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.
Find out more here: www.closeupfilmcentre.com/venue-hire
Showing This Week
Monday 12 November: Persona
Arguably Bergman’s most representative and iconic film, Persona is the pivot point between the director’s two great sixties trilogies (his crisis-of-faith trio and the island-set films with which he closed the decade), blending crucial elements of both into something spare, chilling and inimitable.
Wednesday 14 November: Images of the World
"One must be just as wary of pictures as of words. There is no literature without linguistic criticism, without the author being critical of the existing language. It’s just the same with film. One need not look for new, as yet unseen images, but one must work with existing ones in such a way that they become new.” Introduced by artist, film maker and cultural activist Andrea Luka Zimmerman
Thursday 15 November: Spectres of the Spectrum
"Baldwin's work draws on a history of underground film-making from Joseph Cornell to 1980s scratch video as well as today's climate of anti-corporate culture-jamming. Spectres of the Spectrum (SOS for short) is radical pop art, and head-spinningly entertaining storytelling, if you manage to keep up with it." – Jonathan Romney
Friday 16 November: Wild Strawberries
Bergman’s most popular film alongside The Seventh Seal similarly packages troubling existential questions within a tightly structured narrative, offering charming, lighthearted passages for almost long enough to make one forget the morbid realities that undergird its story.
Saturday 17 November: Cries and Whispers
This existential wail of a drama concerns two sisters, Karin and Maria, keeping vigil for a third, Agnes, who is dying of cancer and can find solace only in the arms of a beatific servant. An intensely felt film that is one of Bergman’s most striking formal experiments, Cries and Whispers is a powerful depiction of human behaviour in the face of death, positioned on the borders between reality and nightmare, tranquility and terror.
Saturday 17 November:
Returning exhausted from the Crusades to find medieval Sweden gripped by the Plague, a knight (Max von Sydow) suddenly comes face-to-face with the hooded figure of Death, and challenges him to a game of chess. One of the most influential films of its time, The Seventh Seal is a stunning allegory of man’s search for meaning and a work of stark visual poetry.
Calendar
Wed 14 Nov 8:15pm
Images of the World
Images of the World
Thu 15 Nov 8:15pm
Spectres of the Spectrum
Spectres of the Spectrum
Fri 16 Nov 8:15pm
Wild Strawberries
Wild Strawberries
Sat 17 Nov 6:00pm
Cries and Whispers
Cries and Whispers
Sat 17 Nov 8:30pm
The Seventh Seal
The Seventh Seal
Sun 18 Nov 6:00pm
Autumn Sonata
Autumn Sonata
Sun 18 Nov 8:10pm
The Piano Teacher
The Piano Teacher
Mon 19 Nov 8:15pm
Persona
Persona
Thu 22 Nov 6:00pm
November Film Festival Programme 1
November Film Festival Programme 1
Thu 22 Nov 8:00pm
November Film Festival Programme 2
November Film Festival Programme 2
Fri 23 Nov 6:00pm
November Film Festival Programme 3
November Film Festival Programme 3
Fri 23 Nov 8:30pm
November Film Festival Programme 4
November Film Festival Programme 4
Sat 24 Nov 5:00pm
November Film Festival Programme 5
November Film Festival Programme 5
Sat 24 Nov 7:00pm
November Film Festival Programme 6
November Film Festival Programme 6
