Featured
Showing Tonight: Leningrad Cowboys Go America
This hilarious road movie from Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki follows the misadventures of the worst rock and roll band in the world, the Leningrad Cowboys. When a promoter in their native Siberia, stunned by the band's lack of talent, advises them to try their luck in America they head for New York. Having learned English en-route on the plane and sporting shades, outsize quiffs and outrageously long winkle-pickers, they are passed off on Americans.
Showing This Week
19 October 2017: The Incredible Simultaneity Console VII
Week seven of Filmarmalade's Anniversary programme, curated by Gordon Shrigley. Featuring Luciano Zubillaga's video Things To Come.
20 - 22 October 2017: Mika Taanila: A Survey
Close-Up presents the final two programmes of Mika Taanila’s London-wide survey, and parallel interventions in sound and silence, featuring Mika Vainio (Pan Sonic) and Erkki Kurenniemi. Mika Taanila will be present for both screening programmes. Curated by Stanley Schtinter.
20 October 2017: Le Havre
In this warmhearted comic yarn from Aki Kaurismäki, fate throws the young African refugee Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) into the path of Marcel Marx (André Wilms), a kindly old bohemian who shines shoes for a living in the French harbor city Le Havre. Kaurismäki's glorious, colourful and deeply humane modern masterpiece champions the downtrodden and celebrates the smaller things that make life worth living.
20 - 22 October 2017: The Listening Screen
The Listening Screen is the pitch-black auditorium, for which Mika Taanila has produced two exclusive sound installations of music by his collaborators and mentors, both of whom sadly passed away earlier this year.
20 October 2017: The Listening Screen I: Mika Vainio
In this tribute, Mika Taanila manipulates samples, sounds and compositions never before heard outside of the cutting room, from his extensive collaborations with the Pan Sonic musician.
21 October 2017: 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. Part one of the Proletariat Trilogy.
22 October 2017: The Listening Screen II: Erkki Kurenniemi
Mika Taanila revisits private dairy and field recordings of Kurenniemi, as well as the sounds of his instruments. An intensely personal and private rumination on Kurenniemi’s adamant and inspiring will to live.
22 October 2017: Electric Forest
Close-Up presents a rare opportunity to experience Finnish experimental films as selected and introduced by Mika Taanila.
22 October 2017: Museum Planet
Mika Taanila presents a selection of his films, two of which focus on his friend and mentor Erkki Kurenniemi. Followed by Taanila in conversation with Maria Palacios Cruz.
Coming Soon
27 October 2017: Sixpackfilm: A Tribute
Sixpackfilm’s deputy director Gerald Weber presents two programmes celebrating the Vienna based archive’s phenomenal collection of Austrian experimental film and video. We’re pleased to welcome Weber here to introduce and discuss two thematic programmes gleaned from Sixpackfilm’s extensive archive.
28 - 29 October 2017: pic.london festival
As part of their inaugural festival, pic.london presents a two-day film programme exploring the relationship between still and moving images. Beginning with film’s infancy at the end of the 19th Century – through the 1960s avant-garde – this programme investigates the ways in which artists and theorists have engaged the moving image to develop, challenge and critique photographic language.
30 October 2017: Simon Liu: I Decided to Turn Left
This programme is an assortment of handmade 16mm films by Hong Kong and Brooklyn based artist Simon Liu. The works, made primarily between 2015 through 2017, consist of diaristic imagery of the filmmaker's home and travels that have been shrouded by chemical manipulations and printing processes.
31 October 2017: Night of the Living Dead
A deceptively simple tale of a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse who find themselves fending off a horde of flesh-eating ghouls newly arisen from their graves, Romero’s claustrophobic vision of a late-sixties America tearing itself apart rewrote the rules of the horror genre, combined gruesome gore with acute social commentary, and quietly broke ground by casting a black actor in the lead role.
4 - 5 November 2017: For Example, the Philippines
The Centre for Film & Ethics at Queen Mary University of London presents American documentary director John Gianvito’s complete seminal diptych For Example, the Philippines over one weekend including the UK premiere of Wake (Subic). At once an act of agit-prop and an ethical witnessing, For Example, the Philippines presents a genuine “history from below.” Acknowledging that landscape is always also political, the biochemical violations inflicted by militarism finally emerge as an assault on life itself. John Gianvito will be present for Q&As after the films.
6 - 27 November 2017: Close-Up Film Course: Surrealism and Cinema from Luis Buñuel to David Lynch
Surrealism is one of the art movements that has had the strongest influence on cinema and its impact has lasted to the present day. During this four-week course, Virginie Sélavy will look at 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.
Calendar
Thu 19 Oct 7:30pm
The Incredible Simultaneity Console VII
The Incredible Simultaneity Console VII
Fri 20 Oct 12:00pm
The Listening Screen I: Mika Vainio
The Listening Screen I: Mika Vainio
Fri 20 Oct 7:30pm
Le Havre
Le Havre
Sat 21 Oct 8:30pm
Shadows in Paradise
Shadows in Paradise
Sun 22 Oct 12:00pm
The Listening Screen II: Erkki Kurenniemi
The Listening Screen II: Erkki Kurenniemi
Sun 22 Oct 6:00pm
Mika Taanila: Electric Forest
Mika Taanila: Electric Forest
Sun 22 Oct 8:00pm
Mika Taanila: Museum Planet
Mika Taanila: Museum Planet
Mon 23 Oct 7:30pm
The Man Without a Past
The Man Without a Past
Tue 24 Oct 7:30pm
Lights in the Dusk
Lights in the Dusk
Wed 25 Oct 8:00pm
The Other Side of Hope
The Other Side of Hope
Thu 26 Oct 7:30pm
The Incredible Simultaneity Console VIII
The Incredible Simultaneity Console VIII
Fri 27 Oct 7:00pm
Sixpackfilm: A Tribute
Sixpackfilm: A Tribute
Sat 28 Oct 6:00pm
pic.london weekend pass
pic.london weekend pass
Sat 28 Oct 6:00pm
The Unveiled
The Unveiled
Sat 28 Oct 7:15pm
Abstaction vs. Representation + Between the Gaze
Abstaction vs. Representation + Between the Gaze
Sat 28 Oct 7:15pm
Abstraction vs. Representation + Between the Gaze
Abstraction vs. Representation + Between the Gaze
Sat 28 Oct 8:30pm
Memory, Politics and Power
Memory, Politics and Power
Sun 29 Oct 7:30pm
Untold Stories
Untold Stories
Mon 30 Oct 7:30pm
Simon Liu: I Decided to Turn Left
Simon Liu: I Decided to Turn Left
Tue 31 Oct 7:30pm
Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead
Wed 01 Nov 7:30pm
People in the Slum
People in the Slum
Thu 02 Nov 7:30pm
Whale Hunting
Whale Hunting
Fri 03 Nov 8:00pm
The Dream
The Dream
Sat 04 Nov 1:00pm
Vapor Trail (Clark)
Vapor Trail (Clark)
Sat 04 Nov 7:30pm
Non Fiction Diary
Non Fiction Diary
Sun 05 Nov 1:00pm
Wake (Subic)
Wake (Subic)
Sun 05 Nov 7:30pm
Bamseom Pirates Seoul Inferno
Bamseom Pirates Seoul Inferno
Mon 06 Nov 7:00pm
Close-Up Film Course: Surrealism and Cinema
Close-Up Film Course: Surrealism and Cinema
