Barry Jenkins tells us about reclaiming and rebuilding America’s history of slavery in The Underground Railroad. Plus Promising Young Woman and the virgin/whore trope, Aubrey Plaza on Black Bear, Martin Scorsese’s discovery of Joe Pesci, Dea Kulumbegashvili’s Beginning, and a classic Satyajit Ray interview.
"No movie or television show can really speak to what it must have been like to have been my ancestors. But it doesn’t mean we can’t try."
Barry Jenkins
Barry Jenkins’s television series adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Underground Railroad is a 10-hour monument to America’s history of slavery and its modern day reverberations. As Devika Girish poignantly puts it in our cover feature, the series “gives thick, viscous life to stories that, while spinning a fantastical yarn, also serve to fill an absence in our cultural and cinematic record.”
In their wide-ranging conversation, Jenkins discusses the ethics of showing Black trauma on screen, the emotional intensity of creating the series, and rebuilding a history that America has tried to destroy.
Girish also speaks to Colson Whitehead, author of The Underground Railroad’s source novel, to hear his thoughts on Jenkins’s interpretation, and composer Nicholas Britell tells James Bells about his principles and inspirations whilst writing the series’ score.
Also in this issue, Hannah McGill examines Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Womanvia cinema‘s lengthy infatuation with the virgin/whore trope, and Anna Bogutskaya speaks to the director about the development of the film and its ‘hyper feminine‘ aesthetic.
Black Bearis a black-comic cabin in the woods drama, starring Aubrey Plaza in a disorienting dual role. Plaza tells Beatrica Loayza about working with writer-director Lawrence Michael Levine, playing an alcoholic, and the film‘s gruelling night shoots.
Extracts from Jay Glennie’s new book Raging Bull: The Making Of explain how Martin Scorsese stumbled across Joe Pesci and dragged him out of early retirement – it’s when Marty met Pesci.
Dea Kulumbegashvili, the director of Beginning, speaks to Jonathan Romney about her existential and explosive debut film and its place within the history of Georgian cinema.
And from our archive, a 1970 interview with legendary Indian director Satyajit Ray, whose centenary falls on 2 May, by Folke Isaksson. We also look back to Ray’s debut Pather Panchali via reflections from the great filmmaker himself.
Plus regular features:
Editorial Inside the box
Rushes
Block party The word is out: non-fungible tokens promise to revolutionise the ways artists, filmmakers included, make money from their work. But then again… By Pamela Hutchinson
+ Chain of fools? A short history of NFTs
Streaming: crossing continents The streaming service Shasha invites audiences to look at a region whose film traditions have often been ignored in the West. By Thomas Flew
Rising star: Annika Summerson The Swedish cinematographer of Mogul Mowgli and Censor in profile. By Katie McCabe.
Interview: X-ray vision Celeste Bell discusses her deeply personal portrait of her mother Marianne Elliott-Said, aka Poly Styrene, frontwoman of X-Ray Spex. By Katie McCabe.
+ Punk rock docs on overlooked acts
Berlinale highlights Diverse, unclassifiable and formally porous, the selection at the virtual Berlinale 2021 was one of the most exciting yet. By Ela Bittencourt.
Soundings: double act Screenwriter, actor and composer Amy Nostbakken talks about exploring the boundaries of the female voice in Mouthpiece. By Katie McCabe.
Obituary: Raymond Cauchetier: 1920-2021 His fame came late, but the iconic images of the self-taught photographer helped to define the aesthetic of the nouvelle vague. By Jonathan Romney.
+ A gallery of Cauchetier’s famous photos
Film craft: voice notes How do actors like Daniel Kaluuya and Daisy Edgar-Jones master new accents? Three dialect coaches reveal their secrets. By Nicole Davis.
+ Talking heads: recent film accents rated
History: when the lights went out The outbreak of World War II saw many UK cinemas shuttered in the same way they have been by Covid. How did film culture fare back then? By Henry K. Miller.
+ Spotlight: programmer Olwen Vaughan
Dream palaces: Genesis, Whitechapel Director Sarah Gavron, chronicler of London with her films Brick Lane, Suffragette and now Rocks, pays tribute to her favourite cinemas in the city.
Wide Angle Primal screen: shadow of a century The world of 1921 was surprisingly close to our own. Here, we choose 12 films from that year which capture the flavour of the times. By Bryony Dixon and Pamela Hutchinson.
Reviews
Films of the month
A Common Crime A well-heeled Buenos Aires academic faces a test of her liberal politics in Francisco Marquez’s incisive, mesmerising psychological thriller. Reviewed by Maria Delgado.
Los conductos Camilo Restrepo’s stunning debut mixes up myth, fantasy and contemporary Colombian social reality to potent effect. Reviewed by Jonathan Romney.
plus reviews of Black Bear Coming 2 America The Drifters Freaky I Care a Lot IWOW I Walk on Water Martyr Mouthpiece Moxie My Donkey, My Lover & I My Father and Me The Night Poly Styrene I Am a Cliché Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time Sequin in a Blue Room Sisters with Transistors Spring Blossom Verdict
Television of the month
ZeroZeroZero Reviewed by Nikki Baughan.
plus reviews of Bloodlands The Investigation Framing Britney Spears Man in Room 301
Home cinema features
Kiss the girls: Mädchen in Uniform The notorious/beloved Weimar drama of girls’-school passion and rebellion looks sharper and more subversive than ever. Reviewed by Phuong Le.
Rediscovery: The Complete Lenzi/Baker Giallo Collection Put together an Italian hack director and a washed-up Hollywood star and you get… four rather good gialli. Reviewed by Kim Newman.
Archive Television Robert Hanks returns to the summer of ’76 with the fly-on-the-wall navy series Sailor.
Lost and Found: The Last Stage One of the first films about the experience of the Nazi camps is also one of the best: it deserves to be far more widely known. Reviewed by Linda Mannheim.
plus reviews of The Criminal Code Demons 1 & 2 Ingagi The Jewish Soul: Ten Classics of Yiddish Cinema Kagemusha Survivor Ballads: Three Films by Shohei Imamura I Was at Home, But… Romeo Is Bleeding Things Change Twentieth Century
Books Wild Minds: The Artists and Rivalries That Inspired the Golden Age of Animation by Reid Mitenbuler (Black Cat) reviewed by J. Hoberman.
Goodbye Dragon Inn by Nick Pinkerton (Fireflies Press) reviewed by Sukhdev Sandhu
Robert De Niro at work: From Screenplay to Screen Performance by Adam Ganz and Steven Price (Palgrave Macmillan) reviewed by Philip Concannon.
Endings Fargo The cosy finale of the Coens’ great 1996 thriller sees warm domesticity win through against the chilly selfishness of the world outside. By Philip Kemp.
