Capital Celluloid 2014 - Day 118: Tue Apr 29

Jeremy (Barron, 1973): Cinema Museum, 7.30pm



TV presenter, film critic, author and skiffle double-bass player, Mark Kermode introduces one of his favourite films Jeremy (1973). Robby Benson and Glynnis O’Connor star in this touching high school romance. There will be a Q&A session with Mark before the film.

Here's an extract from an interview with Kermode about Jeremy.

Let's finish with Jeremy, then. Because you talked about how we don't look back at older films more often. Jeremy highlights that critics have Kryptonite, critics have favourites, and films that are personally important to them. Those are the films that build and inform critics, yet conversely, the ones not often talked about by them. Why is that?

I think partly it's do with what you said before, 14 films a week and you're struggling to keep up with releases. For me, I do screenings and introduce films, and I get asked what I want to show. 'There's a 35mm print of Jeremy'. Wow: one of the reasons I chose that was that I hadn't seen a 35mm print of Jeremy since 1974. It's a privilege.

It's partly to do with finding the time, but partly because the narrative of the thrust of film journalism is what's the next thing, what's the next thing? Film academia tends much more to look back. The best thing to happen to me in my life was Linda [Mark's wife]. It happens that Linda is a professor of film, and it's one part of her that I can't envisage my life living without her. Living with someone who's an academic who writes better than I do, knows more than I do and will literally sit there and go you're wrong about A.I. is great because so much of film academia is that the critics have moved on, now let's do the archaeology. You can't believe the pleasure of living with someone who loves that...

Here (and above) is an extract.

No comments: