Melbourne film talk with critical warmth.
Primal Screen treats film criticism as a shared table conversation, moving from weekly releases into older works, screenings, and interviews. Its panels are brisk but careful, often pairing a current title with a revealing comparison from cinema history.
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Primal Screen sounds like film criticism happening in a room, not being handed down from a distance. It is brisk, companionable, and alert to detail. The show regularly gathers critics, guest hosts, curators, programmers, and filmmakers around a set of films that speak to one another. Sometimes the bridge is obvious, as with a contemporary relationship drama placed beside Leave Her to Heaven. Sometimes it is stranger and more playful, as in an opera-on-film special that moves through Amadeus, animated comedy, and the porous line between adaptation and reinvention. The show likes a pairing. A new release becomes more interesting when placed against an older form, a local screening series, a political moment, or a performance tradition. That structure gives the conversation a useful rhythm: setup, context, scene detail, caveat, wider claim. It does not rush straight to thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Recent episodes cover A24 drama, film noir, Palestinian narrative drama, Australian documentary culture, Canadian mockumentary comedy, space-mission comedy, Tourette’s biographical drama, and cinema shaped by surveillance footage. The range is broad, but the editorial center is clear. Primal Screen cares about how films are made, how they are shown, and what communities gather around them. Melbourne is part of the texture. RRR studio chatter, local cinema screenings, Kinotopia’s print launch, Hear My Eyes’ re-scored Terminator 2 event, and references to programming make the show feel connected to an active film city. The panels can be funny. They can also turn grave when the films demand it. Serious subjects are approached through craft, testimony, and representation rather than blunt summary. Interviews expand the frame, bringing in people involved in curation, composition, magazines, and filmmaking. The result is a show for listeners who want criticism that is knowledgeable but still alive to banter, uncertainty, and discovery. It is not a polished essay machine. Its value is the friction of informed people thinking aloud together.
Made for: For listeners who follow new releases, retrospective programming, screenings, and local screen culture, and who prefer full conversations over quick verdicts. It also suits filmgoers who enjoy comparisons across eras and genres.
What sets it apart: Primal Screen stands out by tying weekly reviews to Melbourne’s wider cinema ecosystem, including programmers, live-score events, print film culture, and independent screenings. Its panels make criticism feel social without losing precision.
Primal Screen is a show about movies, from the ones on the big screen to the ones you stream. A mix of new release and retrospective film and television reviews and interviews with film and television practitioners on 3RRR 102.7FM in Melbourne Australia. Presented by Flick Ford with regular guest critics Lisa Kovacevic, Cerise Howard, Will Cox, Emma Westwood and more.Hosted and produced by Flick Ford.Podcast editing and social media by Gina Cameron and Isabella Radevski.The intro and outro theme is Soft Illusion and was generously provided by Andras.https://andras.bandcamp.com/track/soft-illusion
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Flick Ford and rotating guests make screen culture legible through close formal observation, candid disagreement and unusually wide-ranging studio conversation.
Primal Screen turns film criticism into a lively studio conversation, with Flick Ford guiding rotating critics and filmmakers through current releases, retrospectives and occasional themed programs.
Come for Terminator 2 with synthesizers; stay while Flick Ford turns a close-up into an argument.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A lively look at opera as cinema, spectacle, comedy, and historical invention.
Primal Screen traces the charged place of opera in film, moving from Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now to Mr Bean on a Holiday in Cannes echoing Puccini's O Mio Babino Caro, then widening into films that make opera part of their whole design.
Three film reviews open into a measured conversation about surveillance, accountability, and uneasy admiration.
Primal Screen turns a three-film review slot into a wider conversation about what cinema can reveal, and what it can leave unresolved. The Perfect Neighbour sets up questions of footage, surveillance, and accountability, before Oliver Larcher's desert rave drama Surat shifts the…
A nimble Primal Screen episode links a re-scored Terminator 2 event with a comic Rivoli gig quest.
