#598 - Shana L. Redmond and Michael Gillespie on Body & Soul and Us

This week we’re excited to present a conversation between film scholars Shana L. Redmond, Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University, and Michael Gillespie, Associate Professor in NYU’s Department of Cinema Studies, as they discuss a double feature of Oscar Micheaux's 1925 silent film Body and Soul and Jordan Peele's 2019 sophomore feature Us. Hailed as “a colossal achievement” and “blissfully ambitious” upon its release, Jordan Peele’s 2019 feature Us plumbed everything from American isolationist fears and labyrinthine power structures to the rich lineage of the doppelgänger motif and home-invasion thrillers. Now with the recent publication Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay by Inventory Press, in-depth footnotes, commentaries, and a constellation of images, definitions, and inspirations have untethered entirely new references orbiting the film. This past June, Film at Lincoln Center was thrilled to interpret the cosmology outlined in this book through a presentation of double features, supplementary reading material, in-person appearances from some of the book’s contributing writers, and never-before-seen 35mm presentations of Us.