One of BFF.fm’s longest running podcasts, Bitch Talk is back from their fifth annual Sundance Film Festival and loading up the feed with incredible conversations with writers, directors, actors, and others involved in creating some of the year’s most thought-provoking films. So I got on Zoom with one of their co-hosts, Erin Lim, to discuss highlights from the festival and what has motivated her to keep making this show for the past decade.

“[Our guests] are people doing really good things, so we need to just keep talking to them and feeling good about the world because despite it all, they're still doing it.”

Erin told me that when Bitch Talk, an all-AAPI created, hosted, and produced podcast, launched in 2013, “it was two gals, my original co-host and I, sitting around a kitchen table in Oakland, kind of shooting the shit, maybe reading some headlines, talking about pop culture and that was that. It has evolved into a very interview-focused podcast, sometimes with Basic Bitches thrown in, which is our round-table conversations with each other about our daily lives.”Erin used to work in the film industry and is based in the Bay Area, which has contributed to how Bitch Talk always had an arts and culture leaning with a strong lineup of film people and a healthy dose of progressive politics.

While the show also features conversations with politicians, business owners, comedians, and other members of the community, February and March are all about film. This year was Bitch Talk’s fifth year attending Sundance and, as Erin explained, a lesser-known festival that happens at the same time in the same place—Slamdance.

“Slamdance is the punk cousin of Sundance. They're not affiliated. It'd be like if BFF had its own film festival. We cover both, which is fantastic because just as many well-known directors, actors, and films come out of Slamdance as they do at Sundance.”

Part of preparing for the two festivals is getting access to all the films as early as possible (usually not more than a few weeks before) and watching them all. This year they had only a couple weeks to watch 28 films.

“I didn't get to watch them all before I got there, so I had to jam a few while I was there, on my laptop with a bloody nose. Being at altitude this year was really fun. So I'm sitting there at the table, with tissue and watching a fucking documentary called 20 Days in Mariupol, which was the first 20 days of Ukrainian and Russian War. So it was great. It's very sexy at Sundance and Slamdance.”

The Bitch Talk team has spent years building up their relationships with filmmakers and their reps in order to snag the interviews that excite them most. I asked Erin about how they choose who to talk to from the dozens of films and hundreds of people involved in making them.

“We definitely look at who the directors, who the screenwriters are, meaning are they marginalized folks? Are we hearing stories from people that we don't hear from? Or if they've already been on the show and we have a good relationship with them, let's have them back on.”

And sometimes Erin and the team just get stoked about a title and follow their curiosity.

“There was a title––I think it was at South by Southwest last year––and the title was F*ckEm Right Back. And we're like, ‘Yes.’ We didn't even have to know anything.”

For Erin, her co-host Ange, and producer Char, creating this podcast is all about the community it’s enabled them to build, creating a platform to support artists and the powerful work they’re doing, and enabling joy for themselves and their listeners even when a lot of things about our world are kinda crap.

“[Our guests] are people doing really good things, so we need to just keep talking to them and feeling good about the world because despite it all, they're still doing it.”

So, now, available to you on the BFF.fm Podcast Network and wherever you listen to podcasts, the fruits of Erin, Ange, and Char’s labor are ready for you to listen to.

“My husband is biased, but he says, ‘I think these are the best interviews you've had since doing this.’ It's like, well, we've done it five times now, two years virtually, but I think we're just getting into our rhythm.”

Some episodes to check out before getting hooked and spending the next month binging the entire back catalog of Bitch Talk:

Slamdance 2023 Documentaries – Silent Love and Starring Jerry As Himself

“Starring Jerry as Himself was very thought-provoking and––I should just get their synopsis because I'm not gonna do it justice. ‘A family documents how their immigrant father, a recently divorced and retired Florida man was recruited by the Chinese police to be an undercover agent.’ We got to interview the whole family who was a part of it, including Jerry’s ex-wife. We really loved it and we were so happy to meet Jerry, who's the star.”

Sundance 2023 Documentaries – Food and Country and 20 Days in Mariupol

“Laura Gabbert is a returning guest for her last film, City of Gold, in 2017, about the LA Times food writer Johnathon Gold. We haven't seen her since then, but she remembered us. This year she came back with another film, called Food and Country, that really talks about our US food ways, which is very interesting in how it was impacted during the pandemic.”

Thanks for reading. Thanks for listening. Thanks for supporting community radio. Check out more BFF.fm podcasts here.