Welcome to Close-Up!
Showing This Week
Wednesday 16 October: Brief Encounters
Shelved for 20 years by Soviet censors, Muratova’s first solo feature contains the building blocks of her experimental style including the use of flashbacks, a lack of clear or conventional narrative, montages of still photographs and audio discontinuities.
Thursday 17 October: The Hellstrom Chronicle
Equal measures monster movie, hoax, and nature documentary, The Hellstrom Chronicle takes us through the infernal microcosmos of the insect world, with gorgeous 70s-hued macrophotography and a dramatic, pre-ASMR sound design. Introduced by Dr Amy Cutler.
Friday 18 October: Getting to Know the Big Wide World
A construction site, a symbol of newness and growth, serves as the background to an impassioned and unresolved love triangle. The drab terrain is little more than mud and cement, but the sky is a blanket of colour and light, offering the three confused lovers the glow of potential solace. Against this landscape, the sensual, poetic and mundane beauty of Muratova’s vision elevates the everyday reality of Soviet society.
Saturday 19 October: Hyènes
Djibril Diop Mambéty adapts a timeless parable about human greed into a biting satire of Africa betraying the hopes of independence for the false promises of Western materialism. Hyènes both encapsulates and transcends the complexity of the postcolonial African experience.
Saturday 19 October: The Liberated Film Club X with Astra Taylor
"Because you're sick of knowing exactly what you're going to get and you're sick when you get it." We're thrilled to welcome Astra Taylor as our special guest for the tenth instalment of The Liberated Film Club. Free to attend for Close-Up members, but booking is essential.
Sunday 20 October: Le Franc + La Petite vendeuse de soleil
We're thrilled to present a double-bill of the first two films in Djibril Diop Mambéty's incomplete Histoires de petites gens trilogy. Le Franc and La Petite vendeuse de soleil are shown here in new digital restorations courtesy of Waka Films.
Sunday 20 October: The Asthenic Syndrome
Muratova cleverly drags her audience through this masterpiece of glasnost by tragi-comic means, creating a window into the future of post-communist Russia through the lens of affliction – an entire society taken by the Asthenic Syndrome, once known as hypochondria. Banned by the Soviet government for obscenity, this caustic and allegorical epic uses colour and its absence to great effect.
Showing Next Week
Monday 21 October: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
In the early 1970s, Fassbinder discovered the American melodramas of Douglas Sirk and was inspired by them to begin working in a new, more intensely emotional register. One of the first and best-loved films of this period in his career is The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, which balances a realistic depiction of tormented romance with staging that remains true to the director’s roots in experimental theater.
Tuesday 22 October: The Long Farewell
Ostensibly the story of the strained relationship between a divorced translator and her teenaged son, who would rather live with his father in Siberia. Muratova’s important early feature, scripted by prominent feminist Natalya Ryazantseva, was deemed too aesthetic, personal and elitist by Soviet authorities, and was subsequently banned and its director was ejected from the filmmakers’ union.
Wednesday 23 October: The Wild Boys
Early 20th century La Réunion: five delinquent boys commit a ghastly crime at school. Their punishment? A mysterious disciplinary on a cruel captain’s ship. Yet when the boys arrive on the shores of a gorgeous paradise island, they succumb to the earthly delights of its unusually sexy, luxurious and sticky vegetation, leading to a metamorphosis that is less body horror more body ecstasy.
Friday 25 October: Arboretum Cycle
“I didn’t want to make a film that depicted a garden or plants or flowers, but one where the film itself became like a plant that could fill with light.” – Nathaniel Dorsky
Saturday 26 October: Fox and His Friends
A lottery win leads not to financial and emotional freedom but to social captivity, in this wildly cynical classic about love and exploitation by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Casting himself against type, the director plays a suggestible working-class innocent who lets himself be taken advantage of by his bourgeois new boyfriend and his circle of materialistic friends, leading to the kind of resonant misery that only Fassbinder could create.
Saturday 26 October: Eternal Homecoming
In her last film, made at the age of 78, Muratova brings together her favourite actors to act in a film about casting. But this is no ordinary film about acting, as the director employs a variety of cinematic devices to play with – even trick – her audience. Through her much-loved use of the refrain and repetition, Muratova proves she continues to be fascinated with the aesthetic possibilities of the cinema.
Sunday 27 October: Jürgen Böttcher: A New Way of Seeing
A selection of Jürgen Böttcher's early films, from Three of Many (1961) his personal portrait of three artist friends in Dresden, to Laundry Women (1972), his second film about women at work. The screening will be introduced by Diana Mavroleon.
Sunday 27 October: Jürgen Böttcher: Outsiders
A programme focusing on the relationship between Jürgen Böttcher's films and his equally important work as a painter. Three variations of painted Transformations on film and a sensitive portrait of an older colleague, the contructivist artist Hermann Glöckner. The screening will be introduced by Diana Mavroleon.
Coming Soon
12 - 17 November 2019: 21st Century Žilnik
The first UK survey of the work of the pioneering Yugoslav-Serbian filmmaker Želimir Žilnik. With a career that began in the 1960s, Žilnik is one of the genuine legends of European cinema, particularly a radical, engaged, independent, humanist cinema. This contemporary overview focuses on the urgency and vitality of Žilnik’s 21st century work, and includes the UK premiere of his most recent film, The Most Beautiful Country in the World.
Calendar
Wed 16 Oct 8:30pm
Brief Encounters
Brief Encounters
Thu 17 Oct 8:15pm
The Hellstrom Chronicle
The Hellstrom Chronicle
Fri 18 Oct 8:15pm
Getting to Know the Big Wide World
Getting to Know the Big Wide World
Sat 19 Oct 6:00pm
Hyènes
Hyènes
Sat 19 Oct 8:15pm
The Liberated Film Club X with Astra Taylor
The Liberated Film Club X with Astra Taylor
Sun 20 Oct 5:30pm
Le Franc + La Petite vendeuse de soleil
Le Franc + La Petite vendeuse de soleil
Sun 20 Oct 7:30pm
The Asthenic Syndrome
The Asthenic Syndrome
Mon 21 Oct 8:15pm
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Tue 22 Oct 8:15pm
The Long Farewell
The Long Farewell
Wed 23 Oct 8:15pm
The Wild Boys
The Wild Boys
Fri 25 Oct 7:30pm
Arboretum Cycle
Arboretum Cycle
Sat 26 Oct 5:30pm
Fox and His Friends
Fox and His Friends
Sat 26 Oct 8:00pm
Eternal Homecoming
Eternal Homecoming
Sun 27 Oct 6:00pm
Jürgen Böttcher: A New Way of Seeing
Jürgen Böttcher: A New Way of Seeing
Sun 27 Oct 8:15pm
Jürgen Böttcher: Outsiders
Jürgen Böttcher: Outsiders
Mon 28 Oct 8:15pm
Martha
Martha
Wed 30 Oct 8:30pm
Katzelmacher
Katzelmacher
Fri 01 Nov 8:15pm
The Marriage of Maria Braun
The Marriage of Maria Braun
Sat 02 Nov 6:00pm
Berlin Super 80: Films from the West German Underground
Berlin Super 80: Films from the West German Underground
Sat 02 Nov 8:30pm
The Third Generation
The Third Generation
Sun 03 Nov 5:30pm
Jürgen Böttcher: A Deeper Dialetic
Jürgen Böttcher: A Deeper Dialetic
Sun 03 Nov 8:30pm
Four Parts of a Folding Screen
Four Parts of a Folding Screen
Mon 04 Nov 7:00pm
Film Course: Surrealism and Cinema
Film Course: Surrealism and Cinema
