The Last Thing I Saw

Ep. 434: Ina Archer on Once Upon a Time in Harlem and the William Greaves centennial at Film Forum

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Once Upon a Time in Harlem is one of the great films of 2026, taking us into a historic 1972 gathering of Harlem Renaissance luminaries at the home of Duke Ellington. It’s led to renewed acclaim for the director, William Greaves, who passed away in 2014 and is probably best known for his mind-frying meta-film Symbiopsychotaxiplasm. I was delighted to talk again with Ina Archer, who curated the “William Greaves at 100” retrospective at Film Forum, about Once Upon a Time in Harlem, Greaves’s process and career, the influence of his acting background on his directing, and some lesser-known titles in a filmography that continues to reveal new fronts in Greaves’s expansion of film form and investigation of America. We conclude by trading some recent, Halloween-themed viewing.

Ina Archer is an artist and filmmaker represented by Microscope Gallery, and a Media Conservation and Digitization Specialist for the Center for African American Media Arts and the Robert F. Smith Center for the Digitization and Curation of African American History.

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 433: Pawel Pawlikowski on Fatherland, casting Sandra Hüller, his early documentaries, cinematic inspirations, and more

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. One of my favorite films at Cannes this year was Fatherland, the latest from Pawel Pawlikowski, who also directed Ida, Cold War, and My Summer of Love. So I jumped at the chance to speak with the filmmaker when he visited New York for the release of Fatherland, which is now in theaters. We talked about how he developed its story about Thomas Mann traveling across Germany in 1949 with his daughter, Erika, and how he cast Sandra Hüller and Hanns Zischler (as Erika and Thomas, respectively). I also couldn’t resist asking him about the early documentaries he made for the BBC about Dostoevsky’s great-grandson and other piquant subjects; about some of his cinematic influences; and about the status of a film he once had in development starring Joaquin Phoenix.

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 432: Bassam Tariq on Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Written and directed by Bassam Tariq, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother knocked me flat at the Toronto film festival this year with its richly imagined action drama about a hit man turned single father to three children, who can’t quite escape the demands of his profession. Mahershala Ali plays a man going through a crisis of faith and fatherhood, in a complicated America of mosques, Christian sects, unforgiving social services, and online porn empires. It’s the latest from Tariq, whose work I first became acquainted with at True/False through the documentary These Birds Walk, which he co-directed over a decade ago. I was so happy and honored to discuss Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother with the filmmaker as the movie hits VOD and receives renewed attention. Tariq is also the director of Mogul Mowgli (2020, starring Riz Ahmed) and episodes of Bait.

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 431: Robert Greene on You Can See Everything + Nathan Fielder + performance + documentary

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. When I saw You Can See Everything, I immediately wanted to make sense of what I had seen by talking through it with someone else. And who better to talk through the latest Nathan Fielder project than another filmmaker who constantly explores the complexities of performance and portrayal in documentary: Robert Greene, the director of Kate Plays Christine, Procession, Actress, Bisbee ’17, and most recently Too Much Sugar (which had its world premiere last month in Venice). Greene generously shared his thoughts on You Can See Everything (directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim) and its blockbuster chronicle of Fielder embedding with convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her partner Billy Evans.

You Can See Everything is in theaters now. Greene is also the filmmaker-in-chief at the Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the University of Missouri and is on the faculty of its School of Visual Studies.

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Ep. 430: Jessica Green on American Regionalism at BAM: Giant, When I Get Home, Brigham City, The Delta, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Run Tecato Run, Shakedown

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. A new series at BAM in Brooklyn explores American Regionalism in film, showing the different ways the tapestry of American cultures and identities appear in movies. It’s curated by Jessica Green, a programmer whose work I’ve followed for many years, and who now also works in development at She Spun Films. Among the films discussed are the Texas rancher epic Giant (directed by George Stevens, starring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean), the visual album When I Get Home (Solange Knowles), Virginia-set The Delta (Ira Sachs), Mormon police procedural Brigham City (Richard Dutcher), Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper), addiction drama Run Tecato Run (Efrain Gutiérrez), Pacific Northwest thriller Paydirt (Penny Allen), Montana-set Bitterroot (Vera Brunner-Sung), Corpus: A Home Movie About Selena (Lourdes Portillo), Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles), and Los Angeles black-lesbian nightclub documentary Shakedown (Leilah Weinraub).

The series “Area Coded: American Regionalism in Film” runs October 23 to 29 at BAM and was programmed by Jessica Green.

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass