Deep Focus: 1 — 7 December
In Focus: Luc Moullet at the ICA, copper and concrete at the Barbican, and the Diggers at Close-Up
Luc Moullet’s Les Contrebandiers screens at the ICA on Tuesday as part of an In Focus strand on the director curated by film magazine Narrow Margin.
Monday, the London Migration Film Festival arrives at Rich Mix with Med Hondo’s Soleil O, followed by a Q&A. Lust for Life, Minelli’s celebrated portrait of Vincent Van Gogh starring Kirk Douglas screens in NFT3, with an introduction by Christopher Frayling. Funeral Parade returns to the Prince Charles Cinema with Female Trouble. The Regent Street Cinema Monday Matinée is Sirk’s Imitation of Life. Kinomad film club presents Collage Films by Arthur Lipsett at the Hackney Bath House.
Tuesday, the ICA’s latest In Focus zeros in on Luc Moullet: curated by film magazine Narrow Margin following a summer engagement with the New Wave auteur’s work at Anthology Film Archives, the strand opens with Les Contrebandières, a film following two Alpine smugglers that morphs into “a nimble essay on consumerism,” followed by Le Litre de lait, an eccentric, late-period autobiographical work. Over in Shoreditch, Close-Up presents Bernardo Zanotta: Trilogia Canibal, a trilogy of shorts — shown together in full for the first time — probing “links between cannibalism and gay history” through a variety of forms, followed by a Q&A with the director hosted by Elizabeth Dexter. Panna a netvor, Juraj Herz “haunting and psychological” Czech New Wave adaptation of Beauty and the Beast is at Farrs Dalston, presented by Sine Screen. Lina Lapelyte’s In the Dark, We Play, part of a site-specific installation on view at Kensington’s The Cosmic House, screens at the Institut Francais, accompanied by a conversation with Lapelyte and writer Lev Bratishenko. The Goethe-Institut’s Konrad Wolf season continues with Divided Heaven. Richard Burton’s first big-screen role, The Last Days of Dolwyn, is in NFT1 on 35mm, introduced by his daughter, actor Kate Burton.
Wednesday, held as part of Lawrence Lek’s exhibition Life Before Automation and co-curated with Sine Screen, Speculative Choreographies, a programme of “moving-image works where the screen becomes both a stage and a site of collapse” screens in Goldsmith’s Richard Hoggart cinema, featuring works by Lek, Meriem Bennani and Sara Magenheimer. Cannibal Apocalypse, Antonio Margheriti’s “oddly melancholic” exploitation zombie romp is at The Nickel. Tea and Sympathy is on 35mm at the BFI, as part of Too Much: Melodrama on Film. Token Homo’s BAR TRASH strand continues with Mausoleum at Genesis Cinema.
Thursday, Close-Up hosts Millennium Film Journal No. 82 Launch Screening, a shorts programme of works discussed in the new issue that attempts to account for an “increasingly convoluted world, in which images are not just a reflection of reality, but part of its very substance,” featuring Ken Jacobs Little Stabs at Happiness and works by Samy Benammar and Tomonari Nishikawa. The BFI’s Frederick Wiseman season continues in NFT3 with Aspen, a study of the social divisions in the former mining town turned ski resort, introduced by curator Sandra Hebron. Konrad Wolf’s Goya is at the Goethe-Institut. In Focus: Luc Moullet continues with Les Sièges de l’Alcazar, followed by shorts and an online Q&A with Moullet. The Barbican hosts a preview screening of Peter Hujar’s Day, followed by a ScreenTalk with director Ira Sachs and Ben Whishaw. Pink Palace returns to the Rio with a screening of Frederic Tcheng’s Halston, a “definitive look at the unsung gay hero of 70s American fashion.
Friday, coinciding with The Curve’s Lucy Raven: Rounds exhibition, the Barbican hosts a double-bill of Lucy Raven’s China Town and Godard’s Operation Beton, works that examine the human labour embodied in materials — copper and concrete — and the chains of interdependence and exploitation they obscure. The Birkbeck Cinema hosts filmmakers Bev Zalcock and Sara Chambers for A Night With Barrelstout Productions, a programme celebrating the duo’s playful, political work, rooted in film history. Parajanov’s short, Hakob Hovnatanyan is accompanied by an illustrated talk by the Sergei Parajanov Museum’s Anahit at the ICA, presented by the Armenian Film Festival London. The Gothique Film Society presents a double bill of Japanese horror at The Cinema Museum with Mansion of the Ghost Cat and The Lady Vampire. The Prince Charles screens festive staple Eyes Wide Shut on 35mm. A new 4K restoration of Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante begins a run at the Rio. Capping the In Focus strand, the ICA hosts the UK Premiere of Pedro Pinho’s I Only Rest in the Storm.
Saturday, described by Jonathan Rosenbaum as “the most mysteriously beautiful English film since the best of Michael Powell,” Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s Winstanley, a portrait of the Digger radical hewn through with a crumpled authenticity and elliptical eccentricity is at Close-Up — preceded by the counterfactual It Happened Here — both screenings are followed by a conversation between Brownlow and Stanley Schtinter. There’s a packed day at the BFI: Look Back in Anger is on 35mm in NFT2, followed by Wiseman’s portrait of the modern university, At Berkeley; in NFT3, a Mulvey-selected double-bill of Eisenstein’s Man With a Movie Camera + (nostalgia), Hollis Frampton’s witty provocation, which screens on 16mm; Ophuls’ Lola Montes is in NFT1. Across the river, the ICA’s In Focus: Luc Moullet closes with Le Fantôme de Longstaff + Le Prestige de la mort. The Japanese Film Club presents the UK Premiere of a new 4K Resotration of Shall We Dance? at the Rio.
Sunday, Griffith and Lillian Gish’s Way Down East is on 35mm in NFT2, followed later that day by Yvonne Rainer’s portrait of “the emotional and professional entanglements of a professional dance group,” Lives of the Performers; Wiseman’s In Jackson Heights is in NFT4. The London Film Week presents a preview screening of Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You at The Garden Cinema. Produced by Sergio Leone and “widely considered a classic of Italian comedy,” Un Sacco Bello is at the Regent Street Cinema. Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us closes out the week at the Institut Francais.
Until next time