Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 66: Sat Mar 7

Les Flocons d'or/Goldflocken (Schroeter, 1976): ICA Cinema, 6.30pm

This screening is part of the season at the ICA Cinema devoted to Werner Schroeter. You can finds all the details here.

ICA introduction:
Using the modest sum in prize money that Willow Springs had garnered, Schroeter began work on what would be one of his most uncompromising films to date and an unofficial final part to a trilogy of films alongside Willow Springs and The Death of Maria Malibran. With international co-production extending his cast of regular collaborators like Ingrid Caven and Magdalena Montezuma to include arthouse stalwarts like Bulle Ogier and Udo Kier, the film encompasses four parts weaving together high and low culture in a richly textured tapestry of underground filmmaking. The screening is preceded by an introduction from Anneke Kampman.

Venice film festival review:
A multilingual film, the summary of Schroeter’s early films: four episodes about great feelings and emotions, about the search for luck, about destiny and mortality, taking place in Cuba, France and Bavaria. Beautiful dreamlike variations on classic genres, from kitschy Mexican melodrama to poetic realism of French art films to Bavarian Heimatfilm in dialect. As Schroeter said: “It starts with an introduction conceived like a romantic poem about the general theme of the film: Death”. Les Flocons d’or was Schroeter’s last “super underground film” for which he could combine a unique international cast. Andréa Ferréol gambols erotically with three dogs and recites Poe’s The Raven; Magdalena Montezuma incarnates an angel of death; Bulle Ogier personifies “The Murderous Soul”; and Udo Kier carries a flower into the forest, like Schroeter’s hero Novalis, before repeatedly bashing his head into a rock. 

Here (and above) is an excerpt.

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 65: Fri Mar 6

The Hurt Locker (Bigelow, 2008): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.20pm

This is a 35mm presentation which also screens on February 21st. The film is part of the Kathryn Bigelow season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.  

Chicago Reader review:
Kathryn Bigelow’s heart-stopping Iraq war drama (2009) follows a U.S. army bomb squad around Baghdad as it defuses IEDs, a job that places the men in potentially deadly situations a dozen times a day. After the squad’s explosives expert is killed in action, he’s replaced by a shameless cowboy (Jeremy Renner) whose needless risk-taking infuriates his two partners (Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty). He’s a true warrior, but Bigelow defines that in terms of addiction; as one of the other soldiers points out, he doesn’t mind endangering them to get his daily “adrenaline fix.” The war has already produced some excellent fiction films (The Lucky Ones, In the Valley of Elah), but this is the first to dispense with the controversy surrounding the invasion and focus on the timeless subject of men in combat. It’s the best war movie since Full Metal Jacket.
JR Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 64: Thu Mar 5

Katyn (Wajda, 2007): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.30pm

This presentation is part of the Andrzej Wajda season at BFI Southbank and also screens on March 10th (with an introduction by journalist Carmen Gray). You can find the full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Andrzej Wajda has spent much of his long career dramatizing major events in Polish history, and this poignant feature depicts the circumstances surrounding the Soviet Union’s massacre of thousands of Polish officers in the spring of 1940. The film opens with a striking scene that underlines the plight of Wajda’s people in World War II: as hundreds of Poles cross a bridge to flee invading German troops, others run toward them to escape the advancing Russian army. The rest of this feature follows a handful of families over five years as they suffer through the Nazi occupation and the Soviet occupation that succeeded it.
Joshua Katzman

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 63: Wed Mar 4

Wendy and Lucy (Reichardt, 2008): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm

This film is part of the Big Screen Classics strand at BFI Southbank. This screening will be introduced by writer and editor Laura Staab and the film is also being shown on March 8th. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Kelly Reichardt's masterful low-budget drama tells a story a child could understand even as it indicts, with stinging anger, the economic cruelty of George Bush's America. Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain) is impressively restrained as Wendy, a young homeless woman who's living in her car with her beloved mutt, Lucy. After the car breaks down in an Oregon hick town, she makes the mistake of tying Lucy up outside a grocery store before going in to shoplift, and when she gets busted and taken to the local police station, the dog disappears. Reichardt (Old Joy) and co-writer Jonathan Raymond began working on the story after hearing conservative commentators bash the poor in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and their movie is a stark reminder of how easily someone like Wendy can fall through our frayed safety net. The climax is a heartbreaker, and in its haunting finale the movie recalls no less than Mervyn LeRoy's Depression-era classic I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang.
JR Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 62: Tue Mar 3

