Today,The Criterion Channelgoes live. For those who were bummed when FilmStruck shut down last year, The Criterion Channel comes roaring back as a way to see classic, independent, and foreign language movies that aren’t available anywhere else. Additionally, rather than relying on algorithms to try and guess what the viewer should watch next, Criterion Channel uses real people and their film expertise to curate lineups. What a concept!
I had the pleasure of speaking to programmerPenelope Bartlettlast week about The Criterion Channel. During our discussion, we talked about what goes into programming a lineup, working with their wealth of special features, the value of letting people curate movies instead of algorithms, people she’s excited to highlight on the channel, bringing more attention to female filmmakers and filmmakers of color, and much more. Check out the full interview below. The Criterion Channel is now available on Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Roku, iOS, and Android and Android TV devices.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
What went into programming Columbia Noir? Because obviously Criterion Channel has more than just 11 noir films. So how do you whittle it down to say these are the 11 we want to focus on for this program?
PENELOPE BARTLETT: Well one thing that was important to us from the onset was the channel was to show it’s not just about our library, the Janus Library, which is a huge library of amazing films. But we also really wanted to continue the mission that we had started with FilmStruck of also showcasing the best of world cinema, classic Hollywood cinema. So this seemed like a really great series to showcase our ongoing commitment to programming and Hollywood cinema.
Then we just started to do our research. We became really sort of fascinated by the diversity and the richness of the noir films that came out of Columbia Studios between the mid 40s and the early 60s. Then it was really what we tried to do with our series is make them, of course, rich and varied. But also manageable so people can get through all of the films.
So we’re trying not to present a series with 25 or 30 titles, but to sort of streamline and curate. Because we think often people are sort of overwhelmed by the amount of choices of things that there are to watch. So what we really want to do is curate things down to a point where you can actually watch all of the films. And really enjoy them. And they sort of tell a story as well.
What I like about this is that some streaming services are more algorithm based, where they attempt to guess what the user wants. And this is more curation based, where it’s trying to guide someone to say, “I don’t know if you the individual do this, but from a perspective of similar films, these are very much collected.”
BARTLETT: Yeah, 100%. And yes, I’m incredibly lucky that I do actually get to be the person who’s sort of making these with my incredibly talented colleagues. Coming up with the films that are being selected and the supplemental material that we’re making to go along with it and all the special features that we’re known for. Yeah, we absolutely … Exactly what you said, we really want the channel to feel like it was curated thoughtfully by real people, not by algorithms. And it really is. We really are actually sitting here working away, making lists of films, putting them together in thoughtful ways.
Now when you’re deciding on a program, how does that come about? Do you guys sort of spitball? What are the avenues that you go down to create a program?
BARTLETT: I think it’s a range of those things. We have two years of programming experience in the digital space from the work that we did on FilmStruck. So that’s kind of a nice starting point. In that we know what programs performed well, we know what things people really enjoyed seeing in that space. So we’re able to kind of bring that knowledge into the launch of our new channel.
And then we’re thinking about it in terms of what do we want to see? What stories do we want to tell? We’re, of course, looking back now a little bit on film history and saying, “Who are the people who maybe weren’t celebrated in the way that they could’ve been?” You know, women, people of color. We really want to go back and find those hidden figures and really diversify the film history that we’re presenting as well. Because it’s been such a white male space for so long and we really want to change that. So we think about that a lot when we’re programming.
And of course it’s also the films that are available to us. Because we’re working with a number of studios, we’re working with a number of independent distributors. So in some cases we’re receiving the lists of the films that are available and then thinking about ways that we can actually curate and present those films. So we might actually be looking at a list of films and then saying, “Oh look we have all these great noir films” or there are all these great Glenn Ford films or Rita Hayworth films. And then coming up with a series from that point as well.
When programming, do you try to look ahead to try to tie programs together? So that, let’s say, in April you have one collection of films and they’re like, “Hey this would be a great springboard for another collection in May.”
BARTLETT: Yeah, I think we do a little bit of that. But we also, like I said, we want to offer a varied and diverse experience if we possibly can. So we don’t want to sort of piggyback on our programming too much. Certainly there are … For example, one of our launch programs is screenplays by Suso Cecchi D’Amico. She was an Italian screenwriter who collaborated with a lot of the most important post-war Italian directors. But most of the films are usually celebrated from the access point of the director, the sort of auteurist perspective. And we’re kind of casting a little bit of a different blend on it and saying, “Look, she was actually a co-writer on all of these incredibly important films. Including Bicycle Thieves and Senso.”
