Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 67: Sat Mar 7

Bones (Costa, 1997): ICA Cinema, 4.30pm

A 35mm screening and a Q&A with Pedro Costa, as part of the director’s season at the ICA Cinema. Full details here.

ICA introduction:

The first film in Pedro Costa’s Fontainhas trilogy is a tale of young lives torn apart by desperation. Following the screening, the director will join us for a Q&A. When a suicidal teenage girl gives birth, she misguidedly entrusts her baby’s safety to the troubled, deadbeat father, whose violent actions take the viewer on a tour of the foreboding, crumbling shantytown in which they live. After shooting Casa De Lava (1995) in Cape Verde, Costa relocated to the unchartered territory of Fontainhas, an impoverished quarter on the outskirts of Lisbon that no longer exists. The first of his three transformative films about the neighbourhood, Bones is a haunting, shadowy look at a devastated community that signals the further shift of Costa’s work into the lives of migrants. 

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 66: Fri Mar 6

The Visitors (Kazan, 1972): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 9pm

An extremely rare (35mm) screening of a largely unseen Elia Kazan film. This movie, in the Kazan season, can also be seen on March 14th. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
On the evidence of Elia Kazan's recent autobiography, it is this low-budget, independent feature of 1972, shot in super-16-millimeter, that comprises his true last (or at least last personal) film, rather than The Last Tycoon, which he embarked on mainly for the money four years later. Scripted by Kazan's son Chris and shot in and around their Connecticut homes, the film offers some disturbing yet relevant echoes of themes in other Kazan pictures: the “pacifist” who finds himself driven to violence and the hatred-provoked hero who squeals on his buddies (reflecting Kazan's naming of names to the HUAC in the early 50s). Two Vietnam vets released from Leavenworth after serving time for the rape and murder of a Vietnamese woman go to visit the former buddy who turned them in, who is now living with his girlfriend and their young son in the home of her father, a macho, alcoholic novelist. There's a lot of prolonged waiting around while the two convicts circle their prey and prepare their revenge. While Kazan makes the most of the ambiguous personalities involved—he is especially good with his James Dean-ish “discovery” Steve Railsback, as well as with an early James Woods performance—the abrasive sexism of the overall conception, which recalls Peckinpah's Straw Dogs in spots, makes this the most unpleasant of all his films. But it deserves much more attention than it got when it came out, and showcases Kazan's strengths as well as his weaknesses.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 65: Thu Mar 5

A Year Without Love (Berneri, 2005): Barbican Centre, 6.30pm

Journalist Ben Walters introduces this 35mm screening in the ‘Her Lens, His Story’ season at the Barbican Cinema.

Time Out review:
It’s not impossible that Pablo (Juan Minujín) knows Ho Po-Wing and Lai Yiu-Fai, the central couple from Wong Kar-Wai’s ‘Happy Together’: like that film, this is set in mid-’90s Buenos Aires, and is about an atomised gay man’s largely bootless pursuit of meaningful emotional connection. In between quarrelling with the aunt he lives with, struggling to get his writing published and visiting the hospital (he’s HIV positive), Pablo places personal ads, goes clubbing and visits porn cinemas. It’s not too surprising that, yearning to be acknowledged, given limits and taken care of, he is drawn to the leather and S&M scene; nor that it leaves his romantic desires unfulfilled, leading only to jealousy without love. Plainly, then, this is not feelgood fare, but ‘A Year Without Love’ makes no overt pleas for pity or anger. Reminiscent of Ron Peck’s ‘Nighthawks’ in its unsentimental realism, it tracks the passage of time through seasonal porn covers and subtly establishes its period through the two innovations that changed gay life a decade ago: the internet (the object of Pablo’s affections is masterinboots@top.com) and combination therapy. Indeed, for Pablo, the AZT cocktail turns out to be a better match than any of the men he meets: an inflexible master with his best interests at heart.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 64: Wed Mar 4

The Ascent (Shepitko, 1977): Barbican Cinema, 6.20pm

This film is part of the 'Her Lens, His Story' season, Full details here.