Primal Screen uses time travel as a loose through-line, moving from Hear My Eyes' live reimagining of Terminator 2 Judgment Day to Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie, a Canadian mockumentary adventure about a fictional band trying to book a gig at the Rivoli.
Primal Screen moves from Undeniable's Melbourne hip-hop history to Wuthering Heights and Pillion.
Primal Screen builds a clear case for its triple bill, beginning with Undeniable: The Evolution of Melbourne Hip Hop and a conversation with filmmaker Daniel Hayward, DJ Peril, and Lino Etia.
A focused reading of Anatomy of a Fall's mother-son tension and the images that hold what the courtroom cannot settle.
Primal Screen returns to the studio with Anatomy of a Fall, settling into the film's most productive uncertainty: its refusal to make every answer available.
A lively film discussion moves from La Chimera's outsider imagery to Civil War's uneasy timeliness.
Primal Screen treats film reviewing as a conversation about bodies, clothes and place, and how they can make an outsider visible. Flick Ford and Cerise Howard stay close to Josh O'Connor's Arthur in La Chimera, noting his height among the locals and the cream suit that grows…
Friendly interviews from inside pop culture.
Culture, conversation, and weekend momentum.
Fan-first interviews with genre creators.
Creative work, traced back to its sources.
Flick Ford and Cerise Howard host Primal Screen, reviewing three new films: La Chimera, Civil War, and Back to Black.
Host Flick Ford and guest Will Cox review Justine Triet's courtroom drama 'Anatomy of a Fall', exploring its themes of truth, language, and visual storytelling.
Host Flick Ford introduces a film review episode of Primal Screen, discussing The Promised Land and Black Barbie with guests Vaishnubi Ujekma and Thomas Caudill.
Host Flick Ford and co-host Cerise Howard introduce the Melbourne International Film Festival and preview interviews with filmmakers Zoe Pepper, James Litchfield, and Lucinda Reynolds about their debut features.
A radio show episode where hosts discuss movie reviews of Warfare, Sinners, and The Rehearsal, with a satirical segment about the Pope's death.
Host Flick Ford interviews filmmaker Timothy Despina-Marshall about his psychological horror film 'In the Room Where He Waits' and previews a conversation with Molly Reynolds about 'A Portrait of Love'.
A radio show previewing reviews of the films Am I OK?
Primal Screen revisits Michael Apted’s Seven Up, begun in 1964, as Asif Kapadia prepares the final 70 Up installment for SBS.
A radio show episode previewing a Ryusuke Hamaguchi season at Melbourne Cinémathèque and reviewing films Father Mother Sister Brother and The Deb.
Primal Screen guest host Maudie Osborne and critic Alice McShane devote the Easter Monday show to two films about dysfunctional couples: Kristoffer Borgli's The Drama and Stahl's 1945 Leave Her to Heaven.
Guest host Maudie Osborne and film curator Alice McShane discuss two dramatic films about dysfunctional relationships: A24's 'The Drama' and the classic noir 'Leave Her to Heaven'.
This episode of Primal Screen previews the film All That's Left of You with director Cherien Dabis and reviews the TV series Bait and the film I Swear.
This episode of Primal Screen covers the launch of Kinotopia's print magazine 'Katies', and reviews of 'Project Hail Mary' and 'The Voice of Hind Rajab'.
Primal Screen's “Opera on Film Special” moves from Powell and Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffman to Milos Forman's Amadeus, with Austin Lancaster, Alex Williams, and Andreas Giannopoulos comparing color, choreography, and recorded voices.
Gita Gunbir says The Perfect Neighbour was built from "30 hours" of ring-cam, body-cam, dash-cam, and 9-1-1 material tied to Ajike Owens and Susan Louise Lorenz.
Primal Screen hosts Flick Ford, Anthony Carew, and Kate Fitzpatrick interview Hear My Eyes artistic director Hayden Green and Belgian composer Peter Van Hoosen about a live re-scoring of James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
DJ Peril says Melbourne hip hop was "created in this city" through DJs, breakers, MCing, and graffiti.