Hello,

The title for this month’s post and may provide yet more insight into how my strange brain works. I was looking for something to watch as April came to a close and I saw that MUBI had put a number of German filmmaker Christian Petzold’s films on the site and I thought about watching one. However, I wanted to catch the entire selection, watching the ones I hadn’t seen and rewatching the ones I had. A Petzold batch wasn’t on my April watch list though, and knowing that I couldn’t complete the [re]watch before month end, I decided to wait until this month, where it could form the central focus of my film watching.

MUBI [UK] currently have Jerichow (2008), Barbara (2012), Phoenix (2014), Transit (2018), Undine (2020) and Afire (2023) for viewing. I joined the Petzold train with Phoenix, and had seen everything that followed. I got hooked on him with Transit, a film I really love, and it was so rewarding to revisit four films in close succession, having started chronologically with first watches of Jerichow and Barbara. Watching so much of his work in quick order gave me a whole new appreciation for it, and allowed me to see what binds the films thematically, beyond a gorgeous grasp of genre conventions and playful subversions. I can’t wait to use some gorgeous examples of his cinematic storytelling in my teaching next year,

I love Petzold’s work and this partial rewatch - I’m looking forward to catching his latest Miroirs No. 3 (2025) soon - left me with a new admiration for he manages to infuse genre experiments - melodrama, fantasy/magic realism, war, crime - with a common thematic thread that binds the films. I realised by spending so much time with his work that one of the realisations that I love his work so much is for how it chronicles loneliness. All his main characters share deep loneliness. Sometimes it’s just in them, sometimes it’s a result of life’s cruel impact. They are living with it, rebelling against it, repressing it, revelling in it, revolting by using it as fuel. I relate. I loved this interview with Petzold that I came across this month as well - Q&A with Christian Petzold [Le Cinéma Club]

Pictures of Ghosts: Guest Post

A quick plug for a piece of writing and thought that has been evolving for almost a year. Thanks to my friend Dario for hosting a guest post on his Substack which has brought my original post out from behind its previous paywall over on our now-retired Cinematologists Patreon. In addition, there is a new prologue which captures why I feel the piece is still relevant nearly a year on, and also updates from the interim that reflect on the challenges detailed within. Enjoy Searching for Pictures of Ghosts over at Dario’s Substack. For those asking why I posted on Substack, given the known problematics, I would recommend Dario’s own reckoning with these issues in his brilliant piece from this month Moral Relativity and Digital Platform Ethics, or is being on Substack complicit with Nazism? The LRB piece he references can be found here.

Playlists

I am using this space to capture, for me more than anyone, playlists emerging from cultural travel and work. This month I went to London for work, but also to celebrate my friend Kat’s birthday by seeing the Super Furry Animals at Brixton Academy. It was nice to make a trip playlist again, capturing my listening from across the journey and timeline. Here it is -

Also this month, at the regular film night I host locally, I topped off the evening’s films with an hour of DJing on vinyl a selection of some favourite film music and songs from films. That was one of my favourite hours this month, and here’s what I played. If you can read it -

A reminder that if listening to music rather than trying to decipher hieroglyphic handwriting that might be related to music is your bag, you can listen to my monthly radio show on Brewing Folk - https://player.brewingfolk.co/contributor/fylm

168 Songs of Hatred and Failure: A History of Manic Street Preachers

I blitzed through the above book in no time. Moreish in its readability, it’s the second book in two months about a band I love whose story is told through their songs, following Oasis last month. While not their whole discography, it is substantial and akin to the Oasis book focuses with love and care on their whole career, not just the bits they are most known for. Akin to the Oasis book it was also enlightening on their approach to craft, the identity and legacy of the band and how they responded musically and creatively to the path they blazed so brightly. Oasis pop up sympathetically as influential peers - the Manics supported Oasis at Knebworth [I was there, they were epic and there’s a picture of me in an Oasis magazine snapped at Knebworth on my friend’s shoulders singing along to ‘Enola/Alone’] - and working class comrades trying to bring a different voice to mainstream middle class British indie in the early 90s.

One of the most enlightening elements of the book is how voracious and promiscuous the band were in their musical loves and how they tried to engage in dialogue with their heroes. Early on the Clash and Guns N’ Roses were evident and not just in the music but every interview they gave and in latter years the Abba love has been very prominent. What wasn’t as clear and what the book beautifully draws out is the influence of bands such as Simple Minds and genres such as Hip Hop. They really are a smart and brilliant band. One of the things that resonated the most was how comfortable they have always been, and remain, with feelings such as sadness and loneliness, and how they reflected on their career and made peace with so much, kept going, and continued to try to do good work. The peace they make with their younger selves is really inspiring. I made a playlist of all 168 songs, plus the songs mentioned in epigraph at the start of some of the chapters. Because it’s me.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

I tried to watch this show in 2024. I tried to watch the first episode three or four times, but I was in a bad place with insomnia and working through a lot of stuff and I shelved it. I don’t know what drew me back, other than needing an easy watch and having a real soft spot for the recent reboot series of movies featuring King Kong and Godzilla - Godzilla (2014), Kong Skull Island (2017), Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) and Godzilla vs. Kong (2021). When I sat down to rewatch the first episode I realised what a difficult place I was in as I remembered precisely zero about any of it. I raced through the two seasons to date, and I loved them both [despite agreeing with some of the reviews that say season two is over-plotted].

