Why This Film?
🎬 Exploring the Criterion Collection, one spine at a time.
A conversation-driven podcast that takes a deep dive into the artistry, cultural influence, and historical significance of films in the Criterion Collection. Each episode focuses on one film, unpacking its craft and legacy through engaging conversations with experts, historians, filmmakers, and passionate cinephiles.
Why This Film?
1 LA JETEE (1962) Spine #387 w/Dr. Dennis Weiss
“The past is dead!”
In the premiere episode of Why This Film?, Ron and Dr. Dennis Weiss dive into Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962), a groundbreaking French short from the Criterion Collection that redefined what cinema could be. Composed almost entirely of still photographs, it’s a haunting meditation on memory, time, and human longing.
Dennis — a retired philosophy professor and curator of the long-running Philosophy, Drinks & Film series — joins Ron to explore how La Jetée uses form, sound, and storytelling to challenge our ideas about what makes something a film.
Together they ask: Why this film, and why does it still matter — in the Collection and beyond?
