New Episodes on 2001 (The Year, Not the Film), Berlin's Best, Sirat, and More

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

It’s been a little while since my last round-up, but I’ve been busy putting together another slate of podcasts for your delectation. This time I bring you filmmakers and films you should know about from the Berlinale—episodes on countesses and queens, coups and sieges, Mouse and Flies, Everybody Loves Bill Evans and Everything Else Is Noise, Angela Schanelec and Alain Gomis.

But before I even left for Berlin, I snuck in a couple of doozies with MOMI curator Michael Koresky and with Metrograph’s intrepid editors. And then I spoke with one of the contenders for Best International Feature at the Academy Awards, Oliver Laxe, director of Sirat.

That’s all for now. Thank you to all the supporters of The Last Thing I Saw!

Nic

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Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are available at the usual podcast places (iTunes, Spotify, etc.).

Some writing I did.

For The Financial Times, I wrote an obituary for Robert Duvall and an article about the Lumière Brothers, who got us all into this (cinematic) mess, on the occasion of a new documentary, Lumiere! Le Cinéma, showing soon at the Museum of Modern Art and beyond.

For The New York Times, I reviewed The Inquisitor, a stirring documentary about the esteemed congresswoman and professor Barbara Jordan, who died 30 years ago.

I’ve written other articles that will publish down the road, so I’ll share a festival review for an excellent film that’s now getting its U.S. release: Kontinental ’25, opening March 27.

Some streaming ideas.

Gugusse et l’Automate (Library of Congress) Lost Méliès film is found! Whole, cool story here. Also, funnily enough it’s about AI-will-kill-us-all!

Ring (Criterion) Good old Ring-y!

The Death of Stalin (MUBI)

Faces (Criterion) Good old Faces-y!

The Color of Olives (Palestine Film Platform)

The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki is available for order in bookstores or at your online store of choice. My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service... all of Miyazaki’s lovely animated films are in here—their inspirations, their craft, their influences.

Contact me if you’re interested in setting up an event.

Here I may end with a song.

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at nicolas.rapold@gmail.com.

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer, and the author of the book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki (available now!) and the editor of the forthcoming Frederick Wiseman: Interviews. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The Financial Times, Sight & Sound, Screen Slate, The New York Times, Filmmaker, Air Mail, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications where I’ve also written include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, including both retrospectives and premieres—so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

On the editorial side, I’m a contributing editor at Screen Slate, which recently won a special award from the New York Film Critics Circle. Previously, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.