Writers on Film

Joseph Aisenberg is a writer and novelist. His book on Carrie is available in a new updated version here.

Writers on Film hits the Croissette, talking to David Marquand of EuroNews; Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian; Jo-Ann Titmarsh of The Evening Standard and Ed Potton of The Times. My own reviews can be found at Cine-Vue here and Next Best Picture here. I also wrote a couple of pieces for Variety, which can be found here.

We talk Life Above the Clouds: Steven DeLay's expansive collection of essays in this anthology proves that the subject of Malick is far from exhausted, and continues to affirm this filmmaker as an arousingartist of aesthetic, philosophical, and cinematic intrigue "In Life Above the Clouds: Philosophy in the Films of Terrence Malick, DeLay curates both established and emerging Malick contributors who keenly prove that illuminating conversations surrounding his work keep us returning to Malick with fresh takes and passionate inquiries." The Philosophical QuarterlySteven DeLay is Research Fellow at the Global Center for Advanced Studies. He is the author of Faint Not: Twelve Brief Meditations on the Word of God (2022), In the Spirit: A Phenomenology of Faith (2021), Before God: Exercises in Subjectivity (2020), and Phenomenology in France: A Philosophical and Theological Introduction (2019). His works of fiction include Elijah Newman Died Today: A Novella (2022) and Everything (2022). He is also the editor of the forthcoming Finding Meaning: Philosophy in Crisis based on the online series of essays "Finding Meaning" at Richard Marshall's 3:16 AM.

Jim Colvill is an editor based in New York City. He is also the publisher who along with Jake Perlin established Film Desk Books, a NYC based small press and online bookseller dedicated to books on cinema. He also edited The Press Gang, a collection of work from New York Press, with critics Godfrey Cheshire, Matt Zoller Seitz and Armond White. Here's a link to the site of Film Desk.

Al Clark comes back to the podcast to talk the second half of his career. Having left London and Virgin, Al embarked on a massively influential career in the Australian film industry. His films launched many an Australian star both in front of behind the camera. Here's the blurb from his second memoir: "Time Flies Too is the sequel to 2021’s beguiling and absorbing memoir Time Flies by Al Clark, who in its last paragraph married and settled in Australia after a Spanish village childhood, a Scottish boarding school education and nearly two decades of living and working in London in the pioneering days of Virgin Records.These new recollections playfully explore his adjustment to life in a new country, the labyrinth involved in making films, the gifted collaborators he encountered along the way, and the work itself — notably one of Australia’s most enduringly successful movies (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert ). It completes the journey of a solitary boy who fell in love with cinema, and of the man who strove to bring it to life."

James Peaty is film maker and writer. He's written for publishers including Marvel Comics, DC Comics and Dark Horse Comics in the US as well as Rebellion Publishing and Titan Comics in the UK. During that time he has written for titles including The Batman Strikes!, X-Men Unlimited, Green Arrow. Supergirl, Justice League Unlimited and Doctor Who. For 2000AD he wrote and co-created Skip Tracer (with artist Paul Marshall), while for The Judge Dredd Megazine he wrote and co-created Diamond Dogs (with artist Warren Pleece).

Melanie Williams is Professor in Film and Television Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK. A specialist in British cinema, her publications in this area include British Women’s Cinema (2009), Ealing Revisited (BFI, 2012), David Lean (2014), Female Stars of British Cinema: The Women in Question (2017) and Transformation and Tradition in 1960s British Cinema (2019).A Taste of Honey (1961) is a landmark in British cinema history. In this book, Melanie Williams explores the many, extraordinary ways in which it was trailblazing. It is the only film of the British New Wave canon to have been written by a woman – Shelagh Delaney, adapting her own groundbreaking stage play. At the behest of director Tony Richardson and his company, Woodfall, it was one of the first films to be made entirely on location, and was shot in an innovative, rough, poetic style by cinematographer Walter Lassally. It was also the launchpad for a new type of young female star in Rita Tushingham.Tushingham plays the young heroine, Jo, who finds she is pregnant after her love affair with Jimmy (Paul Danquah), a Black sailor. When Jimmy's ship sails away, Jo is comforted and supported by her gay friend Geoff (Murray Melvin), while her unreliable mother, Helen (Dora Bryan), has her own life to lead. Candid in its treatment of matters of gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality and motherhood, and highly distinctive in its evocation of place and landscape, A Taste of Honey marked the advent of new possibilities for the telling of working-class stories in British cinema. As such, its rich but complex legacy endures to this day.

Ethan Warren is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and is the writer and director of the film West of Her.

Adrian Martin was film reviewer for The Age between 1995 and 2006. For his numerous books, essays and public lectures he has won the Byron Kennedy Award (Australian Film Institute) and the Pascall Prize for Critical Writing, and his PhD on film style won the Mollie Holman Award. He is the author of ten books and hundreds of essays on film, art, television, literature, music, popular and avant-garde culture. His site can be reached here.