Ridgewood Babylon
three interviews and another in-person appearance
AS MY INTEREST DRIFTS further and further away from contemporary cinema (Backrooms? Obsession? The Odyssey? I have to wash my hair that night), it’s an honor and a privilege when I get the chance to try and support still-alive artists in my reduced capacity as a critic/journalist.
To wit, I’ve published three filmmaker interviews in the last 10 days:
For Tone Glow, a far-ranging conversation with husband-and-wife filmmaker duo (and fellow Ridgewood, Queens residents) Sarah Halpern and Tim Geraghty about their staggering new miniseries/documentary monument, which just concluded a wildly successful week run at Anthology Film Archives. The film probes into the history of Tim’s home state of Rhode Island from a formally kaleidoscopic, unabashedly political and courageously personal perspective, foregoing the tropes of “objective” nonfiction cinema. I don’t know when or where monument will play next, but I strongly urge any programmers reading this to get in touch with them; for me it’s instantly one of the key films of 2026. (It also makes me happy this is their first interview ever published about monument.)
For Screen Slate, a discussion with San Diego-based film theorist/historian/director/educator Jean-Pierre Gorin, most famous for cofounding the Dziga Vertov Group with Jean-Luc Godard, occasioned by his NYC takeover which continues tonight with Vladimir and Rosa at L’Alliance Francaise, and concludes tomorrow in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, with Poto and Cabengo at e-flux. Gorin is a true raconteur who, to borrow the term of a friend discussing the British artist/author Stewart Home, “bores a million wormholes one sentence”. Our conversation is a kind of Gorin 101; after 90+ minutes of base-covering questions and answers, I felt a bit like it was time to start the real interview. Anyone in New York should prioritize making these last two screenings.
For Filmmaker, a talk with Chie Hayakawa, whose debut feature Plan 75 starkly addressed Japan’s aging population crisis, and whose new movie Renoir is a deep meditation on grief as experienced by an 11-year-old girl in the summer of 1987. Like many Japanese filmmakers, Hayakawa spoke with a certain diplomatic formality, but as the interview went on we began to dig into the different ways people react to death, emotionally and societally. I think Renoir is one of the best coming-of-age films I’ve ever seen, and recommend making time for it before it leaves IFC Center this Thursday.
Last but not least, I’ll be at LOW Cinema tonight, in Ridgewood, to moderate a Q+A with James N. Kienitz Wilkins about his new picture The Misconceived, a brutally hilarious send-up of aging millennials coping with the fact their dreams of becoming rich and famous in the art world may not pan out as planned. (James invited me to design the above poster for the film.) We’ll be joined by my high school friend Matt Romein, who worked on the film’s motion-capture (or “MoCap”) aesthetic, rendering an upstate mumblecore dramedy in the style of a Grand Theft Auto cutscene via Unreal Engine. Tickets are still available, and James has tapped me to introduce the 10pm show of Ralph Bakshi’s misbegotten “Roger Rabbit on acid” movie Cool World as corollary programming.
That’s it for now. FDT, have a great weekend (if that’s your bag), and hopefully I’ll see you at the movies.
Current Mood: Busy! 🤪
Current Music: Herbie Hancock - Goodbye to Childhood
Special thanks to Davis Fowlkes, Monika Uchiyama, Joshua Minsoo Kim, Nico Pedrero-Setzer, Yuka Murakami, Eric Barroso, Jake Perlin, Michael Krause, Chloe Lizotte and Maxwell Paparella.
 | A guest post by
|