Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 146: Sun May 26

TAKE YOUR PICK

1 Dr Who and the Daleks (Flemyng, 1965) + Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD (Flemyng, 1966):
Riverside Studios Cinema, 2pm & 3.50pm

A Dr Who double-bill for all the family. Here is the Riverside Cinema's introduction:

Doctor Who and the Daleks (U) 2pm
The first of Doctor Who's two outings on the big screen - Doctor Who travels with his companions to the planet Skaro - ravaged by nuclear war and home to a race of mutated survivors, the Daleks, and their human-like counterparts, the Thals. Now nearly 50 years old, Studio Canal has produced this new version in high definition for the first time.

Here is the trailer.

Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 AD (U) 3.50pm
Again showing in the new HD format, this 1966 film again pits Peter Cushing as Doctor Who against the Daleks, this time intent on mining the magnetic core of Earth using humans as slave labour.  

Here is the trailer

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2 A Tribute to Les Blank: Close-Up, BGWMC, 42-44 Pollard Row, E2 6NB, 2pm













In tribute to the renowned director Les Blank, who died recently aged 77, Close-Up present a programme celebrating his life and work. Many of Blank’s films document people at the margins of American society and their music – blues, Cajun, Creole music, TexMex, polka. Blank avoided commentary and testimonies from experts, instead his films immerse the audience in these cultures, capturing the essence and spirit of his subjects in unique, intimate and often impromptu situations. Blank brought similar technique to his films about established artists Dizzy Gillespie, Lightnin’ Hopkins and, in what remains his most famous work Burden of Dreams, Werner Herzog during the chaotic production of Fitzcarraldo.

Running Around Like A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off
1960 | B/W | 4 min |

Blank's first student film, stars himself with Gail Blank and Pieter Van Deusen. The film includes homage to Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal, the film that inspired Blank to become a filmmaker.

Dizzie Gillespie
1964 | B/W | 20 min |

Dizzy, Blank's earliest music film, focuses on the trumpet player himself, who, along with Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk and others, sparked the change from Jazz into Bop in the 40s.

The Blues Accordin' To Lightnin' Hopkins
1968 | Colour | 31 min |

"In his own words and his 'own own' music, Lightnin' Hopkins reveals the inspiration for his blues. He sings, jives, ponders. He boogies at an outdoor barbecue and a black rodeo, and takes you with him on a homecoming visit to his boyhood home of Centerville, Texas. The film reaches past the impish bluesman himself into the Blues itself, into the red-clay Texas, into hard times, into blackness, into the senses." – Les Blank

Chulas Fronteras
1976 | Colour | 58 min |

"...the best visual record of Tex-Mex & NorteƱo music that I know." – Ry Cooder

"Chulas Fronteras is absolutely the best Chicano documentary film that I have seen to date. It is our history, rescued without excuses and without romanticism but wit vitality." – Prof. Juan Rodriguez

Burden Of Dreams
1982 | Colour | 95 min |

For nearly five years, acclaimed German filmmaker Werner Herzog desperately tried to complete one of the most ambitious and difficult films of his career, Fitzcarraldo, the story of one man’s attempt to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle. Les Blank captured the unfolding of this production, made more perilous by Herzog’s determination to shoot the most daunting scenes without models or special effects, including a sequence requiring hundreds of natives to pull a full-size, 320-ton steamship over a small mountain. The result is an extraordinary document of the filmmaking process and a unique look into the single-minded mission of one of cinema's most fearless directors.

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