Celebrating Cinema

LAB111

A podcast for the love of cinema.

Amsterdam's LAB111 film podcast on the cinema that matters — debates, rankings, and director deep dives, every Thursday. From cult classics to today's most-talked-about releases, Laura Gommans (film journalist), Hugo Emmerzael (film critic), Kiriko Mechanicus (filmmaker) and Tom Ooms (film programmer) take turns asking what films tell us about ourselves, our culture, and the times we live in.
Show notes and the CC newsletter at celebratingcinema.com.

You can get in touch at celebratingcinema@lab111.nl

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Yesterday · 52 min
Boots Riley On I Love Boosters And Making Anti-Capitalist Cinema In Hollywood
Can you dismantle capitalism from inside Hollywood? For filmmaker, musician and outspoken communist Boots Riley, the contradictions of working within the very system he seeks to challenge have become central to his filmmaking, fuelling some of contemporary cinema’s most distinctive political satire. From his breakthrough feature Sorry to Bother You to the surreal television series I’m a Virgo and his latest film I Love Boosters, Riley has developed a distinctly absurdist cinematic language that makes the mechanisms of capitalism impossible to ignore. In conversation with producer Elliot Bloom, he reflects on his journey from politically charged hip-hop group The Coup to filmmaking, the possibilities of communicating radical politics through popular entertainment, and why emotional storytelling can reach audiences in ways political theory alone cannot. They also discuss the relationship between individual political awakening and collective action, the challenges of making anti-capitalist films within Hollywood, and cinema’s potential to help us imagine alternatives to the world we live in. After all, exposing what is wrong with the world is one thing. Imagining what comes next is another. Get tickets to I Love Boosters @ LAB111 Get tickets to Sorry To Bother You @ LAB111
November 5 · 39 min
Can Cinema Teach Us How To Protest?
Can cinema teach us how to protest? In this episode of Celebrating Cinema, Elliot and Kiriko explore the possibilities and limitations of cinema as a tool for political resistance, and how imagining a different world might help us change the one we live in. Through two films that couldn't be more different, Boots Riley's I Love Boosters (2026), which turns the fight against capitalism into a candy-coloured, anarchic spectacle, and Felipe Bustos Sierra's documentary Everybody to Kenmure Street (2025), which revisits an extraordinary day in Glasgow when an entire neighbourhood mobilised to stop the deportation of two men. What can Hollywood fantasy teach us about collective action, and what happens when resistance moves from the screen into the streets? From Riley's unapologetic communist politics and the contradictions of making revolutionary cinema within the Hollywood system to Third Cinema and the radical imagination of Sorry to Bother You, we consider how films can expand our political imagination, challenge established ideas about power and perhaps even inspire action beyond the cinema. But there's a difference between imagining revolution and making it happen. What can cinema teach us about the realities of organising, resisting and building something different? Get tickets to I Love Boosters @ LAB111 Get tickets to Sorry To Bother You @ LAB111 Get tickets to Donnie Darko @ LAB111 Get tickets to Film & Food:
October 29 · 32 min
How Robert Pattinson Went From Twilight To The Weirdest Guy In Hollywood
Robert Pattinson went from playing the ultimate teen heartthrob in Twilight to taking on some of the strangest roles in contemporary cinema. Host Laura Gommans is joined by producer Elliot Bloom to review Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime, in which Pattinson plays Chris Hansen, the host of To Catch a Predator. From the bizarre world of sensationalist reality TV to Pattinson’s wonderfully weird career choices, we discuss how an actor who could have played romantic leads forever instead gravitated towards filmmakers like David Cronenberg, Claire Denis and the Safdie brothers. Also in this episode, we share excerpts from Laura’s conversations with Clayface stars Tom Rhys Harries and Naomi Ackie, and director James Watkins, about the films that inspired them while making this new DC origin story. Get tickets to Primetime @ LAB111 Get tickets to Imagine Film Festival @ LAB111 Get tickets to Little Shop Of Horrors @ LAB111 Get tickets to Prime Pattinson @ LAB111 A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.
October 22 · 40 min
Why Does Hollywood Love Remaking Foreign Films?
