Capital Celluloid 2023 — Day 184: Tue Jul 4

The Howl (Brass, 1970): Chiswick Cinema, 7.30pm


In The Howl a young bride escapes from her wedding with a stranger. They encounter talking animals, journey through a surrealist's psychedelic hotel, instigate a prison riot, and escape from naked cannibals living in a tree.

Simon Matthews' latest book 'Free Your Mind! Giovanni 'Tinto' Brass, 'Swinging London' and the 60s Pop Culture Scene' is the focus of this screening at Chiswick Cinema. The presentation will feature a screening of Brass's film Howl followed by a Q&A with the author.

Extract of BFI review of Brass's Swinging London trilogy:
Milanese director Tinto Brass tends to be either reviled as the man who made Caligula and Salon Kitty or appreciated by cultists who see him as Italy's answer to Russ Meyer, albeit with more posterior than anterior interests. However, there is a third Tinto Brass, the young maverick whose early work includes what might be classified as a 'Swinging London' trilogy. Brass tells a remarkable story of how he persuaded Dino de Laurentiis to produce The Howl by writing what amounted to a political manifesto rather than a screen treatment, declaring: “The time has come to blow up the screen!” His intention, he says, was to make a liberated film that would capture the bucking electrical energy of the times, not 'about' 1968 but 'of' 1968 – the year when the idealism of Flower Power came nose to nose with political consciousness, Hippie to Yippie.

Here (and above) is an extract.

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