Time Out review:
An extraordinary, gruelling account of the partisans' fight against the Nazis in German-occupied Belorussia, The Ascent reflects the Russian obsession with the horrors of the Great Patriotic War, but unusually is both steeped in religious symbolism and ready to acknowledge the existence of the less than great Russian collaborator. The true battle is not with the Nazis, who hover in the background as mere extras, but between the Russian Nazi investigator and Sotnikov, the captured partisan who finds the spiritual strength to go to his death unbeaten. With its many references to the Crucifixion, the story takes on heroic proportions glorifying the sufferings of the martyr and his influence on future generations. A remarkable piece of work, not least for being filmed in black-and-white against a vast, bleak expanse of snow.

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 63: Tue Mar 3

Deliverance (Boorman, 1972): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.40pm

This film, part of the Big Screen Classics strand at BFI Southbank, is also screening on March 12th and 15th. You can find the details here.

Time Out review:
Four Atlanta businessmen decide to prove that the frontier spirit is not dead by spending a canoeing weekend shooting the rapids of a river high in the Appalachians. Terrific boy's own adventure stuff with adult ingredients of graphic mutilation and buggery, but John Boorman is never content either to leave it at that or to subscribe to the ecological concerns of James Dickey's novel (where man's return to nature becomes vital because 'the machines are going to fail, and then - survival'). Instead, he adds a dark twist of his own by suggesting that concern is too late. From the quartet's first strange encounter with the deformed albino child in a mountain community almost Dickensian in its squalor, down to the last scene where Jon Voight watches coffins being unearthed and removed to safety before the new dam floods the valley, their trip down the river becomes an odyssey through a land that is already dead, killed by civilisation and peopled by alien creatures rather than human beings. Signposted by the extraordinary shot of a corpse, surfaced from the water with one arm grotesquely wrapped round its neck and the other pointing nowhere, it's a haunting, nightmarish vision.
Tom Milne

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 62: Mon Mar 2

Water Lilies (Sciamma, 2007): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.40pm

This 35mm presentation, also being screened on March 11th, is part of the Celine Sciamma season. You can find the full details here.

Time Out review:
Languid, sorrowful and strange, French filmmaker Céline Sciamma’s debut as a feature writer-director is a sensitive and daring portrait of female adolescence that’s curious about all longings, sexual confusions and grey areas of desire. The Parisian suburbs and, especially, the guys and gals of a local synchronised-swimming club offer Sciamma a distinct canvas on which to plant Marie (Pauline Acquart), Anne (Louise Blachère) and Floriane (Adele Haenel), three 15-year-olds at once different and the same. Anne is large, awkward, desperate to sleep with a boy, but childish; Floriane is good-looking, flirtatious, confident, with a reputation for putting it about; Marie is quiet and watchful, small and pretty, the hardest to make judgements about. Each is trying to find some resolution and comfort in their feelings. It’s Marie with whom we travel, our guide from poolside (such beautiful underwater sequences) to club to bedroom. Marie grows apart from Anne when she encounters Floriane at the local pool and willingly follows her around. Is Marie’s gaze one of fascination at Floriane’s maturity? Or is Anne simply falling in love? 

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 61: Sun Mar 1

Wild River (Kazan, 1960): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 2.10pm

This film, my personal favourite of Elis Kazan's movies, is also being shown on March 10th, and is part of the BFI Southbank season dedicated to the director. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
The Tennessee branch of the Mississippi, that is, where TVA agent Montgomery Clift is faced with the job of evicting a matriarch (Jo Van Fleet) from her family island in order to complete a dam project. This 1960 drama is probably Elia Kazan's finest and deepest film, a meditation on how the past both inhibits and enriches the present. Lee Remick costars as Van Fleet's widowed daughter, giving one of the most affecting performances of her underrated career. The tone shifts from hysteria to reverie in the blinking of an eye, but Kazan handles it all with a sure touch. Scripted by Paul Osborn, and adapted in part from books by Borden Deal and William Bradford Huie.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 60: Sat Feb 29

The Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.15pm

This 35mm presentation is part of a Science Fiction season at the Prince Charles. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
The Wachowskis turn their attention to metaphysical SF: Keanu Reeves discovers that the universe (i.e., America and environs) is run by computers that use human beings as batteries for bioelectrical energy, and that he's living not in 1999 but roughly two centuries later; Laurence Fishburne enlists Reeves to lead a revolt staffed by a small multinational crew (including kick-ass heroine Carrie-Anne Moss). This is simpleminded fun for roughly the first hour, until the movie becomes overwhelmed by its many sources—Blade Runner (rainy and trash-laden streets), Men in Black (men in dark suits with shades), Star Wars for mythology, Die Hard for skyscrapers, Alien for secondary characters and decor, Superman and True Lies for stunts, and Videodrome for paranoia.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 59: Fri Feb 28

Head On (Kokkinos, 1998): Barbican Cinema, 6.20pm

This presentation is part of the ‘Her Lens, His Story’ season. Full details here.

Based on the novel Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas (The Slap), the story follows Ari (Dimitriades): a hot-blooded teenager, who keeps his homosexuality secret from his Greek-Australian family. Exploring his sexuality, a drug-fuelled 24 hours of sex, drugs and partying culminates in an unexpected opportunity for romance. Director Ana Kokkinos explores the protagonist’s complex attitudes towards masculinity, rooted in his family's cultural customs and traditional views, with tact and precision. Excellent support is provided by Paul Capsis as his genderqueer friend, who forces Ari to confront his own identity.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 58: Thu Feb 27

Celine and Julie Go Boating (Rivette, 1974): Prince Charles Cinema, 8pm

A personal favourite. This is a long movie and I took a hip flask in when I went to see this on a date at Notting Hill's Electric Cinema back in the day. That worked wonderfully as this is a meandering film, probably best seen under some sort of influence.

Chicago Reader review:
Jacques Rivette's 193-minute comic feminist extravaganza is as scary and unsettling in its narrative high jinks as it is exhilarating in its uninhibited slapstick (1974). Its slow, sensual beginning stages a meeting between a librarian (Dominique Labourier) and a nightclub magician (Juliet Berto). Eventually, a plot within a plot magically takes shape—a somewhat sexist Victorian melodrama with Bulle Ogier, Marie-France Pisier, Barbet Schroeder (the film's producer), and a little girl—as each character, on successive days, visits an old dark house and the same events take place. The elaborate Hitchcockian doublings are so beautifully worked out that this movie steadily grows in resonance and power. The four main actresses scripted their own dialogue with Eduardo de Gregorio and Rivette, and the film derives many of its euphoric effects from a wholesale ransacking of the cinema of pleasure (cartoons, musicals, thrillers, and serials).
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is BFI review of the film.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 57: Wed Feb 26

Love Letter (Tanaka, 1953): Barbican Cinema, 6.30pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the ‘Her Lens, His Story’ season. Full details here.

Barbican introduction:

Masayuki Mori plays Reikishi, an emotionally repressed man who makes an unusual living: translating love letters from Japanese women to American GIs they met during the Occupation. One day, Reikichi's beloved ex-girlfriend Michiko (Yoshiko Kuga) appears, needing his services. Actor Kinuyo Tanaka, a regular star of the films of Kenji Mizoguchi, including The Life of Oharu and Ugetsu Monogatari, made a tremendous directorial debut here with Love Letter, creating a moving and constantly surprising melodrama starring Kurosawa regular Mori. Unusually, Tanaka explores societal attitudes towards ‘fallen women’ through the eyes of the male protagonist, emphasising that it is he who needs to change rather than the vulnerable woman. This unique portrait of post-war Japanese masculinity is very rarely screened in the UK.

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 56: Tue Feb 25

Il Bidone (Fellini, 1955): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6pm

This film, which is also being shown on February 28th and 29th, is part of the Federico Fellini season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Time Out review:
A pair of provincial con-men (Broderick Crawford and Richard Basehart) pose as priests to swindle ignorant peasant farmers, but what begins as comedy turns sour, cruel, and finally tragic. Characteristically, Fellini stacks the pack with a final victim of great facial beauty, palsied legs and obscurantist belief, after which it is only a matter of time before bad Brod receives his comeuppance on a stony hillside. Most of Fellini's preoccupations are present, but in 1955 had not yet blown the obligation to tell a story off-course.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 55: Mon Feb 24

Inter-View & Flora (Hausner, 1995): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.50pm

These 35mm presentations, which are also being screened on February 22nd (details here), are part of the Jessica Hausner season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

BFI introduction:
FLORA is a sympathetic, often darkly funny and wholly unsentimental look at the trials and tribulations of early adulthood, as experienced by a young woman, while INTER-VIEW is Hausner’s most fragmented and impressionistic film, this featurette alternates between two protagonists: a writer apparently conducting research by interviewing strangers about their professional and personal lives, and a quiet graduate looking for a job (hopefully involving flowers – shades of Little Joe?). Like its predecessor, Inter-View offers an early instance of the writer-director’s enduring penchant for scenes involving dance.

