Shaheen series on the channel, they put out some usman
Speaker 4: Semben films recently. Fingers crossed, maybe maybe some of those
Speaker 4: harder to find films will start to materialize.
Speaker 7: Some of it.
Speaker 4: I think, like writing about Egyptian cinema and trying to
Speaker 4: do more writing about Middle Eastern cinema, it was shocking
Speaker 4: to me to learn how little there is in certain
Speaker 4: areas because of the way the governments are set up
Speaker 4: and because of the way cinema is managed. So it's
Speaker 4: like from certain regions you just have this explosion of
Speaker 4: political violence and revolution on screen in films, and then
Speaker 4: in other regions that you could just hear the crickets chirping.
Speaker 1: Well, when we were talking about this with a recent
Speaker 1: episode of and as yet on a public episode of
Speaker 1: your podcast that's coming up, when we're talking about Yu,
Speaker 1: said Jahanes Jamilla the Algeria, which is a nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: film that he did about the sort of revolution in Algeria,
Speaker 1: very much focused on a female figure, and that revolution
Speaker 1: is we were talking about the fact that Jahan himself
Speaker 1: I think did a large number of films, and the
Speaker 1: characters in that film, now some of those were in
Speaker 1: sixty seventy. When there's one guy in that film that
Speaker 1: was at one hundred and thirty two Egyptian films, and
Speaker 1: that makes you realize that there's this whole body of
Speaker 1: film out there that you're completely ignorant about.
Speaker 4: For some of those Egyptian films, you have to really
Speaker 4: like melodramas and musicals.
Speaker 2: Well, speaking of melodramas and musicals, I was really happy
Speaker 2: that you have Indian films represented as.
Speaker 4: Well, and none of them are melodramas or musicals. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that was actually really exciting that we were able to get.
Speaker 4: So this Indian film writer, Udai Batia, wrote this book
Speaker 4: about Indian crime cinema, and he wrote a chapter for
Speaker 4: our book about these gangster films that kind of a
Speaker 4: little bit like what Melville does and what some of
Speaker 4: the French sixties and seventies crime directors do. A lot
Speaker 4: of these Indian gangster movies, which are again incredibly difficult
Speaker 4: to find for English friendly releases, they are similarly all
Speaker 4: about how gangsters and these organized crime gangs are basically
Speaker 4: created by the conditions of poverty and colonialism and government
Speaker 4: corruption and fit right in. And we knew there's so
Speaker 4: much more with Indian cinema you could do in a
Speaker 4: book like this. It just finding somebody with that expertise.
Speaker 4: So we're so grateful that OUDA came on board.
Speaker 2: Were there any areas of the globe that you wanted
Speaker 2: to have representation from about We're unable to find somebody
Speaker 2: to pen something.
Speaker 4: I think some of it was an issue of word count,
Speaker 4: so I really wanted to do more another Middle Eastern
Speaker 4: cinema chapter and something on Persian cinema. But once we
Speaker 4: started adding in these shorter essays, and once we hit
Speaker 4: our word limit count, it was like, Okay, we have
Speaker 4: covered a lot. We could say more about South American cinema.
Speaker 4: We could say more about probably Soviet adjacent cinema, probably
Speaker 4: more about Hong Kong cinema. We could have fit in here,
Speaker 4: although that's a little bit trickier because they do have
Speaker 4: some restrictions.
Speaker 7: Could do ten of these volumes.
Speaker 1: I think Latin America, Latin America, I think Latin America
Speaker 1: and South America was certainly one area that we could
Speaker 1: have just done a huge amount more. There's nothing for Mexico.
Speaker 1: There's nothing from a number of the Latin American countries. Cuba, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a chapter. There's a sort of outtake on some
Speaker 1: of the films in Argentina, and there's also one about
Speaker 1: George Sanginis, who was a Bolivian director. But there was
Speaker 1: so much and of course we have mentioned Scott's essay
Speaker 1: about the sort of unlikely connections between Glora Roacher and
Speaker 1: Jose Marines. But we could have done so much more
Speaker 1: about Latin America, really gone deep into that I discovered,
Speaker 1: and you constantly discovered as you're doing these books. It's
Speaker 1: like the same when I was doing the pulp and
Speaker 1: popular fiction books. You're always finding stuff, and then when
Speaker 1: the book is finished and comes out, he's still finding stuff.
