A place to think deeply about movies
We discuss Benedict Cumberbatch at his best, worst, & poshest, from The Power of the Dog to The Courier to The Electrical Life of Louis Wain.
On today’s episode, we’ll be doing something a little different. Instead of our usual discussions of films with a panel of critics, Alex interviews British actress Olivia Vinall about performing Shakespeare. In this conversation, we talk about each of Olivia’s four Shakespearean roles: Desdemona, Cordelia, Juliet, and Rosalind. We talk about how she finds a way into the text, what it’s like working with different directors, and why she loves Shakespeare so much.
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We’re celebrating the legacy of Aboriginal Australian actor David Gulpilil. Gulpilil died on November 29th 2021, at age 68, leaving behind him a career of rich performances, despite the many ways the industry underserved him for decades. On this episode, we particularly focus on Charlie’s Country, as a film that was so personal to Gulpilil, and which features probably his best performance.
We also survey Gulpilil’s legacy, both his vital contributions to film, and also how his troubling domestic abuse conviction complicates that legacy. We discuss the issues that arise when representation of marginalised groups is so slim that we start to view the few successful figures as heroes rather than flawed humans.
We’re joined by Fiona Underhill and Caitlin Merriman to battle it out: who is the poshest actor in Britain? And what defines ‘posh’ in such a class-conscious country?
In this episode, we discuss the two latest Old Vic In Camera productions, Three Kings and Faith Healer. The podcast considers acting for the camera on stage, the very talented Andrew Scott, and future productions we would like to see.
This episode is a Seventh Row members exclusive, as are all episodes older than six months. Click here to become a member.
This episode features Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney, Executive Editor Orla Smith, and Editor-at-Large Mary Angela Rowe.
Three Kings, by Stephen Beresford, is the story of a young man’s on again, off again relationship with his charming, narcissistic father and how the two are unfortunately unlike. Three Kings refers to a coin trick which appears several times throughout the play. This Old Vic In Camera production is a one man show, written specifically for Andrew Scott during quarantine.
Faith Healer, written by Brian Friel, features four monologues by three characters who never occupy the same place at the same time. The play is about Francis Hardy, a faith healer who performs miracles 10% of the time. We hear monologues from Francis (Michael Sheen), his wife Grace (Indira Varma), stage manager Teddy (David Threlfall), and Francis again. Each monologue questions the narrative of the prior monologue.
On our final weekly episode of Lockdown Film School, we ran a masterclass with Canadian collaborators about their experiences with collaboration: the co-writer-directors behind The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn) and the co-writer-stars of Mouthpiece (Norah Sadava and Amy Nostbakken).
Check out our livetweet from the masterclass here.
All four women agree collaboration is more fun, helps with keeping to deadlines, and is mutually supportive. They also talked about the need to find collaborators whom you trust and respect.
Norah, Amy, and Elle-Máijá have all worked in theatre, and the each talked about how their experience in theatre inspired and informed the films. Norah and Amy adapted their play for the screen. Elle-Máijá and Kathleen chose to shoot continuously and in order like a play, and spent four weeks rehearsing the film before the shoot.
Kathleen and Elle-Máijá aimed to make their film set “non-extractive”, where it wasn’t militaristic and hierarchical, but inclusive of everyone’s creative abilities. They talked about the importance of hiring indigenous creatives, collaboration, and creating a safe space for everyone involved.
All four women talked about how they thought about feminism in their films, how they thought about depicting women’s bodies on film, and how they worked to decolonize and keep the patriarchy out of their work. As Elle-Máijá said, “It’s more about unpacking the patriarchy at all levels in our lives than a gender binary.”
Mouthpiece’s innovative conceit is that the main character, thirty-something Torontonian Cassandra, is simultaneously played by two actors, Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava, who also wrote the film and the stage play it’s based on. This dual performance, where the actors sometimes mirror each other and sometimes diverge or even conflict, allows them to represent two sides of a complex woman who is constantly in conflict with herself. Set over the course of a couple of days in the dead of winter, Cassandra grieves the unexpected death of her mother (Maev Beaty), as she tries to write the eulogy. As Cassandra grieves, she also goes through an existential feminist crisis, realising that so many of her choices have been a reaction to or rebellion against her mother; it goes so deep she doesn’t even know where the rebellion ends and she begins.
Mouthpiece is based on a 2015 Canadian play written by and Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava, who run the the theatre company Quote Unquote Collective. The play was originally performed in Toronto; in 2017, Jodie Foster brought the Nostbakken adn Sadava to LA to perform the play for a limited run; the play was also staged at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
In 2018, Nostbakken and Sadava teamed up with director Patricia Rozema to adapt their own play for the screen. Mouthpiece premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival and it was later named of of Canada’s Top Ten films of the year.
Mouthpiece is available for free in Canada on CBC Gem; in the US, you can watch it on Kanopy or Urban Movie Channel.
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open is a rare film: not only does it centre women’s often invisible experiences, but it also features a cross-cultural encounter between two Indigenous women from different nations and socio-economic backgrounds. It’s also shot mostly in a single, unbroken take. We first meet Áila (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) in a doctor’s office where she’s having an IUD inserted. On her way home, Áila spots Rosie (Violet Nelson) a young, pregnant Indigenous woman, on the street who is barefoot and distressed. Áila invites Rosie home to offer her shoes, clothes, and comfort, and the film follows the pair in real-time during this encounter.
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open is based on a real life encounter that Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers had with a young woman on the streets of Vancouver. When it came to interpreting the film for the screen, Tailfeathers brought her friend Kathleen Hepburn (Never Steady Never Still) on board as a collaborator, since Hepburn has more experience with fiction filmmaking whereas Tailfeathers’ expertise had been largely in documentary.
The film premiered at the 2019 Berlin Film Festival and built up steam at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, before it was released by Array Now in collaboration with Netflix. The film was nominated for six Canadian Screen Awards and won three, including Best Director for Hepburn and Tailfeathers.
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open is available for free in Canada on CBC Gem; elsewhere, it’s available to stream worldwide on Netflix.
LISTEN: Our podcast episode dedicated to Mouthpiece >>
LISTEN: Our mother’s day podcast episode about Mouthpiece, Stories We Tell, and Louder Than Bombs >>
READ: Our interview with Hepburn and Tailfeathers on The Body Remembers >>
READ: Our TIFF review of The Body Remembers >>
DISCOVER: More great Canadian cinema in The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook >>
