Close Up

1 September 2016: Frans Zwartjes' Medea

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By popular demand, this is the second and final opportunity in London to see Frans Zwartjes' formerly "lost" film, Medea, with an introduction by Close-Up Year 1 "Liberated Film Club" curator, and Zwartjes' collaborator, Schtinter.

Highly stylised, sexually charged and imbued with the gothic, the films of Dutch underground experimentalist Frans Zwartjes pack a punch, evoking the powerful understatement of Buster Keaton while channeling the free-form, happening theatrics of 1960s counter-culture. Hailed by Susan Sontag as "the most important experimental filmmaker of his generation," Medea is the Dutch master’s strident, confrontational take on the Euripides tragedy, performed and adapted for stage by Ganci Geraedts and Josee Ruiter. Also screening Fragments: unseen and enigmatic samples reclaimed from Zwartjes' cutting room floor.

Medea, 1982, 46 min, Digital
Film Fragments
, 1960, 9 min, Digital

With special thanks to EYE Film Institute Netherlands