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 Weekend
Saturday 19 January: Helsinki, Forever + Midnight Sun Film Festival
Peter von Bagh's international break-through: a portrait of Finland's capital made with material taken from all eras and sources, with newsreel footage finding a place as easily as scenes from feature films. Certain locales are contemplated throughout the years, if not always in chronological order – as every so often, Von Bagh's montage follows an emotional logic that questions real historical developments.
Saturday 19 January: Inspector Palmu’s Error
An indisputable classic, and the first adaptation to feature the fictional detective created by the esteemed Finnish author Mika Waltari, best known for his historical books. Known for its splendid documentary images of Helsinki, the film mixes elements of comedy with scenes that would fit in more with the most intense of expressionist horror.
Sunday 20 January: Shadows in Paradise
Aki Kaurismäki regulars Matti Pellonpää and Katja Outinen star in this offbeat yet remarkably touching romantic comedy. Pellonpää plays Nikander, a rubbish collector and would-be entrepreneur who finds his plans for success dashed when his business associate commits suicide. Whilst searching for a job, he meets Ilona, a down-on-her luck cashier in a local supermarket – and, falteringly, a bond begins to develop between them.
Sunday 20 January: The Way You Wanted Me
This powerful drama works as a metaphor for Finland: the leading female character, a prostitute, is defeated and crushed by life, a shadow of her former self – but she has preserved an ideal image of peace and happiness.
Showing Next Week
Monday 21 January: The Eternal Road
Based on Antti Tuuri’s bestselling novel, The Eternal Road tells the untold story of the many thousands of Communist Americans who answered Stalin’s call in the 1930s to build a new society in the USSR based on justice, equality, and freedom. They include Jussi Ketola, an idealistic American with Finnish origins.
Tuesday 22 January: Kaisa's Enchanted Forest
After a life of ill health, the young Swiss author Robert Crottet feels a calling to go to the Arctic and meet the people of the North. He is welcomed by the Skolt Sámi and is mesmerized by the richness of their oral traditions, especially the unique storytelling gift of the lively matriarch Kaisa Gauriloff. After being acknowledged by the forest, he is permitted to record the stories and legends as told by Kaisa.
Wednesday 23 January: The Broad Way
The third film by Valentin Vaala and his leading actor, budding director Teuvo Tulio: two young cosmopolitans with a great passion for cinema. Vaala loved Lubitsch, while Tulio was called the Finnish Valentino. The title of the film refers to the Sermon on the Mount: "The path is wide, which leads to damnation." Vaala designs a cinema of beautiful surfaces: fast cars, elegant costumes, neon lights and jazz
Thursday 24 January: People in the Summer Night + Alvar Aalto
Valentin Vaala's languorously paced images are among the most sensuous in Finnish cinema, and capture Sillanpää's atmosphere of resistance and resignation, the douceur de la vie of old age. As the sun lingers well into the night, farmers till the soil, lovers meet in the fields, a baby is born, a man dies mysteriously, and we are left to speculate about their destinies.
Friday 25 January: Stolen Death
A thriller set in turn-of-the-century Helsinki, Stolen Death uses elements of German expressionism to tell the story of Finnish resistance fighters smuggling arms to overthrow the Tsarist occupiers of Finland. Tapiovaara stresses the divided loyalties of the Finnish bourgeoisie, torn between preserving their privileged economic position and taking a risky stand for an independent Finland.
Saturday 26 January: The Village Shoemakers
Based on a bittersweet, farcical play about unrequited love by Finland's first modern novelist and playwright, Aleksis Kivi, The Village Shoemakers captures the defiant lack of self-pity that distinguished Kivi's literary style. Axel Slangus, later to play the old man in Ingmar Bergman's Virgin Spring, gives an unsentimental performance as a brawny bachelor whose bungled attempts at winning the girl of his dreams leave him to the solitude of a whiskey bottle.
