Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 242: Mon Aug 31

Edvard Munch (Watkins, 1974): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 2.30pm

This film, which also screens on August 16th, is part of the Peter Watkins season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

BFI introduction:
Hailed by Ingmar Bergman as ‘a work of genius’, Watkins’ film fragments the difficult formative years of the Norwegian painter’s life into a vivid, intensely subjective exploration of memory, illness, sexuality and artistic creation. Blending interviews, direct address, documentary techniques and impressionistic montage, the film evokes both the emotional turbulence of Munch’s work and the social and emotional conditions that shaped it.
James Bell

Time Out review:
Peter Watkins' biography of the formative years of the pioneer Expressionist easily vindicates its running time. As Munch moves through his youth, quiet and alienated, we realise that he too was eluded by any lasting intimacy: a long, abortive affair with an older woman joins the ubiquitous ghosts of a childhood scarred by sickness and death. In the end it's the paintings which do Munch's talking for him, both directly and through the prefigurations and echoes in the film's set pieces, a fuzzed, mutely anguished procession of half-profiles and silently helpless groups with numb, naked eyes. It's a remarkable film.
Giovanni Dadomo

Here (and above) is a clip from the film. 

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 241: Sun Aug 30

La Commune (Watkins, 2000): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 12pm

This film is part of the Peter Watkins season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

BFI introduction:
Watkins’ monumental account of the 1871 Paris Commune stages revolutionary history as if covered by live television, with rival broadcasts interviewing workers, soldiers and citizens. Shot in a disused warehouse and developed collaboratively with its non-professional cast, the film reveals uncomfortable connections between the suppression of the Commune and contemporary inequalities. Hailed as the culmination of Watkins’ life’s work, it is an unmissable work that deserves to be seen on the big screen.
James Bell

Time Out review:
What looks likely to be the final film from the director of ‘The War Game’ returns in style to Peter Watkins’ first feature, the provocative and committed ‘Culloden’. He adopts a similar framing device – the television presentation of a historical event – to explore the rise and fall of the 1871 Paris Commune. Around 200 citizens from the relevant districts reconstruct the events in a film that rigorously interrogates media authority, political power and personal responsibility. Fluidly shot in crisp monochrome, it builds a remarkable sense of popular participation (reflected in its communal making) in a seminal historical moment and deals head on with both how one makes a revolution actually work and similarly how it is betrayed by hierarchical interests.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 240: Sat Aug 29

The Oberwald Mystery (Antonioni, 1980): BFI Soutbank, NFT2, 6pm

This screening also shows on August 14th and is part of the Monica Vitti season at BFI Southbank.

Chicago Reader review:
This is an experimental film in the original rather than fashionable sense of that term—a 1980 adaptation by Michelangelo Antonioni of Jean Cocteau's play The Eagle Has Two Heads that reunites the filmmaker with Monica Vitti in the starring role as a widowed queen who falls in love with an anarchist poet sent to assassinate her. What makes this experimental is neither the play nor the performances, but the fact that Antonioni shot it in color video (later transferred to 35-millimeter), regarding the medium not as “television” but as a new kind of cinematography, and associating each character with a different color as part of his visual exploration. The choice of the Cocteau play seems more arbitrary than inevitable, which raises the form-versus-content issue even more than in most Antonioni features. The results are singular, to say the least.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is an extract. 

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 239: Fri Aug 28

Evening Land (Watkins, 1977): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.15pm

This film, which also screens on August 15th, is part of the Peter Watkins season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

BFI Southbank introduction:
Prophetic in its depiction of surveillance culture and the erosion of civil liberties, Watkins’ drama constructs a portrait of Denmark’s ‘model society’ in crisis during a NATO summit that is overshadowed by strikes in a Copenhagen shipyard, terrorism and mounting social unrest. Blending staged drama with the texture and immediacy of television reportage, the film follows the state’s increasingly authoritarian response to dissent.
James Bell

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 238: Thu Aug 27

The Ceremony (Oshima, 1971): ICA Cinema, 6.30pm

This film, which is also screened on August 29th, is part of the Nagisa Oshima season at the ICA Cinema. You can find the full details here. 

Time Out review:
A thinly disguised commentary on Japan's post-war history, using ceremonial family gatherings (mainly weddings and funerals) as a key to the changes in Japanese society: individual characters represent specific political factions, just as events in the narrative mirror the twists and turns in the country's domestic and foreign policies. However dense the allegory, though, Oshima keeps it very accessible to his audience by stressing individuals' feelings as much as ceremonies; their dreams, aspirations, frustrations and agonies are all too familiar. A significant political film for the time.
Tony Rayns

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 237: Wed Aug 26

The Devil (Zulawski, 1972): Garden Cinema, 6pm

This is part of the Andrzej Żuławski season at the Garden Cinema. Full details here.

This screening will be introduced by writer Michael Brooke. The screenings on September the 11th and 27th will feature a video introduction by Andrzej Jaroszewicz, camera operator on The Devil and frequent collaborator of Andrzej Żuławski.

Garden Cinema introduction: 
During the Prussian army's invasion of Poland in 1793, a young Polish nobleman, Jakub, is saved from imprisonment by a stranger, who in return wants to obtain a list of his fellow conspirators. Following his mysterious savior across the country, Jakub sees the overall chaos and moral corruption, including his father's death and the betrayal of his friend who stole his fiancee. Becoming apparently demented by what he has seen, he commits a number of seemingly motiveless and gory killings. An allegory for the political crisis in Poland during 1968, when communist leaders created riots to punish student, the film was shelved upon completion by the government. It was accused of excess of violence and erotic scenes, but the political undertones of Żuławski’s film were more objectionable to the government. The film had to wait 16 years for its cinema premiere and was not released to the public until 1988. Before this happened, however, Żuławski was forced to leave Poland, deprived of the chance to make films in his country, he left for France to continue his career there.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 236: Tue Aug 25

The Man Who Left his Will on Film (Oshima, 1970): ICA Cinema, 8.30pm

This film, which is also screened on August 23rd, is part of the Nagisa Oshima season at the ICA Cinema. You can find the full details here. 

Time Out review:
This is Oshima's post-1968 analysis of the failure and disillusionment of the student Left, and it's among his most biting and cautionary films. Like Death by Hanging and other movies, it starts with a riddle (the real or imaginary disappearance of a student militant), and then follows through all the implications with a remorseless logic. Another student sets out to trace the missing boy, fearing that he committed suicide; his only leads are conversations with the militant's estranged girlfriend and a roll of film shot by the boy just before he vanished. But it's less a mystery thriller than a series of provocative questions. What is militancy? Does 'struggle' mean violence? Is it really possible for an individual to identify with the interests of a group? And what part do sexual problems play in determining the feelings and actions of young people?
Tony Rayns 

Here (and above) is the trailer.