Hollywood loves a remake. But why take a film that already works and make it all over again? Host Laura Gommans sits down with LAB111’s Head of Cinema, Tom Ooms, to dig into Hollywood’s habit of reworking films from around the world and what happens when it gets its hands on someone else’s story. From Masayuki Suô’s Shall We Dance? and its Richard Gere-starring remake to Funny Games, The Vanishing and Force Majeure, they look at the changes that can turn a film into something completely different. There are American happy endings, cultural misunderstandings and the occasional remake that becomes a classic in its own right, as with Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, adapted from Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs. With Odyssey Classics re-releasing the original Japanese Shall We Dance?, it’s a good moment to consider Hollywood’s never-ending impulse to remake the world in its own image. Get tickets to Shall We Dance? @ LAB111 Get tickets to Cine Of The Times: Under The Skin @ LAB111 A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.
October 20 · 31 min
Rodrigo Sorogoyen on The Beloved: Can Cinema Heal Us?
What can cinema really fix? In The Beloved, Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Sorogoyen (The Beasts, Mother) explores the complicated relationship between a powerful film director and his estranged daughter, using the filmmaking process itself to examine questions of identity, domination and abandonment. In conversation with film critic Hugo Emmerzael, Sorogoyen discusses turning the camera on cinema itself, experimenting with different visual languages, and creating a film within a film inspired by the work of Terrence Malick. He also reflects on his recurring interest in toxic masculinity, his collaboration with screenwriter Isabel Peña, and the personal experiences of fatherhood, loss and family history that shaped The Beloved. Can art repair what life has broken? For Sorogoyen, cinema might not fix everything, but it can help us understand ourselves, and each other, a little better. Get tickets to The Beloved @ LAB111 A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.
October 15 · 47 min
Cine Of The Times | Walk Hard Should Have Killed The Musical Biopic
In 2007, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story tore the music biopic apart so thoroughly that Hollywood should never have been able to make one with a straight face again. It flopped. Since then, we’ve had Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, Elvis and, this year, Michael. So what went wrong? For the latest Cine of the Times, film critic Hugo Emmerzael and media scholar Dan Hassler-Forest revisit Jake Kasdan’s merciless parody to figure out why the music biopic refuses to die. They get into how much of the supposedly "true" story never actually happened, the difference between inhabiting a star and simply imitating one, and John C. Reilly’s commitment to playing every absurd cliché completely straight. They also ask what happens when the music industry turns its back catalogue into algorithm-friendly jukebox movies. Recorded again online after the producer lost the first take. Get tickets to Cine Of The Times: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story @ LAB111. Get tickets to Cine Of The Times: Under the Skin @ LAB111. A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.
October 8 · 39 min
Digger: Can Tom Cruise Ever Stop Being Tom Cruise?
For forty years, Tom Cruise has sold us one thing: a man who will not stop running. In Digger (2026), Alejandro G. Iñárritu casts him as an oil tycoon in prosthetics, only for the trailer to remind us of every Tom Cruise who came before. What happens when the ultimate movie star tries to disappear into a role? Laura Gommans and producer Elliot Bloom take Digger as a starting point to ask whether a movie star can ever truly play against type, or whether the persona is always visible beneath the performance. From Henry Fonda turning killer in Once Upon a Time in the West to Adam Sandler unravelling in Punch-Drunk Love, they explore why some of the most revealing performances happen when actors push against the image we already have of them. And what happens when Jesse Plemons walks into Digger and threatens to steal the show? A follow-up to our earlier episode asking whether Tom Cruise could save cinema. The first half is spoiler-free. The alarm sounds at 18:01. Tell us how you'd rate it. We can't decide. Get tickets to Digger @ LAB111 Get tickets to Shall We Dance? (Ballroom Dancing Workshop) @ LAB111 Get tickets to Film and Food: Do The Right Thing @ LAB111 A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.
October 2 · 36 min
Why Is Dutch Cinema Struggling to Find Its Audience?
From Paul Verhoeven to Hoyte van Hoytema to Halina Reijn, Dutch filmmakers have made a mark far beyond the Netherlands. But why doesn’t Dutch cinema travel as far as the talent it produces? For this Nederlands Film Festival special, Celebrating Cinema host Elliot Bloom speaks with actor Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing, director Mees Peijnenburg and producer Leontine Petit, who co-produced the Oscar-nominated Brazilian film The Secret Agent. Together, they discuss what Dutch cinema gains from international collaboration, why homegrown films struggle to find audiences, and the tension between making films for the Dutch market and competing internationally. What would it take to build a Dutch cinema that can connect at home and travel abroad?