Saturday 26 January: The Diary of a Worker
Released in the midst of an extremely grey period in the Finnish cinema, The Diary of a Worker was considered a revelation: the film had discovered realism, living people and vital milieu, none of them packaged in the trappings of entertainment; and what is more, Risto Jarva's work seemed to approach the standard of the best new European cinema.
Sunday 27 January: Shoah: Holocaust Memorial Day
To mark Holocaust Memorial Day we present a commemorative screening of Claude Lanzmann's nine-hour opus Shoah. Using no archival footage, Lanzmann instead focuses on first-person testimonies, employing a circular, free-associative method in assembling them. The intellectual yet emotionally overwhelming Shoah is not a film about excavating the past but an intensive portrait of the ways in which the past is always present.
Coming Soon
1 - 27 February 2019: Close-Up on Luis Buñuel
From his beginnings as a godfather of filmic Surrealism to his remarkably fertile exile in Mexico to his late-career renaissance as a titan of international cinema, Spanish-born director Luis Buñuel’s richly varied body of work reveals a consummate film-poet whose films overflow with unforgettable, dreamlike images.
7 - 14 February 2019: Stereo Spasms Festival: Celebrating Luc Ferrari at 90
Brunhild Ferrari, Ecstatic Peace Library and Close-Up are proud to present a series of talks and discussions focusing on French composer Luc Ferrari’s film works, complementing Café Oto's programme of live-interpretations from Ferrari's compositions. Stereo Spasms Festival is an 8-day programme of concerts, talks, films, readings, installations, and exhibitions, marking the launch of the first English translation of Ferrari's complete works.
26 February - 26 March 2019: Film Course: Surrealism in Cinema from Luis Buñuel to David Lynch
Virginie Sélavy returns with an expanded five-week course exploring the influence of Surrealism on cinema from the beginnings of the movement through to 1960s psychedelia and experimentation, up until its more recent incarnation in the films of Guy Maddin and David Lynch.
Calendar
Sat 19 Jan 6:00pm
Helsinki, Forever + Midnight Sun Film Festival
Helsinki, Forever + Midnight Sun Film Festival
Sat 19 Jan 8:00pm
Inspector Palmu’s Error
Inspector Palmu’s Error
Sun 20 Jan 6:00pm
Shadows in Paradise
Shadows in Paradise
Sun 20 Jan 8:00pm
The Way You Wanted Me
The Way You Wanted Me
Mon 21 Jan 8:15pm
The Eternal Road
The Eternal Road
Tue 22 Jan 8:30pm
Kaisa's Enchanted Forest
Kaisa's Enchanted Forest
Wed 23 Jan 8:15pm
The Broad Way
The Broad Way
Thu 24 Jan 8:15pm
People in the Summer Night + Alvar Aalto
People in the Summer Night + Alvar Aalto
Fri 25 Jan 8:15pm
Stolen Death
Stolen Death
Sat 26 Jan 6:30pm
The Village Shoemakers
The Village Shoemakers
Sat 26 Jan 8:30pm
The Diary of a Worker
The Diary of a Worker
Sun 27 Jan 11:00am
Shoah
Shoah
Mon 28 Jan 8:15pm
Women of Niskavuori
Women of Niskavuori
Tue 29 Jan 7:00pm
The Unknown Soldier
The Unknown Soldier
Wed 30 Jan 8:15pm
The Worthless
The Worthless
Fri 01 Feb 8:15pm
Un chien anadalou + L'age d'or
Un chien anadalou + L'age d'or
Sat 02 Feb 6:00pm
The Exterminating Angel
The Exterminating Angel
Sat 02 Feb 8:00pm
Diary of a Chambermaid
Diary of a Chambermaid
Sun 03 Feb 6:00pm
Two or Three Things I Know About Her
Two or Three Things I Know About Her
Sun 03 Feb 8:00pm
Belle de Jour
Belle de Jour
