Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 355: Fri Dec 20

Show Boat (Whale, 1936): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.15pm

This 35mm screening (also being presented on December 21st) is part of the Musicals season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
James Whale's brilliant and surprisingly delicate 1936 rendition of the Kern and Hammerstein musical, which was based on an Edna Ferber novel, is infinitely superior to the dull 1951 MGM Technicolor remake and, interestingly enough, less racist. The rendition of “Old Man River” by Paul Robeson, magnificent throughout, is a high point, occasioning a montage sequence that shows Whale at his most expressionistic and inventive.
Jonathan Rosenbaum


Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 354: Thu Dec 19

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Hunt, 1969): Prince Charles Cinema, 3.10 & 6.10pm

This 50th anniversary screening is also being shown on December 28th at the Prince Charles Cinema. You can find the full details here.

The press reviews of the films don't capture the excitement of this retrospective for Bond fans and I am recommending the Blogalongabond series by Neil Alcock (aka @theincrediblesuit on Twitter). Here is his take on On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 353: Wed Dec 18

So That You can Live (Cinema Action Collective, 1982): Deptford Cinema, 7.15pm

This is part of the So That You Can Live: The Oppositional Films of Cinema Action season at Deptford Cinema. You can find all the details at the foot of the preview here.

Wavelength Docs introduction:
The residues of history in the Welsh landscape plus the traditions of working class knowledge and solidarity are examined in this searching, moving film by political film collective Cinema Action. Charismatic union convener Shirley Butts assumes the focus, but her daughter's attempts to find work also feature as she reads from Raymond Williams and stares out at an imposing London skyline. The film developed out of an earlier project called The Social Contract. Shirley's daughter reads from The Country and the City by Raymond Williams and original music by Robert Wyatt and Scritti Politti also features. Visually, it occasionally recalls Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her. In many ways Cinema Action's master piece, it was broadcast on the opening night of Channel 4 in 1982 (BFI)

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 352: Tue Dec 17

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Demy, 1964): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.40pm & NFT2, 8.30pm

Chicago Reader review:
Jacques Demy's 1964 "film opera," with music by Michel Legrand, has a reputation for sappiness it doesn't deserve. The chief feature of Demy's direction is his deft avoidance of the pat, the obvious, and the sentimental, which is no mean feat when you're dealing with material as self-consciously simple as this. Catherine Deneuve loses her fiance to the draft; he's wounded and doesn't write, so she reluctantly marries someone else.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 351: Mon Dec 16

West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty (Hondo, 1979):
BFI Southbank, NFT2. 8.40pm

BFI introduction:
This rarely screened MGM-inspired Med Hondo musical was, in its day, the most expensive African film ever made. Adapted by writer Daniel Boukman from his own work, and seven years in the making, this vast musical fresco covers hundreds of years of history from enslavement to 20th-century immigration. It’s set on an enormous slave ship and boasts a dazzling array of brilliant choreography, wide-ranging musical styles, sharp satire and captivating and poignant lyricism. The BFI are presenting this film from a 35mm print.

Here is an extract from an article by Philip Concannon (you can read it in full here) on the 'African musical masterpiece you've never seen':
West Indies should have been instantly hailed as a classic and as a new benchmark for African cinema, but after its mixed reception in France the film never achieved a wide release and it gradually slipped out of circulation. Its reputation continued to shrink as it failed to receive any kind of home video release over the next four decades, and even an admirably wide-ranging list of 50 great foreign-language film musicals compiled by Vulture Magazine in 2015 failed to mention Med Hondo’s magnum opus. When Med Hondo passed away earlier this year, it’s likely that many people recognised his name more from his career as a voice actor – dubbing the likes Eddie Murphy and Morgan Freeman for the French market – than for his brilliant but obscure films. Hondo’s debut feature, Soleil O (1967), recently found a new audience after being restored by the World Cinema Foundation, and one can only hope that his other masterpieces – such as West Indies and Sarraounia (1986) – will be next in line for restoration and redistribution. The time for Med Hondo to be widely recognised as a visionary filmmaker, and for West Indies to enter the canon as one of the most vital screen musicals, is long overdue.

Here (and above) is film of the director Med Hondo in his prime.

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 350: Sun Dec 15

Videodrome (Cronenberg, 1983): ICA Cinema, 12.30pm

From the ICA’s film archives, come a curated selection of cult classics and rare finds in original format 35mm as part of the ICA Cinema’s monthly members' screenings ... David Cronenberg's shocker is the latest.

Chicago Reader review:

This 1983 shocker by David Cronenberg comes about as close to abandoning a narrative format as a commercial film possibly can: James Woods plays the programmer of a sleazy Toronto cable channel who stumbles across a mysterious pirate emission—a porno show called “Videodrome” that features hideous S and M fantasies performed with appalling realism. Knowing a ratings winner when he sees one, Woods sets out to find the producer and quickly becomes involved with a kinky talk-show hostess (Deborah Harry), expanding rubber TV sets, a bizarre religious cult, and—almost incidentally—a plot to take over the world. Never coherent and frequently pretentious, the film remains an audacious attempt to place obsessive personal images before a popular audience—a kind of Kenneth Anger version of Star Wars. 

Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.rers’ Screeni

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 348: Sat Dec 14

No1 The Silence Before Bach (Portabella, 2007): Close-Up Cinema 8pm

This is part of the most complete and ambitious retrospective of radical Catalan filmmaker Pere Portabella’s work. You can find the full details here. Poet and writer Irene Solà who will introduce the two films by Pere Portabella: Poetes Catalan and Die Stille Vor Bach.

Chicago Reader review:
Though Pere Portabella is a major talent in experimental narrative film, working atypically in 35-millimeter, he's still relatively unknown because his early features could be shown only clandestinely in Franco's Spain and none is commercially distributed. The Silence Before Bach is his most pleasurable and accessible film to date, above all for its diverse performances of the title composer's work. Gracefully leapfrogging between fact and fiction in at least two centuries and several countries, it recalls some playful aspects of his Warsaw Bridge (1989) while juxtaposing past and present as if they were attractions in a theme park.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer


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No 2 The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles, 1942): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 4.10pm

This 35mm screening, in the Big Screen Classics strand, is also being shown at BFI Southbank on December 15th. You can find the details here.

Personally, this is my favourite film by Orson Welles and my appreciation and understanding of its richness has been aided in no small part by two great books, This Is Orson Welles by Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, which contains a condensed version of the original script, and the BFI Film Classics monograph The Magnificent Ambersons by VF Perkins. The website Frequently Asked Questions About Orson Welles is well worth a look if you want to find out more about this film and the legends that have grown up around it.

Chicago Reader review:
Orson Welles's second completed feature (1942) and arguably his greatest film (partisans of Citizen Kane notwithstanding). By far his most personal creation, this lovingly crafted, hauntingly nostalgic portrait of a midwestern town losing its Victorian innocence to the machine age contains some of Welles's most beautiful and formidable imagery, not to mention his narration, a glorious expression of the pain of memory. A masterpiece in every way (but ignore the awkward ending the studio tacked on without Welles's approval).
Don Druker

Here (and above) is the famous snow ride scene.