We have arrived at our final episode as the 'Autism Through Cinema' podcast.  This is also our 50th episode, so all six of the regular hosts have gathered to look back on the work we have done over the past few years. Each host picks a favourite episode and offers their thoughts, before we join back together to reflect on the medium of podcasting as an academic pursuit. Here are the direct links to the episodes discussed by each host: Georgia: Punch-Drunk Love Ethan: Cat People Janet:...

A huge welcome today to our final special guest, the wonderful Alex Gregson. Alex is Head of Audio at 344 Audio, and has led on the edits of the last eight episodes of our podcast, for which we are eternal grateful. He is newly diagnosed as autistic and reflects very thoughtfully on how his autism has contributed positively to his career as a sound engineer and audio editor. For our analysis, Alex brings along Alejandro González Iñárritu's Academy Award winning 2015 revenge thriller The...

In this rather exclusive episode, Alex, Ethan, & David take a look at an as yet unreleased film called 'Voice', directed by Norwegian director Ana Hjort Guttu. A documentary maker from Norwegian TV meets resistance when she contacts a group of filmmaking activists to tell a story that is not her own. 'Voice' is a fascinating look at documentary ethics which gives us a springboard to talk about the issues we might need to consider when the subjects of our non-fiction films are not from our...

Part two of our special double episode about the wondrous Doctor Who. Harry Draper is still with us, and we spend some time talking through his brilliant contribution to the world of Who audio stories, his TARDIS-focused tale 'The Last Day at Work', which is available here: https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doctor-who-short-trips-the-last-day-at-work-1917 We also engage in a fascinating discussion about the joys and perils of autistic tendencies towards extreme fandom, such as the...

We are officially bigger on the inside... Turns out we don't just cover 'cinema', we may occasionally warp our way onto the TV screen if we feel sufficiently compelled. And what could be more compelling than The Timelord themselves?  It's Doctor Who time (timey-wimey?). Specifically, we focus our sonic screwdrivers onto the second serial of the fourth series of classic Who: 'The Tenth Planet'. This serial is notable for two reasons: the first appearance of the now iconic Cybermen, and the...

Here at Autism Through Cinema we've always been interested in how film stretches beyond the traditional cinematic space, and how cinema appears in other contexts. With this in mind, Lillian asked Georgia and Janet to indulge in a trip to TATE Britain to take in the multi-screen spectacle of 'What Freedom is to Me', a retrospective of the work of New Queer filmmaker Isaac Julien. The trio reflect on the freedoms that are afforded to neurodivergent viewers when not confined by the temporal and...

On the 9th September 2023 the ATC podcast team will be appearing live at The Garden Cinema in Covent Garden, London. There will be a screening of Celine Song’s critically acclaimed debut film ‘Past Lives’ at 14:50 followed by a panel discussion & Q&A with Lillian, Georgia, Ethan and David. The screening will be a relaxed screening, and tickets can be purchased here: https://www.thegardencinema.co.uk/film/relaxed-screening-past-lives/ Read more about 'Past Lives' in this 5-star...

An episode which has been a long time coming, Georgia, David and Lillian finally tackle the cult classic cyberpunk sci-fi of Ridley Scott's groundbreaking Blade Runner. There is much to discuss from this 'parable of neurodiversity' (as David puts it), including how the Voight-Kampff test of the film mirrors the real-life 'empathy' tests of autism diagnoses, and how the tag-line 'more human than human' relates to language used to describe (and dehumanise) autistic people. The gang also...

With content warnings about discussions around cannibalism, abuse, and eating disorders, Georgia, Janet and Lillian return to tackle the meaty subject of female body horror via Julia Ducournau's grisly debut, Raw. The trio reflect on associations between autism and eating, with particular focus on the processes and difficulties around misophonia, before navigating the tricky relationship of cannibalism and sexuality. There are frank discussions about how norms are undermined in the film, and...

ATC phone home, ATC phone home...! We're back among the aliens and the spaceships today as we tackle Steven Spielberg's tear-jerking classic. We're also incredibly delighted to welcome yet another wonderful special guest, the brilliant Sam Chown-Ahern! Sam is a filmmaker, artist, collaborator, and member of the Neurocultures Collective, who are currently working with Autism Through Cinema in the creation of an experimental feature film. Sam also presented a wonderfully bizarre re-edit of a...

We've made a brief sidestep into TV for the first half of episode #41 because we are joined by the wonderful Andrew Brenner, Headwriter of the CBeebies show Pablo. For the uninitiated, Pablo is an animated show about an autistic boy and his imaginary animal friends and has been a staple of CBeebies since 2017. Andrew talks us through how the show came to be, how it developed, and the importance of working with autistic performers. Three particular episodes of the show are discussed, all of...

Welcome back to a fresh batch of episodes exploring autistic resonance and sensibility on film! We are delighted to welcome the wonderful Sophie Broadgate to the podcast today. Sophie is an autistic filmmaker working in Cumbria and Manchester whose recent short films 'In Motion' and 'We've created invisible systems and structures' explore autistic identity and experience. We chat to Sophie about her own diagnostic experience, her processes working with autistic subjects, and some of her...