Here (and above) is Jessica Hausner being interviewed on images and meaning in cinema.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 54: Sun Feb 23

Suture (McGehee & Siegel, 1993): ICA Cinema, 12.30pm

From the ICA’s film archives, this is one of a curated selection of cult classics and rare finds in original format 35mm as part of the ICA Cinema’s Monthly Members’ Screenings.

Chicago Reader review:
As far as I know this is something of a first, at least since the 1920s or 30s: a movie predicated on film theory playing in a commercial theater. Written, directed, and produced by American independents Scott McGehee and David Siegel, this odd black-and-white 'Scope thriller (1993) about identity and social construction concerns a young man named Clay who becomes briefly acquainted with his half-brother Vincent. Vincent, who wants to flee the country for various reasons, secretly arranges to have Clay blown up in Vincent's car wearing Vincent's clothes; with everyone believing he's dead, Vincent can easily disappear. But Clay survives the explosion, though he has amnesia, and with the help of a plastic surgeon and a psychoanalyst is "restored" to an identity that was never his--Vincent's. A subversive spin is given to this material: Clay and Vincent are said by all the characters to be dead ringers, yet Clay is played by a black actor and Vincent by a white one--and no one ever comments on it. The film may be at times a little too smart (as well as a little too drab and mechanical) for its own good, but the witty, provocative implications of the central concept linger, and the story carries an interesting sting: this is a head scratcher that actually functions. 
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 53: Sat Feb 22

Hotel (Hausner, 2004): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.30pm

This 35mm presentation, which is also being screened on February 24th (details here), is parts of the Jessica Hausner season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

BFI introduction:
When Irene starts work as receptionist at an Alpine hotel, she discovers her predecessor vanished mysteriously; though unalarmed, she finds the place’s gloomy atmosphere getting to her... It’s in this unsettling, visually ravishing study of loneliness and the influence of environment that the importance of two of Hausner’s long-term collaborators, producer-cinematographer Martin Gschlacht and production designer Katharina Wöppermann, first became evident.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 52: Fri Feb 21

Snowpiercer (Bong Joon-ho, 2013): Prince Charles Cinema, 3.20 & 5.45pm

This film, which has never had a UK release, is on a week-long run at the Prince Charles Cinema.

Chicago Reader review:
The human drive toward ecological collapse often seems like a screaming train that can't be halted, which gives this postapocalyptic thriller by Bong Joon-ho (The Host) a potency indivisible from its premise. Decades after an atmospheric experiment to counteract global warming has instead plunged the world into a new ice age, a little community of survivors rides a passenger train around and around the planet, the haves housed near the engine and the have-nots suffering at the back; a rebellion led by two malcontents (Chris Evans and Jamie Bell) and leading up through the cars introduces us to a succession of fantastic technology and eccentric characters (not the least of which is Tilda Swinton as an officious Thatcher-like governess). As with The Host, the political satire is teased out gradually as the story progresses and never intrudes on one's enjoyment of the movie's richly imagined world. With John Hurt, Octavia Spencer, and Ed Harris.
JR Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 51: Thu Feb 20

Waiting for Happiness (Sissako, 2002): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.45pm

Chicago Reader review:
Written and directed by Mauritanian expatriate Abderrahmane Sissako, this 2002 French/Mauritanian drama presents a kaleidoscopic portrait of a West African village wedged between the desert and the sea. A young man returns home after years of travel; the rather elusive narrative follows him through a series of impressionistic encounters with villagers (an old electrician and his orphan ward, a Chinese vendor who sings karaoke tunes in Mandarin, the local hooker) who, like him, are fleeting figures in the transition from tradition to modernity. The images Sissako unscrolls are artfully composed and arrestingly exotic, and the film's meditative languor conveys a feeling of mystery and regret. In French, Hassanya, and Mandarin with subtitles.
Ted Shen