The way the show deals with inter-generational thematics is beautiful, both in how it handles relationships but also formally in how it throws together family members across time, distorting their ages as a way to navigate the always prickly dynamics of family. There’s also a refreshing take on mono-normativity and the situation of loving more than one person romantically and sexually. The fallout from secret relationships including marriage is severe, but what’s interesting is how the characters that cause deceit take ownership of their feeling and don’t try to excuse it. It’s refreshing and makes for a piece of nuance that elevates the show. Also, the monsters are cool and the way that Kong and Godzilla are used in glorified cameo, slaps.

Unfamiliar Sounds: McCarthy

I had never heard of this late 80s indie band before I read the above Manics book. They were a huge inspiration on the Manics and their influence can be felt and heard throughout their career. There isn’t a lot of music and I devoured it all after finishing the book. I wondered if there was also an influential link to the similarly named band McLusky [Welsh compadres of the Manics] and there are clear political resonances under gnarly, angry guitars with a dose of wry humour, Ecstatic to have discovered them, and start like I did with the album pictured above.

Unfamiliar Images:

A crazy month. Nothing unfamiliar [by my own criteria] watched this month [Sorry Craig].

Gig: Super Furry Animals

Links to Stuff I’ve read online, and podcasts I’ve listened to, this month and enjoyed - Michael Douglas on Cuckoo’s Nest at 50 [Senses of Cinema] Far from Home: Three Noirs by Jacques Tourneur [Criterion] Being Yourself: George Clooney [Film Comment] ‘BDSM on screen used to just mean a gimp in the basement’: the kink community’s verdict on Pillion [The Guardian] 'Babygirl' finally shows us what subspace feels like [Mashable] Why there is growing enthusiasm from young audiences for watching films on celluloid [Screen Daily] “There's no such thing as a happy gangster”: A Conversation with Nicolas Winding Refn about Pusher [Screen Slate] Film Festivals in 2026: Battlegrounds of a Divided World/Contact Zones of a New World Order [Senses of Cinema] Life Lessons and Self-Discoveries: Rethinking Film Criticism Workshops [Senses of Cinema] David Foster Wallace & Mark Fisher: Irony, Sincerity and Late Capitalism [Acid Horizon Podcast] Healing Institutions [Sasha Frere-Jones, 4Columns] A Cinema of Genocide [Berlinale Talents] Invisible Work: A Conversation about Kids and Festivals with Catherine Bray [Senses of Cinema] Looking at Photographs of Marilyn Monroe Reading [Affidavit] On Honesty [LARB Radio Hour Podcast] Diary: Memories of Harrison Starr [LRB] In the Cinema Club of…Jem Cohen [Le Cinéma Club] a love letter to the criterion closet, the most intellectual thirst trap ever made [Lvr Girl, Substack] Attention is Erotic [Helen Higgins, Substack] Alien3 [Metrograph] Q&A w/Athina Rachel Tsangari [Le Cinéma Club] Q&A w/Eva Victor [Le Cinéma Club] Suture Me In! Cannes, Sex, and Death [Obscenes] Daughters of Darkness and the Space between Trash and High Art [Dario Llinares, Substack] The futurist visions of Andrei Tarkovsky [A Rabbit’s Foot]

Events, Gigs & Travel in June

June 4-14, Sydney - I will be attending the Sydney Film Festival, introducing the Australian Premiere of Mark Jenkin’s Rose of Nevada (2025), and delivering some talks about the Sound/Image Cinema Lab as part of the MicroWAVE strand in partnership with the University of Technology, Sydney [UTS].

June 11, The Black Angels @ Carriageworks, Sydney

June 15 - 21, New York - I will be in New York seeing friends, doing some work for Falmouth University and joining Mark Jenkin for the US release of Rose of Nevada.

June 26, Pixies at Eden Project, Kernow

June 30, Verdant Taproom, Penryn - Sound/Image Cinema Lab x Brewing Folk Presents: Nos Fylm / Film Night

Events & Travels Further Afield in Time & Space

Falmouth - British Popular Culture(s) Conference - July 9-11

Berlin - November [Dates TBC]