The Cinematologists Podcast - Small Things Like These

Neil and I met up outside Highbury and Islington and walked down Upper Street towards my new place, catching up on general news as we walked. We picked up some supplies on the way; I had promised to avail Neil of one of my house specialties—a gentrified bacon sandwich - avocado, feta cheese, and mustard unceremoniously displacing HP Sauce.

We talked work and the state of the world. Both subjects are things we can unload about with a common frame of reference, and a flow indicative of the intricate shortcuts one builds with a friend, particularly when you share a quite specific space of communication.

There’s always something both regenerative yet melancholic about reconnecting with my Cinematologists Podcast co-pilot to record an episode in person. We’ve been producing and disseminating the show for nearly 10 years now; the first two of those from Falmouth where we were university colleagues. After two of those years, I moved to Brighton and the regular structure of the podcast subsequently changed to remote recording.

I brought Neil into the new place. The sun was starting to penetrate the lounge windows as I showed him round (which took, of all, about 60 seconds). It was warm already and I was looking forward to taping as I started my coffee ritual and laid the bacon on the grill.

We ate, and talked about the upcoming season with ebullience and motivation, excited that for both of us the podcast still feels relevant in cinema’s perpetually uncertain landscape, and that quality of the work still possesses value. And we already have quite a full roster of episodes lined up for 2025, including industry collaborations and interviews.

We try to keep expanding, with bonus episodes, newsletters, festival coverage, and extended interviews. To that end I’m going to start sharing the podcasts directly to this section on my Substack. It seems clear in the current digital landscape, that meeting the audience on the platform they regularly use, rather than try to move people to a different platform, is best way of engaging new audiences.

But audience building has never compromised our sense of the podcast’s identity and decision about what we want to cover. Indeed, the eclecticism of subject and form perhaps plays to the detriment of gaining more listeners. But we’ve always refused to limit ourselves to a niche, generic formula or (hopefully) a rigid viewpoint.

The one grounding factor in the presence of our voices and thoughts reacting to the film, the interview, the topic. Indeed, the one compromise that I’m reminded of sitting opposite Neil is the ability to record in the physical space.

We do as good a job as possible with the software and postproduction to make the shows as seamless and aurally intimate as possible. But the presence of being in the room together for the conversation manifests what I want to describe as a resonance.

The acoustic application of this term is useful which thinking of an in person podcast conversation - the notion of subject-object relations as a vibrating system of mutual stimulation. However, in a broader sense, Sociologist Hartmund Rosa utilises the term to conceptualise a human sense of grounding in the world is manifested and shaped by a resonant synergy: a kind of textural feeling of presence, registered in the liminal space between mind and body, but attuned through material relations and experiences.

I want to write more on this, but suffice to say our alienated online existence promises resonance, but creates the opposite, a kind of silence or deadening. That feeling of being profoundly disassociated from people and the world.

Certainly, the affordances of technology cannot be underestimated. Indeed, podcasting would not be a thing with the complex of technologies that manifest not just an audio artefact, but a space that is somehow simultaneously material and conceptual.

I wonder if you, the listener, can hear a difference? But I’ll always idealise the feeling of resonance, those specific times when we can record the podcast in the same room. Its a just small reminder of the essence being.

---

In the first episode of the new season, Neil is in conversation with Belgian filmmaker Tim Mielants about his work on the recent release Small Things Like These, written by Enda Walsh (Hunger) and starring and produced by Cillian Murphy.

There’s a lovely balance between discussion of the production process, being an “outsider” to the context of the story, and how film style and form, particularly the close-up, are in the service of the main character’s psychology. Tim and Neil also talk about masculinity and grief, along with that old chestnut definition of a Christmas movie.

In our regular discussion, I pick up with Neil this idea of who gets to tell whose stories, the role of audience and character perception in understanding a film's perspective, and more on masculinity. Particularly, the different layers of guilt that can be projected onto boys if they don’t “act” in the right way.

If you are not familiar with the podcast, it might be worth checking out the back catalogue where you can get a sense of the eclecticism of the show. Against the niche-down advice that is advised by so many internet gurus, we have always looked to a broad range of cinematic subject matter along with looking to experiment with audio form as much as possible.

The Cinematologists Main Feed

The Cinematologists Patreon

---

FOR PAID SUBSCRIBERS

Our first bonus episode of the year is available for paid subscribers, in which we discuss two of the marquee releases – The Brutalist (Brady Corbet) and A Complete Unknown (James Mangold). These are films we both enjoyed, but with caveats. Along with discussion on the work, we look at how films implicitly present themselves, where form points to a wider context, and what implications this has for the nature of viewing.

Also in the paid section are some thoughts on Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths. A packed Curzon Screen 1 was there for the film, and a Q&A with Leigh and actor Michelle Austin. It’s the British director’s first film since the grand period drama Peterloo, and a return to modern London, along with a return which might simplistically be reduced to familial comedy-drama, but one in which humour leaves an acerbic taste and drama withholds well-worn rhythms of tragedy and redemption.

---

Thanks as always for reading, watching, or listening. If you are not already a subscriber, please consider doing so by hitting the button below. Also, if there’s anything here that strikes you as interesting, useful, or even mildly amusing, please feel free to share it in the Substack app or on any of those other platforms we like to decry but also can’t live without. Sharing and commenting (not just liking) is a gesture of curatorial practice and a morsel of resistance against complicity with the algorithmic overlords.

Lastly, if you have the means to afford a paid subscription for only £3.50 per month, you receive access to the paid portion of my work, which includes podcasts, extended interviews, and bonus writing. Every paid subscriber also receives an IRL postcard from me through the post. I know it’s hard when there are so many ways one’s attention and money are asked for, so I truly appreciate any support in helping me to build this Substack.