Capital Celluloid 2017 - Day 319: Sat Nov 18

Utopia (Shahid-Saless, 1983): Close-Up Cinema, 4pm


This 35mm screening is part of the Sohrab Shahid-Saless season at Close-Up Cinema. You can read the full details here.

Close-Up Cinema introduction:
This magisterial chamber play is the dark heart of Shahid Saless’ German period. Set in an empty, closed-curtain bordello in West Berlin, Utopia
 posits prostitution as the truth of the then nascent service economy. Ruled by their brutal pimp, the women are trapped inside a claustrophobic tomb of eternally recurring humiliations – a thinly veiled microcosm of German society, just after chancellor Kohl had announced his neoliberal agenda of ‘spiritual- moral renewal’. A visceral metaphor for the political climate of the early 1980s.

Here (and above) is the opening to the film.

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