Capital Celluloid 2017 - Day 209: Sun Jul 30

Easy Rider (Benning, 2012) & Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969): Close-Up Cinema, 5.30pm


Concluding their two-month On the Road season Close-Up Cinema present Dennis Hopper’s late-sixties classic in a double-bill with American minimalist filmmaker James Benning’s search for the legacy of the countercultural moment.

"I divided the original film into scenes," the director has written, "and then replaced each scene with one shot filmed at the original location. My Easy Rider tries to find today's counterculture (if one exists) by replacing the 60s music with music that I listen to today."
James Benning


Easy Rider (1969) review:
"This now-classic road movie turned the B-movie youthquake into an international art cinema. 
Easy Rider tells the story of Captain America and Billy the Kid as they go looking for America and, as Columbia’s original poster put it, “can’t find it anywhere.” From its legendary compilation score to its echt-60’s lens flares and culminating LSD trip, Easy Rider feels disconcertingly familiar, a model of what Tom Frank calls “the conquest of cool.” As they motor along to their inevitably tragic end, our heroes do drugs, have their rights violated, meet some interestingly allegorical groups of folks, and find themselves enframed by László Kovács’s gorgeous cinematography."
Harvard Film Archive


Here (and above) is the original trailer for the 1969 movie.

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