Close Up

19 June 2016: Introduction to Film Book Launch + Repo Man



Join Kamera Books and Close-Up in a special evening to mark the release of Alex Cox's Introduction to Film: A Director's Perspective.

"Critics, academics and theoreticians talk theory. That is what they know. Artists talk about their processes in making art. This is my attempt to apply what I know to a beginning study of film." – Alex Cox

Emerging filmmakers need to know the basics of their art form: the language of the camera, and lenses, the different crew roles, the formats, the aspect ratios. They also need to know some bare-bones theory: what an auteur is, what montage is, what genres are. Most importantly, all filmmakers require a serious grounding in film. You cannot be a great artist if you aren’t versed in great art. An Introduction to Film covers all these aspects, from a director and filmmaker’s perspective.

Gareth Evans will be in conversation with Alex Cox to discuss his new book.

Repo Man
Alex Cox
1984 | 95 min | Colour | 35mm
Introduced by Alex Cox

The tale of a young man learning the tricks of the trade of repossessing cars from an old hand serves primarily as the MacGuffin for a manically satirical look at life in the US during the first Reagan administration. With a doomsday device in the trunk of a car giving off a menacing glow (lovingly lifted from Kiss Me Deadly), Cox light-heartedly makes some serious points about the all-pervasive menace of the military-industrial complex, and gives the staggeringly great cast of character actors brilliant material to resourcefully ply. Set in the wasteland that then was downtown Los Angeles in the age of punk, Repo Man is in many ways an outsider’s view – that of an Englishman suddenly landed in the urban sprawl of a most un-European city.

Part of our Alex Cox season