Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 292: Sun Oct 23

Walk on the Wild Side (Dmytryk, 1962): Cinema Museum, 6pm

Cinema Museum introduction to 35mm screening:
The Vito Project LGBTQ+ Club returns with its brand new season – Imitations of Life: Deconstructing Camp in Classic Hollywood. We will explore how camp has been used not only to bring joy and laughter to audience, but also as a tool to get subversive queer, feminist and socially-charged content to the screen – all the while eluding critics in the process! Each movie is preceded by an introduction and followed by a panel discussion discussing the movie through a queer lens, and a conversation with the audience.

With Walk on the Wild Side, directed by Edward Dmytryk, the Vito Project returns to one of its favourite themes: queerness under censorship in Classic Hollywood. This torrid and lurid slice of Southern Gothic melodrama is not only dripping with atmosphere and repressed queerness, but also features three generations of Hollywood grand dames: tough-as-nails Barbara Stanwyck as a gloriously decadent lesbian bordello madam, Anne Baxter stripped off her Eve Baxter malice and instead sporting a quasi-Latino accent, and new kid on the block Jane Fonda as the not-quite-ingenue who is about to be corrupted by a simmering hotpot of vice and sin.

Set in Depression era New Orleans, in Walk on the Wild Side down-to-earth, good-natured Dove Linkhorn (Laurence Harvey) train hops from Texas to Louisiana with Kitty Twist (Jane Fonda) in search of his lost love Hallie (Capucine), a soft-spoken, sophisticated artist. Once in New Orleans, Dove is devastated to discover that she has been reduced to working in the “Doll House”, a high society bordello run by ruthless madam Jo Courtney (Barbara Stanwyck). But when Dove tries to take Hallie away he finds himself fighting for his life against bordello thugs and the jealous Jo who wants Hallie for herself.

Here (and aboove) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 291: Sat Oct 22

Strange But True (Lipkes, 2017): Close-Up Cinema, 8.15pm

Close Up Cinema introduction to this screening:
We’re excited to present the second part of a programme of films by Michel Lipkes, in collaboration with Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image. Lipkes’s films explore human solitude and yearning in a context of overwhelming urban alienation, in which relationships of power condition existential predicaments. His films convey a sense of cinema based on a variety of influences that go from Nicholas Ray to Robert Bresson and from Samuel Beckett to JG Ballard.

Rotterdam Film Festival introduction:
Jonathan and Yesi are in love, but fearfully keep this from Mister Clean, their dodgy boss on the bin wagons. In Mexico City, there is no end to the refuse. Cardboard and plastic are separated on the spot, and half-empty bottles of drink finished off in one go; for tips, they will collect the refuse from your kitchen. Everything changes when a body turns up among the containers, its pockets stuffed with cash. Mister Clean comes up with a plan that will benefit them all. In today’s Mexico, it’s simply impossible not to get tangled up in the wretchedness of the violent underworld. This second feature by Michel Lipkes shows an inescapable downward spiral – though not without a glimmer of hope – in luscious black-and-white. Film buff Lipkes nods to masters through clever references and symbolism, making Strange but True both an homage and movie-spotter’s delight on several levels. Hope, love, and belief in the power of cinema.

Here is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 290: Fri Oct 21

The Saddest Music in the World (Maddin, 2003): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm

This film, also beign shown on November 3rd, is part of the Guy Maddin season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Mannerist film antiquarian Guy Maddin takes a bold step forward with this 2003 feature, a comic/melodramatic musical enhanced by his flair for expressionist studio shooting (in grainy black and white, with selected scenes in two-strip Technicolor). The project originated as a script by novelist Kazuo Ishiguro; revising extensively, Maddin and George Toles, his usual collaborator, turn it into an allegory about Canada’s colonial relationship with the U.S. In the depths of the Depression, a Winnipeg beer baroness (Isabella Rossellini) launches an international contest to come up with “the saddest music in the world.” Competing for the U.S. is her former lover (Mark McKinney), a brassy Broadway producer; for Serbia the producer’s older brother (Ross McMillan), who grieves for his dead son and vanished amnesiac wife (Maria de Madeiros); and for Canada both men’s father (David Fox), a surgeon who’s drunkenly amputated Rossellini’s legs. Not to be missed
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 289: Thu Oct 20