Speaker 1: I came across Robert Kramer's work quite late in the book,
Speaker 1: so there's a short essay on his nineteen seventy film
Speaker 1: Without a Revolution in America in the United States in
Speaker 1: New York called Ice. But there's so much more. Would
Speaker 1: have been glat to have another chapter on him. Oh,
Speaker 1: we could have gone to town on so much more. Friendship,
Speaker 1: Italian and as you say, Sam, Eastern European stuff that
Speaker 1: we could have covered.
Speaker 4: My probably biggest regret is that I wasn't so when
Speaker 4: I was digging around trying to make a list of
Speaker 4: potential films from North Africa and the Middle East to include,
Speaker 4: I found some Lebanese films that I would have liked
Speaker 4: to have written about, but I was trying really hard
Speaker 4: to find Palestinian films that would qualify. And I don't
Speaker 4: think we've talked about this in the episode yet, but
Speaker 4: our parameters were the Cold War, so roughly nineteen fifty
Speaker 4: five to the very early nineties, around nineteen ninety and
Speaker 4: no documentaries, and the only Palestinian films I could find
Speaker 4: surviving from the seventies were documentaries because everything else was
Speaker 4: just destroyed or confiscated. I'm sure something is out there,
Speaker 4: and there's probably a Palestinian cinema expert who would be like, oh, yes, duh,
Speaker 4: you should have written about this, but you're both.
Speaker 2: So too per film letter were their titles that surprised
Speaker 2: you where you said, oh, I've never heard of this before.
Speaker 2: It sounds like maybe Robert Kramer was a little bit
Speaker 2: of a surprise for you, Andrew what else really stuck out?
Speaker 2: And then also delighted you when you finally got to
Speaker 2: see it.
Speaker 4: For me, and Andrew brought this up, but when I
Speaker 4: was writing my Usef Shaheen Egyptian Cinema essay, finding that
Speaker 4: he made this film called Jamila the Algerian which is
Speaker 4: about this real life figure Jamila Buherad, who was female
Speaker 4: freedom fighter, and to have an Egyptian film from the
Speaker 4: late fifties made while the Algerian War was occurring, focused
Speaker 4: almost exclusively on the female characters like absolutely blew my
Speaker 4: mind and I wish that one was included with this
Speaker 4: Criterion Channel series.
Speaker 7: But it really changed a.
Speaker 4: Lot about how I thought about Middle Eastern cinema, even
Speaker 4: considering that if film like that existed, where it's all
Speaker 4: about women just bombing the shit out of their colonial
Speaker 4: oppressors basically, but also with melodrama and romance and a
Speaker 4: musical number had the same.
Speaker 1: Song to God with the Wind, which is repurposed attic
Speaker 1: aspect dramatic point of the film, which is terrific. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Kramer was certainly. Kramer was certainly a interesting discovery for
Speaker 1: me revisiting some of those films that Kimberly wrote about
Speaker 1: in her chapter on American Campus Revolt Films was really good.
Speaker 1: I mean, I talked about how we could have done
Speaker 1: so much more on sort of South America. But the
Speaker 1: George san Ginis films, he was a sort of Bolivian
Speaker 1: new cinema director who has had a very strong anti colonial,
Speaker 1: pro the Bolivian Indians perspective in his films and then
Speaker 1: eventually fell fout of the military dictatorship in a military
Speaker 1: moment in Bolivia and moved about the placemaking films. His
Speaker 1: stuff is really it's really pretty incredible, especially given that
Speaker 1: it's made or an absolute shoe string some of his films.
Speaker 1: There's one particular film he makes. It's a nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine film which is not an unknown film called Blood
Speaker 1: of the Condor, which is essentially about based on stories
Speaker 1: that were in the pretty sure the oblivion press, about
Speaker 1: how members of the Peace Corps were sterilizing Bolivian Indian
Speaker 1: women as part of their activities, and it's all about
Speaker 1: that and about the revolt against these Peace Corps of
Speaker 1: this particular Indian village, the revolt against these Peace Corps workers.