Here (and above is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 50: Wed Feb 19

Baby Doll (Kazan, 1956): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.40pm

This 35mm presentation, which is also being shown on February 28th (link here), is part of the Elia Kazan season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
One of Elia Kazan's most underrated movies is his only pure comedy, scripted by Tennessee Williams and shot on location in rural Mississippi. Carroll Baker stars (in her debut) as a virgin child bride hitched up to Karl Malden at his most unsavory; Eli Wallach (in another debut) is brilliant as Malden's business rival who manipulates both of them. Though this film was roundly condemned for salaciousness by the Legion of Decency when it came out (1956), its plot actually pivots around the ambiguous matter of whether sex actually takes place or not, and it's the seediness of the southern milieu—Baker's dirty neck rather than her dirty mind or morals—that seemed to have the censors up in arms. But it's largely Kazan's authentic feeling for the locale, aided by Boris Kaufman's superb black-and-white cinematography, that makes this movie so special, combined with a first-rate ensemble. With Mildred Dunnock.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 49: Tue Feb 18

Insomnia (Nolan, 2002): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.30pm

This 35mm presentation is part of a Christoper Nolan Selectrospective at the Prince Charles Cinema. You can find the details here.

Time Out review:
When a teenage girl is murdered in a small Alaskan town, Will Dormer (Al Pacino) and his LAPD partner Hap (Martin Donovan) are sent to investigate. To Ellie (Hilary Swank), the rookie assigned to assist the veteran detective, Dormer's a hero. But she doesn't know Internal Affairs is keeping an eye on him. Then a disastrous stakeout leaves Dormer guilty and fearful for his liberty. Worse, he starts receiving blackmail calls from crime novelist and prime suspect Walter Finch (Robin Williams). The midnight sun, meanwhile, is depriving Dormer of sleep, clouding his judgment. If all this may sound familiar, it's because Hillary Seitz's subtle script improves on the 1997 Norwegian thriller of the same name. Despite its linear storyline, the film is very recognisably the work of the sharp, probing intelligence that gave us Following and Memento. While it succeeds as an extremely stylish, gripping thriller, it's also another of the director's takes on 'life as narrative'. Dormer's dealings with Hap and Finch are about who can come up with a story others will swallow. The better your tale, the greater your control. Poor Dormer, however, disoriented in every sense, no longer distinguishes so clearly between means and motive, cause and effect. This, like the uniformly terrific acting (especially from Pacino and Williams), lends welcome nuance and depth to the ethical enquiry while furnishing the drama with dark, telling ironies and intriguing ambiguity.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 48: Mon Feb 17

Blue Valentine (Cianfrance, 2010): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.45pm

This superbly acted, heartbreaking movie is showing from a 35mm print.

Chicago Reader review:
Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling tear up the screen as mismatched lovers, shown in alternating sequences as a giddy young couple forging a much-compromised emotional bond on their earliest dates and then years later as bitterly divided spouses with a young daughter. They're just getting by on his wages as a boozy house painter and hers as a nurse, and his close, intuitive relationship with the little girl seems to be the only glue holding it all together. In a desperate move, husband and wife retreat for a romantic evening alone in a crummy hotel with theme rooms; theirs is the "future room," a garish space-age pad, and—wouldn’t you know it?—the future arrives. The performances are so gripping that the movie works despite its diagrammatic structure, which focuses on ironic rhymes between past and present and omits the entirety of the couple’s marriage. 
JR Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 47: Sun Feb 16

Red Dust (Fleming, 1932): Regent St Cinema, 5pm

This pre-Code classic, part of a season being screened at Regent St Cinema (details here) is showing from a 35mm print.

