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.

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 59: Sat Feb 28

Blonde Death (Baker, 1984): Nickel Cinema, 6pm

This cult movie will be shown via VHS. 

Nickel Cinema introduction:
Shot on consumer-grade video and circulating for decades as a near-mythic underground tape, Blonde Death follows the runaway odyssey of Tammy, a teenage misfit fleeing an abusive home with two queer outsiders who christen themselves her new family. Their improvised road trip blends impulsive romance, petty crime, and manic self-invention, gradually collapsing into violence as the trio drifts further from stability. The film’s messy exuberance is threaded with a growing sense of doom, capturing the volatility of youth pushed to the margins. A seminal artifact of queer DIY cinema, Blonde Death fuses melodrama, punk energy, and camp excess with unexpectedly sharp social commentary. Director James Robert Baker — better known for his incendiary fiction — uses the limitations of shot-on-video production to amplify the film’s immediacy and emotional rawness. The result is a rare, transgressive work whose jagged form reflects the precarity, rebellion, and desperation of its characters, standing at the intersection of outsider art and queer counterculture.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 58: Fri Feb 27

Angel Heart (Parker, 1987): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.15pm

Chicago Reader review:
Mickey Rourke as a private investigator hired by a mysterious client (Robert De Niro) to track down a missing person. Deliberate mystification in all this, with imponderable flashbacks and assorted voodoo distractions, though director Alan Parker (Midnight Express) drops so many ironic cues along the way that when the surprise ending finally comes, it isn’t. Parker directs everything for maximum visual impact but can’t manage to tie the scenes together: there’s no pacing, no development, only alternating passages of disaffected ramble and hysterical rant. The semiautistic styling may be congenial to his perennial themes (of personal entrapment and the self under siege), but for all the supernatural bloodletting and explosions of technique, the film remains distant and closed (1987).
Pat Graham 

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 57: Thu Feb 26

The Secrets of the Jinn Valley Treasure (Gholestan, 1974): Barbican Cinema, 8.30pm

Barbican introduction to this film in Iranian Masterpieces season:
The final cinematic work of director Ebrahim Golestan, this political satire places the ills of a society under a comic magnifying glass. A Monty Python–esque allegory about the corrosive impact of oil exports on Iranian life, following a villager who discovers a hidden fortune, becomes rich overnight, and swiftly transforms into a tyrant. The film’s troubled history began even before its release. Golestan felt compelled to conceal the story during production, aware of how his intentions may be skewed. When it finally reached cinemas, the film was banned after 2 weeks. The questions remained – were they misinterpretations, or simply interpretations? Featuring several major stars of the era, including comedian Parviz Sayyad and Mary Apick. Golestan re-edited the film but the director’s version was never publicly screened… until now. This screening marks the world premiere of the brand-new restoration of the film’s director’s cut. 

Chicago Reader review:
Having moved to London in 1967, the distinguished Iranian writer, translator, producer, and director Ebrahim Golestan returned to his homeland to make this unpleasant allegorical comedy (1972), his second and final feature to date. A bitter satire about the shah’s corrupt regime, it centers on a poor peasant who plunges into a hidden cave, discovers a cache of valuable antiques, and becomes a grotesque nouveau riche tyrant. Golestan tackled a related theme in his exquisite 1965 short The Iranian Crown Jewels (see listing for “Documentaries by Ebrahim Golestan”), which was commissioned and then banned by the shah’s cultural ministry, but that film attacked the very elitism that subsumes this one.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 56: Wed Feb 25

Swingers (Liman, 1996): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.30pm

This is a 35mm presentation.

Time Out review:
This first feature follows Mike (Favreau) as he gets back into the dating game after the abrupt and unwelcome termination of a six-year relationship. An out-of-work New York actor looking for a break in LA, he's dragged out of his mope by pals Rob (Livingston), Charles (Desert), Sue (Van Horn) and, especially, the irrepressible Trent (Vaughn), who insists they chase down some honeys in Vegas. Wiser, and poorer, they return to trawl the Angelino hotspots. Love it and loathe it, this film wants it both ways. We're supposed to be appalled at the callous chauvinism of the predatory male, but also to get off on his jive, sharp suits and cool car. We do, too. It's a bit smug, a bit smarmy, but you should still see this movie, and here are ten reasons why: (i) Vince Vaughn - a louche, lanky ego salesman, he's the definitive '90s lounge lizard. (ii) Jon Favreau - a subtler actor than Vaughn, he spends the entire picture sulking, and still has you pulling for him. Plus, he wrote the script, and (iii) this is the most quotable movie since Clueless. (iv) It boasts the best answerphone gag in the history of the movies. Bar none. (v-x) Ninety minutes spent learning how not to pick up girls. This is what the movies were made for, isn't it?
Tom Charity

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 55: Tue Feb 24

Ashes and Diamonds (Wajda, 1958): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.50pm

This presentation is part of the Andrzej Wajda season at BFI Southbank and also screens on February 15th. You can find the full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
One of the first works of the Polish New Wave, Andrzej Wajda's 1958 film is a compelling piece, although it's been somewhat overrated by critics who considered its story of a resistance fighter's ideological struggle as a cagey bit of anti-Soviet propaganda, and hence automatically admirable. Following the art cinema technique of the time, Wajda tends toward harsh and overstated imagery, but he achieves a fascinating psychological rapport with his lead actor, Zbigniew Cybulski—who was known as Poland's James Dean.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 54: Mon Feb 23

Blue Steel (Bigelow, 1990): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.55pm

This 35mm presentation, also screening on February 7th, is part of the Kathryn Bigelow season. Full details here.

Time Out review:
On her first day of active duty, rookie NY cop Megan Turner (Jamie Lee Curtis) surprises a supermarket robber and blows him away. Suspended for shooting an unarmed suspect (his gun has mysteriously disappeared), Megan is later seducedby charming commodities-broker Eugene Hunt (Ron Silver). Then dead bodies start turning up all over town, killed with bullets fired from her gun and etched with her name. Detective Nick Mann (Clancy Brown) takes Megan under his wing, but even when Hunt virtually confesses to the crimes, the disturbing cat-and-mouse games have just begun. Curtis gives her most complex performance to date as the reckless Megan, whose obsessive behaviour and over-reactions have more to do with turning the tables on violent men than balancing the scales of justice. Short on plausibility but preserving the psycho-sexual ambiguities throughout, Kathryn Bigelow's seductively stylish, wildy fetishistic thriller is proof that a woman can enter a traditionally male world and, like Megan, beat men at their own game.
Nigel Floyd

Here (and above) is the trailer.