Habit (Fessenden, 1997): ICA Cinema, 6.30pm

ICA introduction:
Larry Fessenden’s horror-infused exploration of loss, addiction, paranoia and madness in 1990s New York has continued to resonate in the three decades since its US release – and we’re delighted that this UK premiere screening will be followed by a Q&A with writer, director, editor and lead actor Larry Fessenden, who will discuss the film and the broader role of his production company Glass Eye Pix since its formation in 1985. After losing his father and splitting with his girlfriend Liza (Heather Woodbury), alcoholic Sam (Fessenden) finds solace with the mysterious, unpredictable Anna (Meredith Snaider), who he meets at a Halloween party hosted by his friend Nick (Aaron Beall). But there’s something strange about the seductive Anna – and as their relationship progresses, Sam’s grip on reality begins to crumble.  Recently the subject of a 20-film retrospective at MoMA in New York, Fessenden and Glass Eye Pix are beginning to receive the recognition they deserve for a four-decade legacy of intelligent, auteur-driven, low-budget filmmaking and their nurturing of emerging talent as diverse as writer/directors Ti West and Kelly Reichardt.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 288: Wed Oct 19

Birth (Glazer, 2004): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.10pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the Prince Charles Cinema's Horroctober season. You can find the full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
In this eerily tranquil psychological thriller, Nicole Kidman's placid countenance is like a Rorschach: you'll project onto it what you want to see. A widow on the verge of remarrying, she's troubled by the arrival of a ten-year-old boy (Cameron Bright) who claims to be the reincarnation of her dead husband. In extreme close-ups, Kidman stares impassively at nothing. Does she believe the kid? Is he crazy? Is she? Director Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) unnerves us with an almost sleepy tone, helped by Alexandre Desplat's lush score. The atmosphere is really the point, though I wish the script weren't quite so elliptical.
Hank Sartin

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 287: Tue Oct 18

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (Maddin, 2002): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.45pm

This 35mm presentation will also be screened on October 29th and is part of the Guy Maddin season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
The highly gifted Winnipeg independent Guy Maddin takes on his first commissioned feature–an adaptation of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s production of Dracula–and succeeds brilliantly, making it his own while offering what may be the most faithful screen version to date of Bram Stoker’s novel. Shot mainly as a black-and-white silent, with music by Mahler, selected sound effects, and expressive use of red for blood and green for dollar bills, this kinetic fever dream is every bit as enticing as Maddin’s Archangel, Careful, and The Heart of the World. Don’t let the high-toned elements scare you off: this 2002 feature is a sensual delight, a highly erotic bacchanal with hilarious asides about male sexual paranoia in relation to race and ethnicity.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 286: Mon Oct 17

My Winnipeg (Maddin, 2007): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm

This 35mm presentation, also being screened on October 25th, is part of the Guy Maddin season at BFI Soutbank. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
It was just a matter of time before the eccentric independent Guy Maddin made a personal documentary about his Canadian hometown, and though he labels this a “docu-fantasia,” one still suspects he’s captured the real character of Winnipeg, especially its freezing weather. The movie (2007) is dominated by Maddin’s usual black-and-white photography, silent-movie syntax, and deadpan melodrama; he even casts Ann Savage, who starred in Edgar G. Ulmer’s classic B movie Detour, as his own mother (her dialogue is credited to Maddin’s usual cowriter, George Toles). In the narration Maddin claims that Winnipeg has ten times as many sleepwalkers as any other city in the world, and though he’s surely making this up, it conveys his own sense of entrapment amid the town’s dreaminess.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.