Welcome to Close-Up!

What's On

Sun 8 September, 4.30pm: Andrei Rublev

Sun 8 September, 4.30pm: Andrei Rublev

Originally titled The Passion According to Andrei, Tarkovsky’s second feature remains a wholly original epic, a life of the medieval icon painter encompassing the full horror of history. The culminating vision of Rublev’s Trinity only emerges from the yoke of Tartar occupation, mystic rites, excommunications, and nearly unrelieved suffering.
Sun 8 September, 8pm: Werckmeister Harmonies

Sun 8 September, 8pm: Werckmeister Harmonies

This mesmeric parable of societal collapse is an enigma of transcendent visual, philosophical, and mystical resonance. In thirty-nine hypnotic long takes engraved in ghostly black and white, auteur Béla Tarr and codirector-editor Ágnes Hranitzky conjure an apocalyptic vision of dreamlike dread and fathomless beauty.
Thu 12 September, 8.15pm: The Outsider

Thu 12 September, 8.15pm: The Outsider

Assuming the freeform structure of naturalistic, independent American cinema of the same period, The Outsider imparts a mutual theme: the hard barter of individual – usually male – freedom for a “normal” life of work and family.  In his second feature, Tarr continues his unpretentious reflections on the symbiotic, inarticulate relationships between personal dysfunction and social malady.
Fri 13 September, 8.15pm: Ivan's Childhood

Fri 13 September, 8.15pm: Ivan's Childhood

Ivan’s Childhood was one of many Soviet films to examine the catastrophic losses of World War II through the prism of childhood, but Tarkovsky’s debut was immediately singled out for its visionary aesthetics, winning the Golden Lion at Venice and the praise of prominent intellectuals.
Sat 14 August, 6pm: Mirror

Sat 14 August, 6pm: Mirror

While Mirror, like all Tarkovsky’s films, pays homage to painting, music, and poetry, it also makes plain that the Russian director understood Mnemosyne to be the mother of the muses. Being a poet, he sought not only to retrieve the past but to reveal its essence – and in so doing to redeem an inherently flawed present. 
Sat 14 September, 8pm: Stalker

Sat 14 September, 8pm: Stalker

Arguably Tarkovsky’s purest articulation of the film as spiritual quest, Stalker develops a radically different attitude to time than the jigsaw of his previous film, Mirror. "A perverse replay of Solaris’s cosmic voyage, a remake of Rublev in a secular world of postapocalyptic misery, a premonition of Chernobyl and Soviet disintegration." – J. Hoberman
Sun 15 September, 4.30pm: Andrei Rublev

Sun 15 September, 4.30pm: Andrei Rublev

Originally titled The Passion According to Andrei, Tarkovsky’s second feature remains a wholly original epic, a life of the medieval icon painter encompassing the full horror of history. The culminating vision of Rublev’s Trinity only emerges from the yoke of Tartar occupation, mystic rites, excommunications, and nearly unrelieved suffering.
Sun 15 September, 8pm: The Turin Horse

Sun 15 September, 8pm: The Turin Horse

Boldly proclaimed by Tarr to be his last film, The Turin Horse offers a masterful and melancholy summary of his unique visionary cinema. A remarkably hypnotic and immersive film, The Turin Horse pushes Tarr’s interest in texture, sound and motion to an expressive extreme, giving way to a sensorial richness rare in cinema today.

Calendar

Thu 12 Sep 8:15pm
The Outsider
Fri 13 Sep 8:15pm
Ivan’s Childhood
Sat 14 Sep 6:00pm
Mirror
Sat 14 Sep 8:00pm
Stalker
Sun 15 Sep 4:30pm
Andrei Rublev
Sun 15 Sep 8:00pm
The Turin Horse
Wed 18 Sep 8:15pm
Jonas Mekas’s Requiem