Reality Check: Genre (crossing) directors – Kaufman and Vigalondo

Charlie Kaufman interview originally broadcast 21/05/09 on Resonance FM as part of I’m ready for my close-up

Charlie Kaufman directs Robin Weigert in Synecdoche, New York

Continuing our series of twice annual looks at pairs of directors who combine genres on screen to beguiling effect, Alex Fitch talks to Academy Award winning screenwriter turned director Charlie Kaufman about his new film Synecdoche, New York and the processes of getting his previous scripts Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich to the screen.

Nacho Vigalondo in character on the set of TimeCrimes

Alex also talks to Nacho Vigalondo, the director of the new Spanish film TimeCrimes / Los cronocrimenes which mixes the style of a 1970s psycho thriller with the tropes of a modern, cerebral time travel film.

For more info, please visit the home of this podcast at Sci-Fi London

There are the following instalments of “Genre (crossing) directors” on Reality Check; episode:
2.11 – Charlie Kaufman / Nacho Vigalondo
2.01 – Tarsem Singh / Paul W.S. Anderson
1.11 – Garth Jennings / Park Chan-Wook

Links: Charlie Kaufman –
Charlie’s pages on Wikipedia
and the IMDb
Kaufman resource site – beingcharliekaufman.com
Interview in The Guardian

Nacho Vigalondo – Official Spanish TimeCrimes website
IMDb page about the film
Read a partial transcript of the interview with Nacho in Electric Sheep Magazine

Comics / sci-fi news:

Kamishibai.org is now live, being a resource for Japan’s performance art of telling stories with sequential images, including info on the next London performance of the form on May 31st…

plus:

Rutu Modan at JCC

Rutu Modan’s work has appeared regularly in the New York Times, and her novel Exit Wounds received the Eisner award for best Graphic Novel last year. With both delicacy and clarity, her work captures the complexity, surreal humour and emotional challenges of living in contemporary Israel. The novel depicts the quest of Koby, a taxi driver, for his father in the wake of a suicide bombing, with the help of the mysterious Numi. Rutu will be at JCC Lit Café in conversation with Ariel Kahn, the winner of the Bloomsbury New Writing Competition, a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Roehampton University, and contributor to The Jewish Graphic Novel. (Ed. Samantha Berman and Ranen. Omer-Sherman, Rutgers, 2008). Supported by Bank Hapoalim.
Time: 8pm
Venue: Upstairs at the Magdala, 2a South Hill Park, London NW3 2SB Price: £6 TO BOOK: www.jcclondon.org.uk

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