September 29 · 55 min
Can Cinema Show Us What We Can’t See? — NFF Special w/ Amanda van Hesteren & Emma Lesuis
For this Nederlands Film Festival special, Kiriko Mechanicus meets two rising Dutch filmmakers who use cinema to get closer to people and histories — and to find out what lies beyond what they already know. Amanda van Hesteren's Dagen met Blue is built around the trust between filmmaker and subject. Kiriko chats to Amanda about her fascination with people in all their colours, how she creates the space for Blue to open up, and what she can learn about someone by spending enough time with them to look beyond the version of themselves they show the world. In Bagasi – wat we meedragen, Emma Lesuis investigates her family's colonial history in Suriname. By combining documentary and theatre, Emma finds a way into a history that runs through both the colonised and the coloniser in her own family and, in the process, comes to see that history differently. Sometimes, you have to make the film to understand what you're actually looking at. Watch Dagen Met Blue @ NFF Watch Bagasi on NPO
September 10 · 54 min
Manufacturing Consent: How 9/11 Changed Hollywood
How did 9/11 change Hollywood and when does entertainment become propaganda? Marking 25 years since 9/11 and coinciding with LAB111’s Manufacturing Consent programme, Elliot Bloom and film critic Hugo Emmerzael trace cinema’s long relationship with propaganda and political power. From revolutionary montage and The Battle of Algiers to Black Hawk Down, Zero Dark Thirty and Iron Man, they look at how wars are sold, enemies invented and ideology turned into entertainment. At the centre of the conversation is the profound shift in American cinema after 9/11, when the War on Terror became embedded in Hollywood storytelling and spectacle. Elliot and Hugo unpack why propaganda rarely announces itself as propaganda, and how the films we watch can shape whose stories we believe, whose violence we accept and who gets cast as the enemy. Get tickets to Manufacturing Consent @ LAB111 Get tickets to Film Lecture: Cinematic Ghosts of 9/11 @ LAB111 Get tickets to Akira @ LAB111 Get tickets to Film & Food series @ LAB111 A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.
September 4 · 46 min
Did Terminator 2 Ruin How We Imagine The End Of The World?
Thirty-five years after Terminator 2: Judgment Day, cinema is still imagining the end of the world through killer machines, nuclear war, viruses and alien invasions. But did one of the greatest blockbusters ever made teach us to imagine the apocalypse all wrong? With Terminator 2 returning to our screens in 4K, producer Elliot Bloom and filmmaker Kiriko Mechanicus ask why cinema is so obsessed with watching the world end and why Hollywood tends to make collapse so spectacular. Through Children of Men, Idiocracy and Brazil, they look beyond the big cinematic apocalypse to the dystopias where life simply carries on. From our need to give the things we fear a human face to our strange enjoyment of watching everything fall apart, the conversation explores what these imagined futures reveal about the world we already live in. And whether dystopian cinema, rather than simply indulging our worst fears, might give us a way of imagining something different. Get tickets to Terminator 2: Judgement Day @ LAB111 Get tickets to Akira @ LAB111 Get tickets to The Big Lebowski @ LAB111
August 20 · 51 min
Why Is Cinema Just Like My Mother?
“My mother and cinema are my two teachers in life, each in their own peculiar ways.” Filmmaker Kiriko Mechanicus and producer Elliot Bloom explore the parallels between these two teachers: the women who raise us, and the films that show us how to live, love and understand the world. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary and re-release of Cría Cuervos, they look at a series of films from the 1970s — including Carrie, The Exorcist and Grey Gardens — in which the relationship between mothers and daughters becomes a way of thinking about changing ideas of womanhood, motherhood and what women are expected to be. At a time when those expectations were beginning to shift, these films capture some of the anxieties, desires and contradictions surrounding that change. What do we inherit from our mothers? And what do we learn from cinema? Sometimes the two are not so different: both give us images of who we might become, what we might fear, and what we might choose to do differently. Get tickets to Cría Cuervos @ LAB111 Get tickets to Mothers & Daughters @ LAB111 A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.
