It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome to the next picture show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film and how it shaped our thoughts on a recent release. I'm Scott Tobias here with... Tasha Robinson. Keith Phipps. Genevieve Kossi. Here on the Next Picture Show, we believe that no film exists in a vacuum and that all culture is more interesting in context. So every other week, we get together to talk over a classic film and consider

how it relates to a current movie. This week, we travel from Hong Kong in the 60s to

modern-day Miami for two heartbreaking stories of repressed passion and unrequited love, each told

with their own formal and structural audacity. Tasha, perhaps you can talk about the pairings

in our pairing.

Currently standing at 99% on Metacritic and 98% on Rotten Tomatoes,

Bering Jenkins' Moonlight is, quantitatively speaking, the most acclaimed film of 2016 so far.

It's also been one of the year's biggest indie sensations, in part because of the strong reviews,

but also perhaps because it tells

the story of unrequited love that we're not used to seeing in contemporary America.

Unfolding in three distinct chapters, Moonlight shows three phases in the life of a bullied

black Miami resident named Sharon, who lives in poverty with his drug-addicted mother Paula.

Sharon has been, quote, unquote, different from his peers since pre-adolescence,

and the film is about his struggle to identify and pursue his desires in an environment that

strongly forbids homosexuality.

The romantic qualities of moonlight, from Sharon's tormented relationship with a classmate

to the dreamy musical themes that connect them, called to mind the work of Wongar Why,

particularly his beautiful 2000 film, In the Mood for Love. Opening in 1962, Hong Kong,

In The Mood for Love, stars Tony Long and Maggie Chung, as neighbors who discover their spouses

...