Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 153: Tue Jun 2

Blind Spot (Von Alleman, 1981): ICA Cinema, 6.30pm

'This is the LAST screening from the people behind THE MACHINE THAT KILLS BAD PEOPLE!* After eight years, the series is coming to a close with the launch of a book containing all the essays specially commissioned for each screening. As always, two towering films. But at this final event, the film club will reveal the secret rule that has governed their programming all along.'

*(The Machine That Kills Bad People is held bi-monthly in the ICA Cinema and is programmed by Erika Balsom, Beatrice Gibson, María Palacios Cruz, and Ben Rivers.) 

Time Out review:
Flora Tristan was a 19th century utopian socialist feminist, notorious in her day, now largely forgotten. A young historian (Rebecca Pauly) leaves husband and child to seek traces of Tristan in contemporary Lyons. Disillusioned with the records-and-monuments methods of historians, she roams the streets recording sounds Tristan may have heard. A film about the impossibility of knowing the past; the camera looks and looks but only yields implacably closed images. Sound's the thing, and in the final, long-held shot of the woman ecstatically playing her violin, the film's complex and compelling themes come together.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is an extract.

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