August 13 · 46 min
Cine Of The Times: Did No Country For Old Men Predict Trump’s America?
In 2007, the Coen Brothers made a thriller set in 1980 that somehow captured an American dread that hadn't fully arrived yet. Critic Hugo Emmerzael and academic Dan Hassler-Forest return to No Country for Old Men — the coin toss, the deaths that happen offscreen, the sheriff who solves nothing — to ask how a film everybody already loves quietly called the next twenty years. Hugo and Dan get into the film's nihilism, its collapse of the Western hero and detective who restores order, and the strange afterlife of Javier Bardem's iconic Anton Chigurh: from Oscar winner to right-wing meme. JD Vance has even used Chigurh's monologue in a political speech, while Pete Hegseth apparently mistook Pulp Fiction for the Bible. And what does No Country for Old Men have in common with Euphoria? What felt like a disturbing vision of a society emptied of values in 2007 can now feel less like a warning than a description of everyday life. Get tickets to ⁠⁠Cine Of The Times: No Country For Old Men⁠⁠ @ LAB111 A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.
August 7 · 47 min
Can Cinema Teach Us How to Pay Attention? — What Playtime, Ikiru & After Hours Asks Of Us
We’re constantly told to slow down and be present, but what does it actually mean to pay attention when so much of modern life is designed to scatter it? This summer, French auteur Jacques Tati returns to LAB111 in six newly restored 4K classics, including his magnum opus PlayTime. Few filmmakers have looked at modern life with Tati’s comic precision: traffic becomes choreography, bureaucracy becomes absurd theatre and the city itself becomes a machine for distraction. Producer Elliot Bloom and filmmaker Kiriko Mechanicus explore attention, bureaucracy and urban life through Tati’s PlayTime, Kurosawa’s Ikiru and Scorsese’s After Hours, looking at what happens when the structures of modern life become so consuming that we stop noticing the lives we’re actually living. But if paying attention has become something we increasingly struggle to do, what should we make of films that turn it into a virtue? In Perfect Days, is noticing the world a genuine alternative to modern life — or are we fetishising attention itself? Get tickets to It's Cinema! The Films of Jacques Tati @ LAB111 Get tickets to After Hours @ LAB111 Get tickets to ⁠Cine Of The Times: No Country For Old Men⁠ @ LAB111 A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.
July 30 · 49 min
When Does A Film Become Camp?
What makes a film camp? Is it something filmmakers create, or something audiences discover? To celebrate Pride Month and LAB111's Camp, Cult & Queer programme, filmmaker Kiriko Mechanicus is joined by film programmer Alicia Bergamelli to unpack one of cinema's most elusive ideas. Drawing on Susan Sontag's famous essay Notes on "Camp", they explore where camp came from, why it has become inseparable from queer culture, and how audiences can completely reshape a film's meaning over time. Through films including Bound, Cruising, Pink Flamingos, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, they discuss the difference between intentional and accidental camp, why works once dismissed or condemned can become beloved classics, and what these changing reputations reveal about cinema, identity and the communities that keep films alive. Get tickets to Camp Cult & Queer @ LAB111 Get tickets to Y Tu Mama Tambien @ LAB111 Get tickets to Cine Of The Times: No Country For Old Men @ LAB111 Get tickets to The Departed @ LAB111
July 23 · 42 min
Why Black Girl Still Matters 60 Years Later w/ Djeneba Saccoh
Who gets to tell a story? And who gets to see themselves reflected on screen? Sixty years after its release, Ousmane Sembène's Black Girl (La Noire de..., 1966) remains one of the defining works of African cinema. Restored in 4K and re-released by Odyssey Classics for its anniversary, Sembène's groundbreaking debut follows Diouana, a young Senegalese woman who travels to France believing she's beginning a new life, only to find herself trapped within the lingering structures of colonial power. Filmmaker Kiriko Mechanicus is joined by filmmaker and archivist Djeneba Saccoh to discuss why Black Girl still feels so vital today. Together they unpack the quiet resistance woven through the film—from Diouana's inner monologue to the carved mask that passes between worlds. From there, Kiriko and Djeneba trace the film's influence through Mati Diop's Dahomey to Souleymane Cissé's Den Muso, exploring how filmmakers across generations have continued to grapple with questions of representation, power and who gets to tell their own story. New to Ousmane Sembène? We recommend listening to our companion interview with his son, Alain Sembène, in which producer Elliot Bloom explores the life, philosophy and legacy of the filmmaker often described as the father of African cinema. Get tickets to Black Girl @ LAB111 Get tickets to Cine Of The Times: No Country For Old Men⁠ @ LAB111
