Featured
1 October - 6 December 2019: Close-Up on Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Marking the 30th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall – and programmed in parallel to the Goethe-Institut's upcoming Jürgen Böttcher retrospective – we're pleased to present a selection of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's digitally restored film and television works from across his vast oeuvre.
October
5 - 20 October 2019: Close-Up on Djibril Diop Mambéty
We're proud to present the films of the legendary African director, actor, orator, composer, and poet Djibril Diop Mambéty. After the late Pan-African greats Ousmane Sembène and Med Hondo, Mambéty came to innovate filmmaking for all Africa and the world with his signature mix of wild narrative style, rich traditional symbolism and virtuoso editing technique with impeccable political commitment.
15 - 25 October 2019: Live Cultures
Making a case against human superiority in the natural world, Live Cultures’ programme of experimental film and documentaries turns a nonhuman eye to the things which ooze, sprout, and crawl. This season offers viewers sublime reckonings with the environment – be it a speculation on the insect apocalypse, a forest-set horror emptied of human narrative, or a queer odyssey to a fertile paradise island.
16 - 26 October 2019: Close-Up on Kira Muratova
A year after her passing we remember the neglected – Romania born – Ukrainian auteur Kira Muratova with a rare programme of films selected from across her expansive career, presented in collaboration with the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre.
19 October 2019: The Liberated Film Club X with Astra Taylor
"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 Astra Taylor as our special guest for the tenth instalment of The Liberated Film Club. Free to attend for Close-Up members, but booking is essential.
23 October - 21 November 2019: Conjuring up the Real: The Films of Jürgen Böttcher
This season of films is organised by the Goethe-Institut, in cooperation with Close-Up Film Centre and King’s College London, to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. The series includes screenings, talks, discussions and a workshop drawn together to celebrate a diverse body of work by Jürgen Böttcher (born 1931), one of the GDR’s most outstanding and influential documentary filmmakers.
November
2 November 2019: Berlin Super 80: Films from the West German Underground
A programme of eighteen short films shot in Super 8 by West German experimental film makers between 1978 and 1984. Featuring music by Malaria, Einstürzende Neubauten and Frieder Butzmann. Presented in parallel to our retrospectives on Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Jürgen Böttcher – organised to mark the 30th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
3 November 2019: Four Parts of a Folding Screen
Based on documents found in Berlin archives, Four Parts of a Folding Screen explores exclusion, statelessness and the legalised theft and sale of everyday family possessions by the National Socialist regime. Martin Brady will be in conversation with filmmakers Anthea Kennedy and Ian Wiblin following the screening. Presented in parallel to our retrospectives on Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Jürgen Böttcher.
4 - 25 November 2019: Film Course: Surrealism in Cinema from Luis Buñuel to David Lynch
Due to popular demand Dr 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.
8 November 2019: LKFF: A Hometown of the Heart
A Hometown in Heart had been a successful play before this beautiful film version brought it to a wider public. Korean mother-worship is nicely blended with reverence for the maternal Bodhisattva Kwanseeom. The visual lyricism and innocence of this tale seem all the more fragile when you consider that within some five months the country would be convulsed by war.
9 November 2019: LKFF: Piagol
While the best-known products of the post-Korean War cinema would be predominantly melodramas and/or period films, Piagol attempted something more challenging: a historically informed, though still anti-communist, representation of leftist partisan fighters left stranded in the South after the main phase of the war ended in stalemate and the Armistice of July 1953 confirmed the bloody status quo.
10 November 2019: LKFF: A Woman Judge
Hong Eun-won, the second woman in Korea to direct a film, said that she was “...interested in making films that depicted the lives of women, but seen through a woman’s eyes rather than imagined by male writers and directors.” In taking this approach, Hong boldly challenged both the melodramatic portrayals of women in Korean cinema of the time, and the directorial world that remains to this date monopolised by men.
12 - 17 November 2019: 21st Century Žilnik
The first UK survey of the work of the pioneering Yugoslav-Serbian filmmaker Želimir Žilnik. With a career that began in the 1960s, Žilnik is one of the genuine legends of European cinema, particularly a radical, engaged, independent, humanist cinema. This contemporary overview focuses on the urgency and vitality of Žilnik’s 21st century work, and includes the UK premiere of his most recent film, The Most Beautiful Country in the World.
December
Calendar
Tue 15 Oct 8:15pm
Sleep Has Her House
Sleep Has Her House
Wed 16 Oct 8:30pm
Brief Encounters
Brief Encounters
Thu 17 Oct 8:15pm
The Hellstrom Chronicle
The Hellstrom Chronicle
Fri 18 Oct 8:15pm
Getting to Know the Big Wide World
Getting to Know the Big Wide World
Sat 19 Oct 6:00pm
Hyènes
Hyènes
Sat 19 Oct 8:15pm
The Liberated Film Club X with Astra Taylor
The Liberated Film Club X with Astra Taylor
Sun 20 Oct 5:30pm
Le Franc + La Petite vendeuse de soleil
Le Franc + La Petite vendeuse de soleil
Sun 20 Oct 7:30pm
The Asthenic Syndrome
The Asthenic Syndrome
Mon 21 Oct 8:15pm
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Tue 22 Oct 8:15pm
The Long Farewell
The Long Farewell
Wed 23 Oct 8:15pm
The Wild Boys
The Wild Boys
Fri 25 Oct 7:30pm
Arboretum Cycle
Arboretum Cycle
Sat 26 Oct 5:30pm
Fox and His Friends
Fox and His Friends
Sat 26 Oct 8:00pm
Eternal Homecoming
Eternal Homecoming
Sun 27 Oct 6:00pm
Jürgen Böttcher: A New Way of Seeing
Jürgen Böttcher: A New Way of Seeing
Sun 27 Oct 8:15pm
Jürgen Böttcher: Outsiders
Jürgen Böttcher: Outsiders
Mon 28 Oct 8:15pm
Martha
Martha
Wed 30 Oct 8:30pm
Katzelmacher
Katzelmacher
Fri 01 Nov 8:15pm
The Marriage of Maria Braun
The Marriage of Maria Braun
Sat 02 Nov 6:00pm
Berlin Super 80: Films from the West German Underground
Berlin Super 80: Films from the West German Underground