The Spirit of the Beehive (Erice, 1973): Prince Charles Cinema, 5.45pm

Time Out review:
Victor Erice's remarkable one-off (he has made only one film since, the generally less well regarded El Sur) sees rural Spain soon after Franco's victory as a wasteland of inactivity, thrown into relief by the doomed industriousness of bees in their hives. The single, fragile spark of 'liberation' exists in the mind of little Ana, who dreams of meeting the gentle monster from James Whale's Frankenstein, and befriends a fugitive soldier just before he is caught and shot. A haunting mood-piece that dispenses with plot and works its spells through intricate patterns of sound and image.
Tony Rayns

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 61: Mon Mar 2

The Loveless (Bigelow/Montgomery, 1981): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.20pm

This presentation, also screening on February 20th, is part of the Kathryn Bigelow season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.  

Time Out review:
'Man, I was what you call ragged... I knew I was gonna hell in a breadbasket' intones the hero in the great opening moments of The Loveless, and as he zips up and bikes out, it's clear that this is one of the most original American independents in years: a bike movie which celebrates the '50s through '80s eyes. Where earlier bike films like The Wild One were forced to concentrate on plot, The Loveless deliberately slips its story into the background in order to linger over all the latent erotic material of the period that other films could only hint at in their posters. Zips and sunglasses and leather form the basis of a cool and stylish dream of sexual self-destruction, matched by a Robert Gordon score which exaggerates the sexual aspects of '50s music. At times the perversely slow beat of each scene can irritate, but that's a reasonable price for the film's super-saturated atmosphere.
David Thompson

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 60: Sun Mar 1

The Death of Maria Malibran (Schroeter, 1972): ICA Cinema, 4pm

This is a 35mm screening and part of the season at the ICA Cinema devoted to Werner Schroete. You can finds all the details here.

Rowe Reviews review:
An experimental art film that is sure to only appeal to the more adventurous viewer who is a fan of opaque and mysterious works of art, Werner Schroeter’s Death of Maria Malibran provides little conclusions through its running time but never-the-less it's a harrowing portrait that challenges the fundamental ideals of what cinema can be.  The film is a fever dream of emotion and subtle energy, being dreamlike as it uses a vibrant orchestral score and operatic performance art to deliver an expressionistic art piece that confounds as much as it intrigues.  The film is simply stunning, with cinematography, art direction, and lighting which combine to create an intoxicating experience that feels very much like an operatic stage play while still giving off an almost supernatural vibe of mystery and intrigue.  The film starts off full of Romanticism but as it progresses it becomes clear The Death of Maria Malibran is one of ironic romanticism and subversive style, routinely having sound and image intentionally out of sync which creates a playful perversion, something that becomes darker and darker as the film progresses, dehumanizing these romanticized, picturesque woman of bourgeois society.  While trying to easily define Schroeter's film in any easily discernible way feels like a fools errand, The Death of Maria Maliban is a film which uses opera as a device to expose the ugliness and cruelty that exists in bourgeouis society, one that is driven by status and the collective ideals.   Characters routinely speak in a way that makes little sense and many of the characters become  undifferentiable as the film progresses, as if to suggest that language itself has little meaning, as one's actions are the deriving force of morality and personal characters.  Schroeter routinely injects the film with upbeat, vapid pop-style songs throughout, another bizarre but expressionistic decision which speaks to the vapid nature of society.  While many of these observations could be completely off-base, The Death of Maria Maliban as a whole feels like an indictment on the selfish, abusive constructs which society as a whole can create, one which routinely tears down the individual for the sake of the collective.  Conformity and lack of individuality feel like a major aspect of this film, with the bourgeois characters essentially attempting to destroy the young Maria Maliban for having a different perspective than their overall ideals.  Featuring so much to think about, consider, and attempt to deconstruct, Werner Schroeter's The Death of Maria Maliban is a film you experience more than attempt to define, being an expressionistic fever dream that is not quite like anything I've ever seen.

Here (and above) is an extract.