Mountain Express review:
Red Dust is something of an anomaly in that it’s everything you don’t expect from that most conservative of studios Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It is rough, brief, to the point and gleefully trashy. The funny thing about MGM is that on the occasions when they went off the rails of “good taste,” they went off the rails with a vengeance — and presumably when Louis B. Mayer wasn’t looking. That’s certainly the case here with this very pre-code melodrama — with much comedy content — of sex and lust set on a rubber plantation in Indochina.
Ken Hanke 

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 46: Sat Feb 15

Hortensia/Béance (Maenza, 1969/2020): Close-Up Cinema, 7.30pm

This presentation is part of the Liberated Film Club's retrospective on Pere Portabella.

Close-Up Cinema introduction:

Pere Portabella, producer of Hortensia/Beancé, said of the film's director, José Antonio Maenza: “He was consumed by his own voracity, was against his time”' Maenza made three works in his short, intense career characterised by the concerns of revolution, sexuality, Marxism, Situationism, ritual and collage; the last of which, Hortensia/Beancé is an exercise in filmmaking as political and revolutionary act, a chaotic and explosive social experiment expressed on film but left unfinished at the time of Maenza's death (in late 1979 he was found seriously wounded near his home with signs of having been beaten and died a few days later – the circumstances of his death remain unclear). The screening copy which premieres at Close-Up and closes the London-wide Pere Portabella film survey has been specially edited for the occasion by Pere Portabella and Marcelo Expósito, with a total running time of 105 minutes. We are delighted to announce the attendance of Pere Portabella at this event.

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 45: Fri Feb 14

Un Chant d’Amour (Genet, 1950): Birkbeck Institute of Moving Image, 6pm

Birkbeck Institute of Moving Image introduction:

Every Friday during the autumn of 1970, the New Cinema Club, then at the cutting edge of film culture in London, staged a weekly programme at the Sapphire Theatre in Wardour Street, Soho, called Acts of Love. It comprised four uncompromising underground sex films, some of them now canonical, then barely seen:

Carolee Schneemann’s FUSES

Stephen Dwoskin’s MOMENT

Jean Genet’s UN CHANT D’AMOUR

Takahiko Iimura’s AI (LOVE)

A staple of the counter-culture, Acts of Love continued, less frequently, in various locations, for the next eighteen months. It took place against a backdrop formed by the mainstreaming of filmed pornography, whose geographic centre was Soho; the emergence of various erotic film festivals which mixed adult and experimental film; and by the rise of second-wave feminism.

Acts of Love (Reconstructed), which will include additional material, is intended to reconstruct not just the formative event, but the various contexts in which it appeared.

The screening will be presented by Elena Gorfinkel (King’s College London) and Henry K. Miller (University of Reading). It is an instalment of an occasional retrospective of Stephen Dwoskin’s films mounted by the Dwoskin Project at the University of Reading. For more information, follow @DwoskinProject.

Here (and above) is Stephen Dwoskin’s ‘Moment’.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 44: Thu Feb 13

Scandal (Caton-Jones, 1989): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.40pm

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Michael Caton-Jones, producer Stephen Woolley, writer Michael Thomas and exec producer Joe Boyd. 

Chicago Reader review:
A breezy yet serious docudrama about the notorious John Profumo-Christine Keeler sexual scandal of 1963 that shook England's Conservative government, written by Michael Thomas and directed by Michael Caton-Jones. At the center of this complex but deftly conveyed intrigue is the ambiguous figure of Dr. Stephen Ward (John Hurt), a society osteopath, portrait artist, and hedonist whose “discovery” and cultivation of Keeler, coupled with his friendly liaison with British intelligence, set all the essential wheels in motion. Hurt is at his best in suggesting the contradictory layers of this man, who proved to be the establishment's scapegoat in the affair, but another part of what makes this movie so absorbing is its heady celebration of London during this period, as well as a healthy enjoyment of the erotic elements—demonstrating overall that good, trashy fun doesn't necessarily entail dumbness or irresponsibility. With Joanne Whalley-Kilmer as Keeler, Bridget Fonda as her friend and fellow playgirl Mandy Rice-Davies, Ian McKellen as Profumo, Leslie Phillips as Lord Astor, and Britt Ekland as the orgiastic party thrower Mariella Novotny.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here, and above, is a clip from the film.