So we will do things like that where we might one month be presenting films directed by [inaudible]. And then we might later program those films but use it as an opportunity to spotlight his wife, who was the main actor in many of his films. I think yeah, absolutely, we will be doing a little bit of what you’re saying. But we’re also trying to offer people as many different experiences as possible.
Well I think it’s a great experience to sort of go from these different angles on, like you said, people who didn’t receive the amount of attention that they were due in the past and now finally get the spotlight they deserve. Are there any individuals in particular you’re really excited about focusing on in the months ahead?
Oh that’s a good question. Let me think about that. Dorothy Arzner is a great one. She was, I think, one of the four women that was inducted into the directing guild before the 80s or something completely ridiculous like that. You have to fact check that, but there was really so few women who directed films for major Hollywood studios up until the 80s. And she was one of them and she was working in like the 40s and 50s. It’s just a really fascinating character and strangely hasn’t received the attention that she deserves. I think we’ll be doing a series of three films by her in June and then I hope we’ll be able to do a bigger retrospective of her work in the next year or two.
You mentioned the special features. How does that work as a guiding set?
BARTLETT: Sure. I mean, there are so many different types of supplemental features that we do. First there’s our Blu ray DVD production line and what we’re sort of known for is every time we release a new film there’s always a really rich selection of special features on the disc. So we’ll go out and interview lots of the key people that were involved with making the film. We always commission an essay. We sometimes commission video essay pieces. We do behind the scenes, we do commentaries. So all of that, with the exception of the written essays, will be available on the channel. Along with the film that it’s associated with. We have all of those just kind of at our fingertips, which is so great. Because people really love to dive into those.
Then we have a range of original production that we kicked into gear for the channel. Which it’s all being carried over from what we were doing when we were on FilmStruck. Which includes our series Adventures in Moviegoing, which is, I guess, curator series where we invite actors, artists, writers, filmmakers to come in and sit down and talk with us about what they loved about cinema. And then to curate some selections and we record introductions for each of the films that they select. So those will all be available to watch.
And then we also produce an in-house kind of film school in 15 minute bite-sized chunk series called Observations on Film Art with David Bordwell from the University of Madison and his wife Kristin Thompson. That’s just like these little bite-sized segments that will address a particular film from some kind of technical or aesthetic angle. And they’re really great. I would really encourage checking them out.
Then we’ve also got a series called Meet the Filmmaker where we commission original documentaries about new filmmakers. So filmmakers who are actually out there working today. We filmed some of those on people like the Safdie brothers, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the Thai filmmaker. And those are really wonderful as well and a great opportunity for us to continue to engage with contemporary film as well as just working with archival films.
One more question I had was when you’re programming a theme versus a person, which do you prefer? Do you prefer to sort of go along the lines of what an auteur has done? Or more along the lines of a genre or a certain theme?
That’s a really great question and it’s really relevant because we are … I think, the Criterion Collection and basically all of the keepers of film culture for so long has been so focused on directors that it’s resulted a little bit in this story that is very … Most directors have been men, for example. Most directors have been white men. So going back and kind of changing the way that we look at film and especially film which is inherently such a collaborative medium, is allowing us to actually, like we were just talking about, tell stories from the perspectives of other people who were involved with the film. Who might have contributed in a really meaningful way, but haven’t really received the acclaim they deserve because they just weren’t the director.
So that’s something we’ve been talking about a lot is going back and re-framing our series in that way. And then in terms of genre, I mean, I think that that’s really fun. Of course, to put together a series of films. We have this one at the launch that’s like three movies with killer couples. It’s just really fun and silly, weirdly, to watch couples going on murder sprees. And then in May we’ll have a series of Mother’s Day films, but a lot of them are pretty, you know, kind of dysfunctional mother child relationships. We try and put a fun, alternative spin on series.
But yeah, curating films according to their subject matter or some other kind of uniting element is always gonna be really fun. It just depends. I think they’re both really great ways to put series together and it really just depends on the story that you’re trying to tell.
