New Books in Film

In 1828, a seventeen-year-old boy was found wandering the streets of Nuremberg, holding two letters and unable to say more than a few words. The locals adopted him as a kind of municipal mascot; eventually, they learned that he had been bound in darkness until his release and struggled to learn more about his past. Werner Herzog took the story as a basis for his 1974 film–not one of his trademark documentaries–and used it as a meditation on the human condition. It’s an unforgettable experience, like seeing 2001 for the first time. Join us as we discuss the film’s ideas, humor, and audacity.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

The German title of the film is Every Man for Himself and God Against All, which is also the title of Werner Herzog’s 2024 memoir.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at [email protected] with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.
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Our bodies and brains are radically transformable, mutable and plastic. From the neuroplasticity of the brain to the epigenetic malleability of our bodies and of all organic life, the work of the contemporary French philosopher Catherine Malabou invites us to consider our plasticity as both a creative resource and an ethical challenge.

Catherine Malabou and Contemporary French Literature and Film: Witnessing Plasticity (Edinburgh UP, 2026) brings Malabou's philosophy into dialogue with contemporary literature and film. It reads conceptions of plasticity and neuroplasticity in Malabou through the mutant bodies of Leos Carax's films; the shape-shifting bodies of Marie Darrieussecq's novels and theatre; the terrifying, traumatic metamorphoses depicted in the fiction of Marie NDiaye; and the anarchic sexualities and identities celebrated in the cinema and writing of Alain Guiraudie. It argues that, in different ways, Malabou's philosophy and literary and filmic texts develop modes of bearing witness to plasticity which can supplement, challenge and extend scientific understandings of biological plasticity, constituting ethical and creative sites of exploration.
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Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations (Columbia UP, 2026) offers a powerful new account of how film shaped international relations and national identity. Drawing on previously unexamined and recently declassified archives in Turkey and the United States, Ayşehan Jülide Etem demonstrates how both countries used educational films to align institutional agendas and geopolitical interests. By tracing the transnational network of educational cinema, Etem uncovers how film functioned as infrastructure, circulating ideologies, organizing institutions, and training citizens. Moving beyond conventional accounts of propaganda and soft power, this book exposes how film was central to the making of modern Turkey and sheds new light on the media’s role in global politics.

Author Ayşehan Jülide Etem is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, where she also directs the Film Studies Concentration. A media studies scholar, Dr. Etem’s research examines how film operates within infrastructures, how it is strategically sponsored, produced, exhibited, and circulated to shape public behavior, manage populations, and mediate power.
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When Hollywood director Rian Johnson started making Wake Up Dead Man, the new Knives Out mystery (a movie you can watch on Netflix), he needed some help. His uncle and aunt in Denver connected him with their pastor in Denver, Father Scott Bailey, who became an advisor to the project. He talks about the process and the big questions of this movie with me. (And I admit: I hated the beginning and stopped watching a few minutes in. After reading about Fr Scott online and finding several Catholic sources who praised the movie, I gave it another look. I’m glad I did, because I think it’s not only entertaining but also important … and beautiful.)


Article in First Things by Father Scott about the movie and his role in it, “Wake Up Dead Man Captures the Beauty of Priestly Ministry,” January 5, 2026.


Article in Denver Catholic about Fr Scott and the movie, “A Denver Priest, a Hollywood Director and a Bowl of Fettuccine: Father Scott Bailey Advises on Catholic Life for New ‘Knives Out’ Film” by Jay Sorgi, November 22, 2025.


Screenplay of Wake Up Dead Man by Rian Johnson, the director and writer, available on his website.

Fr Scott Bailey at the Archdiocese of Denver.

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Starting in the 1880s, Black performers, and those invested in telling stories centering Black people, attempted to counter the dehumanizing and harmful stereotypes used to portray Black characters. Shows began touting “All Colored Revues” to indicate that a cast was made up of actual Black performers rather than white people in blackface, and that these spectacles aimed to build stories around the perception of Black experiences. Although these performances were sometimes flawed, and even overly prejudiced, they represented a significant form of Black American cultural development and expression.

Since theatrical performances were rarely recorded, and many of the movies that featured all Black casts are now considered “lost films,” films for which no copy is known to survive, advertising posters often provide the only remaining evidence of the most important productions featuring Black performers between the 1870s and 1940s. These posters, and the historic innovations of playwrights, composers, directors, producers, and the Black performers behind them, are the subjects of the exhibition, Act Black: Posters From Black American Stage and Screen, curated by our guest for this episode, Assistant Curator of Collections at New York City’s Poster House museum, Es-pranza Humphrey.

Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen is on view at Poster House through September 6, 2026. Exhibition resources are also available via the Bloomberg Connects app until September 6, and at the Poster House online exhibition archive thereafter.

Es-pranza’s recommended reading list is available at the Additions to the Archive Substack.

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