The Learned and The Learner

Welcome friends. Thanks for lending me some of your valued attention.

This wasn’t the post I intended for today. I’m working on a longer exploration of current debates unfolding on Film Stack—particularly around questions of what Film Stack actually is—and the recent flurry of posts that allude, explicitly and implicitly, to a shared agenda or set of aims, i.e. a manifesto. Film and art manifestos have always fascinated me. Their parameters, their intentionality, and their fallibilities offer a snapshot of an individual or group sensibility at a given moment, bridging an interior state of mind with a reaction to a specific set of social, cultural, or political circumstances. I’m really interested in how the growth of a named community of thought on this platform - concerned with the future of cinema in its many interpretations - could be framed in the context of the history of film manifestos.

That piece is to come (hopefully) next week.

For this post I wanted to share some of the recent Cinematologists Podcast audio and writing that myself and co-host Neil have produced. Our last main episode is a brilliant episode that Neil ( [Indistinct Chatter] ) produced featuring an interview with film critic Ryan Gilbey about his new book It Used to be Witches: Under the Spell of Queer Cinema.

It’s a wonderfully personal conversation of trust, empathy and curiosity, very much in keeping with the tenor of the book. Ryan’s personal reflections on how cinema shaped his identity will register with so many of us. This is allied to the depth of knowledge and critical passion for Queer cinema, the uses and contradictions of that term. Indeed, one of the most fascinating directions in which the conversation goes is the idea that film watching is a queer act in and of itself.

The conversation covers many films as you would expect, but a key personal example for Ryan, and one the Neil and I discuss in out conversation, is Lucio Casto’s elegant romance The End of Century. At the risk of being reductive it reminded me of Linklater’s Before Trilogy, but with subtle time shifting mechanism that demand the most satisfying kind of critical labour. Call Me By Your Name would be another obviously touchpoint, but I also found something of the relational character empathy of Celine Sciamma - I’m thinking Petit Maman.

The episode is underpinned by a greater level of poignancy which, I won’t go into here, but if you listen to the episode, you’ll get a sense of how myself and Neil needed to reframe the interview somewhat. You can download/stream the episode for free wherever you get your podcasts - below is the link to Spotify:

For paid subscribers: I've added above the bonus podcast episode Neil and I recorded as an accompaniment to the main show. He was up in London from his home in Cornwall for these tapings. As we don’t often get the chance to record IRL, it’s always a pleasure to shoot the breeze, so to speak, in a more relaxed way—and without the barrier of internet lag.

In this free-flowing conversation, Neil and I reflect on recent projects, shifts in our pedagogical and creative identities, and the deeper personal processes that underlie our podcasting practice.

From there, we touch on the role of physical space and routine in our writing lives, particularly Neil’s decision to work from a local café in Cornwall as a way to disrupt solitude and cultivate a new creative rhythm. This spirals into a discussion about the psychological conditions that enable productive work, and how these are often at odds with the institutional structures we’ve historically worked within.

A key thread that emerges is our shared ambivalence about our academic identities. We unpack what it means to move beyond the institution—not with disdain, but with a desire for more open-ended, hybrid forms of public engagement. This includes a reflection on Substack as a space for exploratory, essayistic writing that doesn’t require the defensive armature of traditional scholarship.

Film wise Neil talks about S/He Is Still Her/E – The Official Genesis P-Orridge Doc, and I, in stark contrast, make a few “considered” remarks about enjoying the Star Wars/Disney series Andor.

Also below, for paid subscribers, is the July newsletter article I recently wrote, entitled The Learned and the Learner.

It’s one of those pieces that reflects on the serendipitous collision of ideas that have emerged through recent conversations, reading, and life events. I try to explore the fluidity between teaching and learning—how these “concepts” are something I’m continuously negotiating across different creative and intellectual contexts.

I reflect on how our culture too often enshrines rigid binaries—teacher/student, expert/amateur, art/commerce—and how cinema, at its best, can offer a more dynamic and relational model of engagement. Drawing from the conversations above, along with my recent discussion with Adrian Martin and the piece I wrote on Cinemas and Film Education, I also bring in Zen concepts like “beginner’s mind” and the writings of Alan Watts and Shunryū Suzuki, positioning these ideas alongside my preparation for a new teaching role at the National Film and Television School.

As always, thanks for reading, watching, or listening.

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Peace and Love.

The Learned and the Learner

In the last few weeks, I’ve been grappling with an idea that I’ve intuitively known - perhaps for as long as I’ve been teaching - but which feels increasingly acute: that the processes of teaching and learning are not linear progressions from ignorance to knowledge, nor one-way transmissions from authority to acolyte, but rather an endless loop. A mutually constitutive relationship that defines how we engage with the world. Teaching is not the culmination of learning; it is its continuation. And learning is not the inverse of teaching; it is its condition.