Speaker 1: That's a really interesting film. Some of the Argentinian films
Speaker 1: are really interesting. These aren't hard to find films, but
Speaker 1: I personally got a lot out of this chapter I
Speaker 1: wrote in there about testy films, but also just talking
Speaker 1: specifically about those films that combine their crime plot with
Speaker 1: vaguely defied right wing conspiracies to destroy the Italian state
Speaker 1: and to asher ina right wing dictatorship, of which there
Speaker 1: are a surprisingly large number in the Putzier Testi pet
Speaker 1: of films. Watching those was terrific. This one particular film
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, I think it is, it's a Damiani
Speaker 1: film called I Am Afraid with Our Men of Alante.
Speaker 1: That was a particular highlight of those films. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some great films in that lot as well. It
Speaker 1: was great watching all of those together as well.
Speaker 4: You also wrote this chapter about Patty Hirst exploitation movies
Speaker 4: that kind of blew my mind a little bit because
Speaker 4: I didn't realize there were so many of them.
Speaker 1: Of course there were, including sort of Patty Hurst porn
Speaker 1: film or Patty Hurst sort of sexploitation film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Patty just called that. I think it was cooled, okay,
Speaker 2: because there's one called Patty by Robert L. Roberts that
Speaker 2: I've been looking for forever.
Speaker 4: How there are so many film makers exploiting history because.
Speaker 1: He was a pop culture fathing frenzy, wasn't she The
Speaker 1: story of an heiress to a fortune who then turns
Speaker 1: into a revolutionary is photographed robbing a bank, and around
Speaker 1: that the whole sort of the whole air, oh, the
Speaker 1: sexual air that she's potentially sleeping with, the captors and
Speaker 1: all of that is tabloid matter from heaven.
Speaker 2: How long did it actually take to put this whole
Speaker 2: thing together?
Speaker 7: I don't so.
Speaker 4: The pandemic has really warped my sense of time. Possibly
Speaker 4: aging as well has done that. So I want to
Speaker 4: say about two years?
Speaker 7: Is that right?
Speaker 1: About a year and a half?
Speaker 6: I think?
Speaker 7: I think didn't take that long. In the grand scheme
Speaker 7: of things.
Speaker 2: It feels like it must have taken a lot longer
Speaker 2: just because of the depth of the material. And then
Speaker 2: just how good the book looks. Who did your layout
Speaker 2: for this?
Speaker 1: Braw and lang la y and g I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: is the layout got?
Speaker 7: It looks so beautiful.
Speaker 1: Ramsey hads at times made comments to me about how expensive.
Speaker 1: Some of the previous books I've done for him have
Speaker 1: been some of those pop and popular fiction books which
Speaker 1: are also full color illustrated books. So I said, oh, look,
Speaker 1: maybe just a few black and white five ties, Ramsey,
Speaker 1: we don't need a lot, just a couple of things,
Speaker 1: and I said, oh, love, I think we should like
Speaker 1: a full color you know, that increases the appeal of
Speaker 1: the book. And I've just done an absolutely stupendous job
Speaker 1: on this.
Speaker 4: That part is so important because so much of the
Speaker 4: marketing for these films, like so many incredible posters and
Speaker 4: promo images, and it just I don't think it would
Speaker 4: be nearly as dynamic without showing so much of that
Speaker 4: so boring to most people.
Speaker 1: Which is something we strenuously wanted to avoid.
Speaker 2: When the cover price is not that bad compared to
Speaker 2: how thick and juicy this book is better.
Speaker 4: Than working with an academic publisher where you're not really
Speaker 4: allowed to include color images and a book half that size.
Speaker 4: It's they're like, all right, that'll be eighty dollars.
Speaker 1: It'd be made one hundred and forty one hundred and fifty.
Speaker 7: When US dollars.
Speaker 4: I feel like them Press have been so great to
Speaker 4: work with, and some of it is they seem very
Speaker 4: aware that they're trying to put together a book package
Speaker 4: that people will want to read, like making it easier
Speaker 4: for people, whereas so many other publishing companies that I've
Speaker 4: worked for seem to not want people to read or
Speaker 4: buy the books. It's like, why are you guys in business?
Speaker 1: Pam's thing is really he's really about getting books in
Speaker 1: the hands of paper. Ramsey's a massive bibliophile. He's constantly lamenting.
Speaker 6: To me.
Speaker 1: That the people out rating as much as they used to.
Speaker 1: So the whole thing is constantly trying to get books
Speaker 1: as good books as possible at the chiefest price possible,
Speaker 1: and move them as much as possible and to people
Speaker 1: who will read them. PM prins they are a radical publisher.
