This week's podcast is the audio from the Film Now panel held in late 2016 & moderated by LARB's Anna Shechtman. The panelists were LA Times film critic Justin Chang, USC Professor and film scholar J D Connor, Cathy Schulman, the head of the organization Women In Film, and Gil Robertson, President of the African American Film Critics Association - and the event featured a wide-ranging consideration of the state of Cinema in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century, with particular focus on questions of diversity and distribution as well as the best films of 2016.

Vanessa Davis talks with co-hosts Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf about her autobiographical comics; in particular her collection Spaniel Rage, which is being re-issued. Davis discusses the evolution of a new literary art form; along with the establishment of women in the comics world. Then Martabel Wasserman drops by to recommend Sarah Schulman's classic novel of New York City at the height of the AIDS crisis, People in Trouble; which features a Donald Trump inspired antagonist. Lastly, Tom and Laurie listen to, and adore, a couple of poems by Emily Dickinson.

Co-hosts Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher speak with Iranian Poet in exile Moshen Emadi, who lives in Mexico but is touring America on the occasion of the publication of the first English language collection of his poems, Standing On Earth. A lover of Whitman and other great American poets, Emadi reflects on the tragedy that when he leaves the country the current President would ban him from returning to the Land of the Free. Then local artist, publisher, and activist Martabel Wasserman joins Kate and Medaya to discuss how art and literature are a powerful and essential component of resistance against oppression - needed now more than ever. Also, Karina Longworth drops by to give a book recommendation: Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz.

Karina Longworth talks with LARB's Medaya Ocher and Gustavo Turner about her phenomenally successful podcast about old Hollywood, "You Must Remember This," on the occasion of the launch of its new season series on Dead Blondes. Then LARB's Janice Littlejohn talks with African-American Theologian Monica Coleman about her stunning memoir Bipolar Faith. Also LARB Film Editor Anna Schectman drops in to recommend Patricia White's book Women's Cinema/World Cinema: Projecting Contemporary Feminisms.