Welcome to Close-Up!
Close-Up makes film culture and history accessible through its cinema, film library & online archive.
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.
Find out more here: www.closeupfilmcentre.com/venue-hire
Film Courses
5 - 26 November 2018: Film Course: Dance/Film - Speaking Back to the Canon
Portland Green leads a four part evening course with guest co-presenters: journalist and author, Michael Carlson; curator, film-maker and writer, Helena Blaker; producer Abigail Addison and film maker David Warwick. The course explores the relationship between dance and film; from the the early 1900s through to contemporary moving image practices.
6 - 27 November 2018: Film Course: Surrealism and Cinema from Luis Buñuel to David Lynch
Due to popular demand Virginie Sélavy returns with her four-week course introducing the history of Surrealist cinema, from its beginnings in the 1920s to its re-emergence in the 1960s-70s art/exploitation/psychedelia and Surrealism's socio-political contextualisation in Eastern European cinema before concluding with a survey of the role of Surrealism in contemporary cinema.
Film Programmes
2 - 20 October 2018: Mohsen Makhmalbaf: The Poetic Trilogy
One of the preeminent figures of Iranian cinema, Mohsen Makhmalbaf has written and directed an impressive array of acclaimed films, winning accolades at international film festivals and the admiration of world cinema audiences. This programme presents three of Makhmalbaf’s most lyrical films which the director has termed his Poetic Trilogy.
5 - 27 October 2018: Close-Up on the Taviani Brothers
With theatrical form and technique serving as the framework for their political cinema, and complex, individualistic characters as protagonists, the Tavianis are as concerned with corruption, abuse of power, poverty, and suffering as were the neorealists and their successors. This season focuses on three of the duo's best known films.
6 - 28 October 2018: Masaki Kobayashi: The Human Condition
Masaki Kobayashi’s mammoth humanist drama is one of the most staggering achievements of Japanese cinema. Originally filmed and released in three parts – adapted from Junpei Gomikawa’s six-volume novel, Kobayashi’s riveting, gorgeously filmed epic is novelistic cinema at its best.
8 October - 3 November 2018: Close-Up on Nuri Bilge Ceylan
With only a handful of feature films to his credit, Nuri Bilge Ceylan has emerged as one of the masters of contemporary cinema. In anticipation of the UK premiere of Ceylan’s new film, The Wild Pear Tree, this programme presents the Turkish auteur’s three preceding features: Three Monkeys, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and Winter Sleep.
4 November 2018: Fireflies #6: Alain Guiraudie / Albert Serra
We’re delighted host the launch of Fireflies Issue #6, which explores the films of radical French dreamer Alain Guiraudie and Catalan iconoclast Albert Serra – two of the most compelling voices in cinema today. Fireflies co-editor Giovanni Marchini Camia introduces That Old Dream That Moves, whilst Issue #6 contributor Erika Balsom will introduce Birdsong. We’ll be celebrating the launch in our bar between the screenings and copies of the magazine will be available to purchase throughout.
7 - 15 November 2018: Never Found: Alternate Histories of the 20th Century
Francesco Maria Carreri presents a four-part programme of films that use the technique of found footage to retell the history of the 20th century. From the burning of the Hindenburg to the Zapruder film, the stories we tell ourselves about our history are intrinsically linked to the medium of the moving image. The collage films selected for the season reappropriate and remix existing footage to propose different narratives from the established ones.
9 - 11 November 2018: Heart to Heart: Lee Myung-se
The London Korean Film Festival presents three early features by Korean New Wave director Lee Myung-se. Presented here on 35mm each screening will be followed by a discussion between Lee and LKFF programmer, Mark Morris.
22 - 25 November 2018: November Film Festival
November is an international festival for experimental film and artists’ moving image, presenting single channel film and video works from within the fields of experimental and essay film, artists' moving image and media art, as well as documentary, ethnographic and narrative films that seek to expand, redefine or reconfigure the means and ends of their respective fields. November champions works made by early career artists and filmmakers whose work is underrepresented in the UK.
28 November 2018: Slow Short Film Festival, Part 1
The Slow Short Film Festival is an annual festival celebrating works that employ an art cinema aesthetic that has emerged over the past three decades. Featuring films from Portugal, the US, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia and North Korea, part one illustrates the form's near-simultaneous emergeance around the world.
8 December 2018: Edge of Frame: The Films of Jodie Mack
Edge of Frame and Close-Up are proud to present a two-part programme of films by highly acclaimed experimental animator Jodie Mack. Part one gathers a selection of shorts, illuminating formal and cursory elements shared between fine-art abstraction and mass-produced graphic design; whilst part two presents the UK premiere of her highly anticipated debut feature The Grand Bizarre. We’re thrilled that Jodie will be present throughout and will be in conversation following both screenings.
9 December 2018: Edge of Frame: Material Fragments
Edge of Frame presents a programme of experimental animation featuring a variety of approaches to collage and cut-out animation. Dating from 1959 to 2018, these works forefront the surfaces and physicality of the materials in front of (and sometimes within) the camera, yet take us into the speculative zones of the imagination, unlocking memories, reveries and dreams, from the highly personal to the purely abstract.