July 21 · 31 min
Who Really Was the Father Of African Cinema? — Ousmane Sembène, By His Son Alain
Some filmmakers don't just make great films, they change who cinema is for. 60 years ago, Ousmane Sembène's Black Girl (La Noire de...) announced a new cinematic voice to the world. Through the story of a young Senegalese woman working for a French family, Sembène exposed the brutal realities of colonialism while proving that African stories could—and should—be told on their own terms. To mark the film's 60th anniversary, producer Elliot Bloom speaks with Alain Sembène, the filmmaker's son, about the remarkable life and philosophy behind one of cinema's true pioneers. Together, they discuss why Sembène turned from literature to filmmaking, why he believed cinema could become "the people's night school," and how he dedicated his career to challenging audiences to question the systems that shape their lives. Get tickets to Black Girl @ LAB111 Get tickets to ⁠Cine Of The Times: No Country For Old Men⁠ @ LAB111 A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.
July 17 · 30 min
Is Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey Just 6 Great Scenes?
Why are journeys one of cinema's defining storytelling forms? Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey brings one of literature's greatest journeys to the screen. Laura Gommans and Tom Ooms discuss whether the film succeeds as an epic, why Nolan's obsession with IMAX shapes the experience as much as the storytelling, and whether a cast this famous ever lets the world of the film feel fully inhabited. They also introduce LAB111's new season of quests, exiles and homecomings, from Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Beau Is Afraid to The Seventh Seal, asking what these films reveal about why cinema returns to stories of people searching for a place to belong. Get tickets to The Odyssey @ LAB111 Get tickets to It's Not The Destination, It's The Journey @ LAB111 Get tickets to Cine Of The Times: No Country For Old Men @ LAB111 A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.
July 2 · 39 min
Has Letterboxd Changed The Way We Watch Films?
Do ratings help us discover great films or have they quietly changed the way we watch? Before you've even bought a ticket, you probably know the Letterboxd average, the IMDb score or the Rotten Tomatoes percentage. Somewhere between the opening scene and the closing credits, many of us are already deciding on a number of our own. Laura Gommans is joined by producer Elliot Bloom to discuss what ratings have done to film culture. From an IMDb Top 250 that barely changes to Rotten Tomatoes' aggregate scores, they explore how audience opinion shapes everything from blockbuster filmmaking to the rise of safe, audience-tested stars, and why the best films rarely fit neatly into a number. Get tickets to ⁠Girly Pop! But I'm A Cheerleader⁠ @ LAB111 Get tickets to ⁠Schmutz Cinema: Close-Up On Late⁠x @ LAB111 A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.
June 25 · 38 min
The Watermelon Woman at 30: Cheryl Dunye's Queer Cinema Landmark
The Watermelon Woman (1996) was Cheryl Dunye's debut and the first American feature directed by a Black lesbian. A film that slips between video-store romance and a forged archive, asking who gets recorded by cinema and who gets written out of it. Thirty years on, it has been restored, added to the Criterion Collection, and, for the very first time, released in Dutch cinemas. Filmmaker Kiriko Mechanicus is joined by Justine Knijn, distributor at Eye Filmmuseum and the person bringing the film to the Netherlands. They get into the film's faked documentary structure and its late reveal; the 1996 sex scene that drew conservative backlash over its tiny public budget; and the satire of academia. A conversation about lesbian film history, restoration, and the long afterlife of films the industry tried to forget and a case for a mainstream gay summer. Get tickets to ⁠⁠The Watermelon Woman @ LAB111 Get tickets to Cine Of The Times: No Country For Old Men @ LAB111 Get tickets to ⁠⁠Fight The Power: Palestine 36 @ LAB111 Get tickets to Girly Pop! But I'm A Cheerleader @ LAB111 Get tickets to Schmutz Cinema: Close-Up On Latex @ LAB111 🎧 New episodes weekly. Leave a review to help more people find us. A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.

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