Welcome to Close-Up!
Showing This Week
Tuesday 23 July: Paris, Texas
Claire Denis worked as an assistant director on Wim Wenders’ Palme d’Or–winning study of masculinity, myth, and disconnection, which remains the director’s most moving and mysterious meditation on the physical and cultural landscape of America.
Wednesday 24 July: Wings of Desire
Angels perched atop the buildings of Berlin listen in on the innermost thoughts of mere mortals in Wim Wenders’s lovely, lyrical Wings of Desire, a soaring high-point of the director’s cinema and a moving, melancholic elegy to a Berlin still divided.
Thursday 25 July: Down by Law
Following her work on Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, Denis headed for Louisiana to assist Jim Jarmusch on his self-described “neo-Beat-noir-comedy” about a pimp (John Lurie), a radio DJ (Tom Waits), and a happy-go-lucky Italian immigrant (Roberto Benigni) who meet while sharing a cell in a New Orleans prison. Forming an unlikely friendship, the three misfits escape into the bayou and slog their way through the swamp towards uncertain futures.
Friday 26 July: Frans Zwartjes: Masterpiece
A launch event for the first catalogued record on the "anti-record label (anti-everything)" purge.xxx, by Frans Zwartjes & Lodewijk de Boer. René Coelho's rarely seen 1971 documentary Frans Zwartjes, Filmmaker will play alongside Portrait of Frans Zwartjes, by Zwartjes' collaborator Stanley Schtinter. All ticket holders will be able to access a discount on records purchased on the night, with a "secret" addition prepared by Schtinter to mark the event at Close-Up.
Friday 26 July: The Liberated Film Club VII with Anna Thew
"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 Anna Thew as our special guest for the seventh instalment of The Liberated Film Club. Free to attend for Close-Up members, but booking is essential.
Saturday 27 July: No Fear, No Die
A precursor to Beau Travail's study of uneasy male camaraderie No Fear, No Die carefully observes the subtly shifting dynamic between the two men – wonderfully played by Denis’ favorite actors, Alex Descas and Isaach de Bankolé – and the rituals and cruelties that define their world.
Saturday 27 July: I Can't Sleep
Denis' mid-career masterpiece is based on the shocking true story of Thierry Paulin, a gay, black, HIV-positive drug dealer, transvestite and serial killer who preyed on elderly Parisian women during the mid-1980s. The mysterious, sensitive – but appropriately troubling – exploration of Paulin's crimes offered by I Can't Sleep is, however, worlds away from such a sensationalistic description of the facts.
Sunday 28 July: Paris, Texas
Claire Denis worked as an assistant director on Wim Wenders’ Palme d’Or–winning study of masculinity, myth, and disconnection, which remains the director’s most moving and mysterious meditation on the physical and cultural landscape of America.
Showing Next Week
Monday 29 July: 35 Shots of Rum
This deeply emotional yet light-of-touch conte evokes nothing so much as Eric Rohmer in his “seasons” quartet as it follows a small circle of black Parisians and their friends in a roundelay of relationships that touches on almost every kind of love there is. Agnès Godard's cinematography richly limns an interior architecture in which objects take on an Ozu-like delicacy and immediacy, and uses train tracks to propel the story into the out-of-doors and, eventually, the future.
Tuesday 30 July: The Intruder
Inspired by a short, autobiographical book by French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, this hallucinatory masterpiece is perhaps Claire Denis’ most formally adventurous film. Blurring the lines between dream and reality, The Intruder brilliantly allegorizes invisible, inner intrusions (the pains of spurned love, the creeping bodily colonization of disease) in tactile physical actions.
Wednesday 31 July: Beau travail
Denis and her near-constant collaborator, screenwriter Jean-Pol Fargeau, reimagine Melville’s Billy Budd as a tale of jealousy and homoerotic desire amongst a company of French Legionnaires in remote Djibouti. In a film of few words the soldiers' sculptural bodies become expressive markers of the ways in which belonging, tenderness and violence trouble contemporary masculinity.
Calendar
Wed 24 Jul 8:15pm
Wings of Desire
Wings of Desire
Thu 25 Jul 8:15pm
Down by Law
Down by Law
Fri 26 Jul 6:30pm
Frans Zwartjes: Masterpiece
Frans Zwartjes: Masterpiece
Fri 26 Jul 8:15pm
The Liberated Film Club VII with Anna Thew
The Liberated Film Club VII with Anna Thew
Sat 27 Jul 6:00pm
No Fear, No Die
No Fear, No Die
Sat 27 Jul 8:00pm
I Can't Sleep
I Can't Sleep
Sun 28 Jul 7:30pm
Paris, Texas
Paris, Texas
Mon 29 Jul 8:15pm
35 Shots of Rum
35 Shots of Rum
Tue 30 Jul 8:15pm
The Intruder
The Intruder
Wed 31 Jul 8:15pm
Beau travail
Beau travail
Sat 24 Aug 8:00pm
Figures of Absence: The Films of Dore O.
Figures of Absence: The Films of Dore O.
Sat 21 Sep 5:40pm
Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 + Dialogue
Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 + Dialogue
Sat 21 Sep 8:30pm
Fighting Elegy + Shorts
Fighting Elegy + Shorts