On the 1st December 2022, the Sight and Sound Greatest Film of All Time poll unveiled a surprising result. The poll takes place every 10 years and for fifty years the top spot was held by Citizen Kane before switching to Vertigo in 2012. This time, with a wider pool of industry voters including filmmakers, critics, academics and curators, the crown has been snatched by Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). Lillian has been super keen to bring Akerman to...

There's a Peter Greenaway season happening over at the BFI in London, and our Lillian recently conducted an interview with the man himself, which you can find here:  https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/beginning-was-image-interview-with-peter-greenaway  We thought, therefore, that it was high time we covered Greenaway, especially with Ethan boldly describing the director's work as one of the 'most autistic'... Lillian and Ethan get together with Georgia to tackle Greenaway's first...

We take a gentle, nostalgic, and surreal turn with this episode via Apichatpong Weerasethakul's 2010 palm d'or winning fantasy film, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. We meditate on what so-called 'Slow Cinema' can offer the autistic viewer, and how this form of filmmaking cuts against the mainstream fast-paced approach. We also enjoy Weerasethakul's fantastical leanings and the methods he uses to normalise and naturalise the supernatural, while we also consider how the natural...

In a break with our normal schedule, and posted a week early, we bring you a special episode where we reflect on the nature of 'Relaxed Screenings'. You might have seen these advertised at cinemas - special events organised with autistic and neurodivergent audiences in mind. Typically the lights are dimmed but not fully turned off, the volume is lowered, there's an understanding among the audience that there may be people fidgeting or making noise, and there's often a separate room set aside...

We are skipping and stimming with delight to welcome Australian filmmaker and producer Sophia Rose O'Rourke to the podcast today. Sophia talks us through her experiences as an autistic creative and how she has been using filmmaking to help discover and explore her own identity. We talk about her short film 'Danse Russe', based on William Carlos Williams' poem of the same name: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46483/danse-russe, and we spend some time dwelling on the barriers that...

Hold onto your heads, we're back at you with another horror film just in time for spooky season. Ethan takes Alex and David into the splattery world of David Cronenberg via his 1981 brain-exploding psychological thriller Scanners. We ponder whether the eponymous telepaths might stand in for an oppressed neurodivergent group, while reflecting on Cronenberg's apparent anti-psychiatry stance. There's a power-play in the film from authority figures seeking to control the scanners, set against a...

"Life may be sad, but it's always beautiful" Today we pay tribute to one of the greats of modern cinema, the late Jean-Luc Godard. We recorded this conversation before the recent announcement of his passing, so we've brought our discussion of Pierrot le Fou forward on our release schedule. Godard is a filmmaker who means a lot to us all at Autism Through Cinema. His unfailingly maverick approach to the cinematic art form serves as a profound expression of what can be possible in this medium...

Today we welcome special guest host Richard Butchins to the podcast. Richard is a filmmaker, documentarian, TV presenter and disability activist whose credits include BBC's Panorama, ITV's Exposure and Channel 4's Dispatches. Richard's brilliant short films and photography can be found on his website: https://www.richardbutchins.art/ Richard brings along the 1972 documentary Sayonara CP (also known as Goodbye CP) directed by Kazuo Hara for Alex and Ethan to discuss. This tough and...

It is the early 1930s and sound has arrived to cinema. The medium's most celebrated silent era star is struggling to embrace this new audio dawn, preferring to keep his iconic little tramp mute while making only minimal use of sound effects. Along comes City Lights, perhaps Chaplin's most personal film, and we spend time with the Tramp and his hijinks and pratfalls to uncover autistic content. Are his awkward yet balletic movements through spaces reminiscent of some autistic tendencies of...

Lillian, David and Alex grab their broomsticks and take flight today into the magical worlds of Studio Ghibli via Hayao Miyazaki's 1989 film Kiki's Delivery Service. In among the gorgeous animation we find a meditation on the nature of difference and an exploration of the feeling of being an outsider. Kiki's wild energy and her bouts of gloom are likened to the rollercoaster emotions of the hardworking neurodivergent, while the concept of witchiness is also brought under autistic scrutiny. We...

Jiminy Cricket! It's a Wes Anderson episode!  David, Lillian and Ethan get all warm and cosy with the pastel-colours and eccentric characters of Anderson's celebrated 7th feature film Moonrise Kingdom. The film crackles with a neurodivergent energy, from the neat tableaus of the cinematography to the gently rebellious characters of Sam and Suzy. We discuss how Anderson's use of a childlike gaze creates a visual style that emphasises formal qualities and static images, with a clear attention...

In the second of a series of special episodes featuring autistic creatives, Janet and Ethan welcome the wonderful Daniel Bendelman to the podcast. Daniel is an autistic video artist and PhD student at The University of Kent whose work attempts to expose the power dynamics of autism representation through video art and performance-based installations. In particular, the team discuss Daniel's remarkable installation for 'Fragments', where Daniel performed the writing of his medical history next...