Welcome to Close-Up!
Close-Up makes film culture and history accessible through its film programmes and mediatheque.
Located in the heart of Shoreditch, Close-Up is the ideal venue for all your screening needs, whether you wish to host a press screening, corporate event, presentation, conference, Christmas or birthday party. Our adjoined cafe and bar is fully licensed and offers a convivial atmosphere for drinks receptions, networking or informal post-screening discussion.
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Showing This Week
Wednesday 19 June: The River
After spontaneously agreeing to play a drowned corpse in a film, a young man (Lee Kang-sheng) develops chronic, inexplicable neck pain. Tsai Ming-Liang’s third feature is at once overtly metaphorical and deeply committed to the ebb and flow of everyday life: a film about individuals in crisis that builds patiently to a devastating emotional climax.
Thursday 20 June: Vive l'Amour
Tsai found international acclaim in his second feature, Vive l’Amour, which traces the odd, accidental love triangle that loosely binds a realtor, her street vendor lover and the lonely young man secretly smitten with the street vendor. A crisp and often satiric snapshot of an anxious Taipei, the film’s moody portrayal of urban alienation and lovesick sexual games continues to draw insightful comparisons to Antonioni
Friday 21 June: The Terrorizers
As the title indicates, this is the one of Yang’s films in which the air of menace, usually lurking at the edges of the frame, takes center stage. The film traces the intersecting fates of three couples in contemporary Taipei, all of whom are caught up in a torrent of violence either emotional or physical, or both.
Saturday 22 June: Kelly Gallagher, I am the mace
We're thrilled welcome US artist Kelly Gallagher to present her first European solo screening, comprising ten years of her moving image work across animation, live action and avant-garde collage. Kelly will be present to perform her ARMed Manifesto and will be in conversation with programme curators Greg de Cuir Jr and Miriam de Rosa following the screenings.
Sunday 23 June: Yi Yi
Edward Yang's extraordinary Yi Yi follows a middle-class family in Taipei over the course of one year, beginning with a wedding and ending with a funeral. Warm, sprawling, and dazzling, this intimate epic is one of the undisputed masterworks of the new century.
Showing Next Week
Monday 17 June: A City of Sadness
Hou Hsio-Hsien’s epic film focuses on the complex history of 20th-century Taiwan during the turbulent period in Taiwanese history between the fall of the Japanese Empire in 1945 and the establishment of martial law in 1949. Made in the wake of the lifting of martial law on the island, A City of Sadness is both an important act of remembrance and a landmark of world cinema.
Sunday 30 June: Rebels of the Neon God
A haunting portrait of loneliness and misdirected youth, Rebels of the Neon God revealed Tsai Ming-liang’s ability to discover the expressive potential of overlooked everyday spaces – back alleys, motels, video arcades. The emergence of Tsai’s minimal aesthetic is apparent at key moments throughout the film.
Sunday 30 June: Stray Dogs
In the last feature film from Tsai Ming-liang, a single father (Lee Kang-sheng) makes his meager living holding up an advertising placard on a traffic island in the middle of a busy highway. Stray Dogs is many things at once: minimal in its narrative content and syntax, as visually powerful as it is emotionally overwhelming, and bracingly pure in both its anger and its compassion. One of the finest works of an extraordinary artist.
Calendar
Wed 19 Jun 8:15pm
The River
The River
Thu 20 Jun 8:15pm
Vive l'Amour
Vive l'Amour
Fri 21 Jun 8:15pm
The Terrorizers
The Terrorizers
Sat 22 Jun 6:30pm
Kelly Gallagher, I am the mace
Kelly Gallagher, I am the mace
Sun 23 Jun 7:00pm
Yi Yi
Yi Yi
Mon 24 Jun 8:15pm
A City of Sadness
A City of Sadness
Sat 29 Jun 5:30pm
Three Times
Three Times
Sun 30 Jun 5:30pm
Rebels of the Neon God
Rebels of the Neon God
Sun 30 Jun 8:00pm
Stray Dogs
Stray Dogs
