Capital Celluloid 2017 - Day 139: Sat May 20

Blow-Up (Antonioi, 1966): Curzon Soho, 3pm


This is the latest screening in the Curzon Soho Enthusiasm season, dedicated to screening from prints. Here is the cinema's introduction to the event (full details here):
We're delighted to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the UK release of Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up with a special screening of the film on 35mm. Blow-Up remains a fascinating portrait of Swinging London seen through an ex–pat’s lens, and one of the seminal tales of 1960s drug­–infused paranoia. Preceding the feature film we are excited to present a rare screening of Peter Tscherkassky’s astonishing 1999 short found–footage thriller Outer Space on 35mm. Reappropriating footage from an unremarkable B-movie from the 1950s, Tscherkassky reprocesses, distorts and cross-prints every single frame to create a delirious audiovisual nightmare where the very substance of celluloid film becomes the protagonist in this visceral horror vignette, lurking with chemical malice.

Chicago Reader review:
Michelangelo Antonioni's sexy art-house hit of 1966, which played a substantial role in putting "swinging London" on the map, follows a day in the life of a young fashion photographer (David Hemmings) who discovers, after blowing up his photos of a couple glimpsed in a park, that he may have inadvertently uncovered a murder. Part erotic thriller (with significant glamorous roles played by Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, Verushka, and Jane Birkin), part exotic travelogue (featuring a Yardbirds concert, antiwar demonstrations, street mimes, one exuberant orgy, and a certain amount of pot), this is so ravishing to look at (the colors all seem newly minted) and pleasurable to follow (the enigmas are usually more teasing than worrying) that you're likely to excuse the metaphysical pretensions—which become prevalent only at the very end—and go with the 60s flow, just as the original audiences did.
Jonathan Rosenbaum


Here (and above) is the trailer.

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