Speaker 1: PM Press obviously a distributor that gets the books into shops,
Speaker 1: but they do a large number of festivals, concerts, political events.
Speaker 1: They're always having tables at all these sort of conferences
Speaker 1: and events that where they move books and a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff on music, punk culture and anarchist culture. They
Speaker 1: do some tremendous stuff. They also released I noticed because
Speaker 1: there's an ad in the back of our book for them.
Speaker 1: They also released a book on the Angry Brigade, which
Speaker 1: was this British urban guerrilla group in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to have to pick that up.
Speaker 6: And they also put out a two.
Speaker 1: Volume documentary history of the Red Army Faction.
Speaker 7: This is the struggle.
Speaker 4: Every time I go on their website, I just want
Speaker 4: to buy everything, and I'm doing so. They're going to
Speaker 4: have a I don't know when this episode is coming out,
Speaker 4: but on Sunday, the twenty ninth, they are doing the
Speaker 4: Brooklyn Book Festival, and I'm going to go and sign things,
Speaker 4: and I feel like I'm going to have to leave
Speaker 4: my wallet at home because i know I'm going to
Speaker 4: want to buy everything that they have at this table.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Tell me about some of the events that you're doing
Speaker 2: to support the book.
Speaker 4: My first event is on Wednesday, the twenty fifth at
Speaker 4: Philamocha in Pennsylvania. In Philadelphia, I'm doing a secret screening
Speaker 4: of a Japanese pinky violence movie all about very angry
Speaker 4: teenage girls of course played by early to mid twenties
Speaker 4: actresses destroying a high school. And then I will be
Speaker 4: at the Brooklyn Book Festival on the twenty ninth. I
Speaker 4: think my next event that tickets aren't for sale yet,
Speaker 4: but October twenty eighth, I'm doing a screening at the
Speaker 4: Nighthawk in Brooklyn. I'm showing this German film called Bloody
Speaker 4: Friday that had script contributions from Fernando de Lio So
Speaker 4: if you like his Policziuteski films, you have an idea
Speaker 4: what to expect.
Speaker 7: But it's basically a.
Speaker 4: Very violent German crime movie where the bank robbers are
Speaker 4: politically motivated. And then I'm doing a couple of events
Speaker 4: in Chicago in the middle of November, and I'm booking
Speaker 4: things for La in January, so I will have all
Speaker 4: of those posted on Instagram once tickets become available.
Speaker 2: And Andrew, are you doing anything over in Melbourne for this?
Speaker 1: I'm not doing any events.
Speaker 2: I of Red Belbert.
Speaker 1: I am doing a lot of podcasts and various other
Speaker 1: activities online to try j yapp support for the book
Speaker 1: at Envious of Sam Bay Rep, Cinema Central as they
Speaker 1: are in New York.
Speaker 7: Pise, Yes, that's Rott.
Speaker 2: Is there a volume two in the works?
Speaker 4: People keep asking me this and I'm like, I don't know,
Speaker 4: this just came out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, give us a bride, give us a sick.
Speaker 2: I know that you both work on a ton of
Speaker 2: things all the time, though, so I wouldn't put it
Speaker 2: past you.
Speaker 4: That definitely was the struggle. Like we were saying earlier,
Speaker 4: I feel like the struggle of this is there. Once
Speaker 4: you go down these different national, regional rabbit holes, it's oh, now,
Speaker 4: here's a list of four hundred other movies that we
Speaker 4: could include.
Speaker 7: So we certainly could do a second volume. But I think.
Speaker 4: Because this just came out, it's a little bit hard
Speaker 4: to tell how into it people are. And I think
Speaker 4: working with a publisher, if you want to do a
Speaker 4: second volume, they need some hard evidence that the first
Speaker 4: volume is well received.
Speaker 2: I have no doubt that people are going to eat
Speaker 2: this up because it is so good and I had
Speaker 2: such a good time. Other than that one essay about
Speaker 2: Peter Watkins, everything else in that book is fantastic.
Speaker 1: That the guy who did that essay was a bit
Speaker 1: light with the contribution I saim to remember, we had
Speaker 1: to constantly get you, come on, get it to us.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, sounds about right, he tells, written under duress.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hear it does a bit of podcasting, so
Speaker 1: you might have been busy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's you know, he's not busy. He just hangs
Speaker 4: out and watches a lot of drag Race.
Speaker 1: Hangs out the hottop watching drag Race live in the dream.
Speaker 2: Now I've switched over to Guy Mont's Spelling Bee, so
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've had a chance to watch
Speaker 2: that one, but definitely check it out.
Speaker 7: I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 1: No, I have no idea what that even did.
Speaker 2: I can't remember if he's from New Zealand or if
Speaker 2: he's from Australia. But Guy Montgomery a big fan of
Speaker 2: the Australian task Master as well as the KI Week
Speaker 2: task Master.
Speaker 7: What's task Man? This is a whole world I don't
Speaker 7: know about task masters.
Speaker 2: This great TV show, Oh my gosh, I'll have to
Speaker 2: send you guys.
Speaker 1: Sounds like the sort of tain Y I Novo series Mosca.
Speaker 7: Is it a reality TV show?
Speaker 2: It's basically five comedians and they make them do stupid
Speaker 2: things and they record them doing it, and then they
Speaker 2: bring them back to the studio and they replay the
Speaker 2: stupid things that they did and get their reactions from it,
Speaker 2: and then they're judged by the task Master and he
Speaker 2: gives them points for how well or not well they
Speaker 2: did on these things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is like a whole most reality television and
Speaker 4: this kind of like performative reaction television is a whole
Speaker 4: world that I am not familiar with.
Speaker 2: It is hilarious, I have to say, so, it's really
Speaker 2: good stuff when you are not writing books. Andrew, where
Speaker 2: can people filld view online?
Speaker 1: They can sawn may lasted all over social media, often
Speaker 1: under the Monika pulp Curry, and they can also have
Speaker 1: sawned me doing a substack newsletter under my own I'm
Speaker 1: Andrew Netty on.
Speaker 2: Substack and Sam how about yourself?
Speaker 4: You can find me on Instagram under my own name,
Speaker 4: very boringly and also on Patreon, and I think those
Speaker 4: are the only two places I'm online.
Speaker 2: And where's the best place to buy the book?
Speaker 7: Through PM press? At this point?
Speaker 4: I think it's available through most online booksellers from what
Speaker 4: people have been telling me. Also, Diabolic DVD is selling it,
Speaker 4: so if you're on there to buy some Blu rays,
Speaker 4: please add it to your cart. Vinegar Syndrome should also
Speaker 4: have it on their store soon.
Speaker 1: I think it's because it's should be asked. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: basically on all the online LA's fall. You can also
Speaker 1: get it via the Great Satan Amazon, and you can
Speaker 1: obviously buy it from PM press in terms of in stores.
Speaker 1: It should be hitting US bookstores roundabout now.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Someone wrote me a day or two ago saying they
Speaker 4: found it in a Chicago bookstore.
Speaker 1: Really now that's starting to come out. That's great, UK people.
Speaker 1: It should be out if the distributor should be getting
Speaker 1: it sometime in early October. Australian peeps.
Speaker 6: Hey, that's just a luck.
Speaker 1: The distributor will be getting it out. But I also
Speaker 1: have copies. Track hunt me down and get a copy
Speaker 1: off me.
Speaker 2: Sam and Andrew, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: This was fantastic.
Speaker 7: Thank you so much.
Speaker 6: Thank you that.
Speaker 8: That squab that someday something something something something that something.
Speaker 6: Do that? Do that?
Speaker 5: Do that?
Speaker 8: Do you think that that that you ta.
Speaker 1: Do?
Speaker 8: What you can? Bum in grind.
Speaker 1: It is good for your mind.
Speaker 6: Why you can do showers?
Speaker 3: Letty it all hang out, but you shout the children shine.
Speaker 8: Waiting til of playing.
Speaker 5: In the fall and rain.
Speaker 6: I'd rather Rose Rose.
Speaker 1: Because he's good for my boy.
Speaker 3: But you the children of the river, shoo the children
Speaker 3: of the river shall the children of the.
Speaker 6: Shot, now you long the children.
Speaker 8: Shot down?
Speaker 3: Get wong the child on the shot, now long the
Speaker 3: children on the shot.
Speaker 5: Is own way.
Speaker 8: Standing step step wo