Newly remastered by the BFI from a 4K scan, Scandal will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on Monday February 24th.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 43: Wed Feb 12

Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder, 1974): Castle Cinema, 7pm

Chicago Reader review:
Rainer Werner Fassbinder takes Douglas Sirk's Hollywood melodrama All That Heaven Allows and pushes it over the brink: it becomes the story of a May-December romance between a Moroccan guest laborer and an aging German hausfrau. The visual style is mostly Sirk's as well—it emphasizes artificially cheerful primary colors and imprisoning frames within the frame—though the distant, drained, but finally impassioned acting style is pure Fassbinder. This 1974 film stands as one of Fassbinder's sturdiest achievements, posed between the low-budget funkiness of his early features and the mannerism of his late period.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) director Todd Haynes talks about the film.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 42: Tue Feb 11

8 1/2 (Fellini, 1963): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.10pm

This film, which is on an extended run at the cinema, is part of the Federico Fellini season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
If all you know about this exuberant, self-regarding 1963 film is based on its countless inferior imitations (from Paul Mazursky's Alex in Wonderland and The Pickle to Woody Allen's Stardust Memories to Bob Fosse's All That Jazz), you owe it to yourself to see Federico Fellini's exhilarating, stocktaking original, an expressionist, circuslike comedy about the complex mental and social life of a big-time filmmaker (Marcello Mastroianni) stuck for a subject and the busy world surrounding him. It's Fellini's last black-and-white picture and conceivably the most gorgeous and inventive thing he ever did—certainly more fun than anything he made after it. (The only Fellini movie that's about as pleasurable is The White Sheik.)
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 41: Mon Feb 10

Fellini’s Roma (Fellini, 1972): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.30pm

This film, which is also being shown on February 8th, 16th and 25th (link here), is part of the Federico Fellini season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
An imaginative, highly personal travelogue and essay film by Federico Fellini (1972), one of his best works of this period. It features the filmmaker roaming around the Eternal City with his crew, musing about the recent and distant historical past, running into old chums and acquaintances (such as Anna Magnani and Gore Vidal), and occasionally indulging some flamboyant conceits for their own sake (e.g., the memorable ecclesiastical fashion show). As usual with Fellini, especially from the 70s on, spectacle tends to be everything.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 40: Sun Feb 9

Amarcord (Fellini, 1973): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 5.20pm

This 35mm presentation, which is also being shown on February 4th, 16th and 29th (link here), is part of the Federico Fellini season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Time Out review:
Fellini at his ripest and loudest recreates a fantasy-vision of his home town during the fascist period. With generous helpings of soap opera and burlesque, he generally gets his better effects by orchestrating his colourful cast of characters around the town square, on a boat outing, or at a festive wedding. When he narrows his focus down to individual groups, he usually limits himself to corny bathroom and bedroom jokes, which produce the desired titters but little else. But despite the ups and downs, it's still Fellini, which has become an identifiable substance like salami or pepperoni that can be sliced into at any point, yielding pretty much the same general consistency and flavour.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 39: Sat Feb 8

The Sea of Grass (Kazan, 1947): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 3.45pm

This 35mm presentation, which is also being shown on February 10th (link here), is part of the Elia Kazan season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

BFI introduction:
An atypical film for both director and stars – a St Louis woman (Hepburn) travels to New Mexico to marry a rancher (Tracy) regarded locally as a tyrant – this western nevertheless became the highest-grossing of all MGM’s Hepburn-Tracy movies. Though Kazan regretted having to film in the studio rather than on the Great Plains, the performances are dependably fine.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 38: Fri Feb 7

A Streetcar Named Desire (Kazan, 1951): BFI Southbank, NFT1&3, 2.30, 6.00 & 8.30pm

This Elia Kazan classic is part of the director’s season at BFI Southbank and on an extended run at the cinema. You can find the full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Howard Hawks once complained that, after he'd spent 20 years trying to scale down and simplify screen acting, Elia Kazan went and shot all his work to hell with this 1951 film, which features some of the most hysterical performances in film history. But they are also great performances, and Hawks could have taken heart from Kim Hunter's work, which provides superb, understated balance to the famous fireworks of Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh. Kazan's direction is often questionably, distractingly baroque, swelling up the considerable subtlety of the Tennessee Williams play, but if the hothouse style was ever justified, this is the occasion. With Karl Malden; photographed by Harry Stradling.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the new BFI trailer.