Barbican Cinema, Barbican Centre
Cinema Matters Part 1: Industrial Light & Magic
12 January - 11 February 2017
barbican.org.uk/film
Box Office 0845 120 7527
The power of the moving image and its influence across the arts is celebrated
by the Barbican throughout 2017 with Film in Focus - a series of worldclass arts and learning projects, commissions and events that celebrate
the medium of film. Across the year, as part of Film in Focus, Barbican
Cinema takes a closer look at the significance of film in a six-part series
entitled Cinema Matters. Part 1: Industrial Light and Magic looks at the
technologies and business of film and its implications for storytelling, including
two films from celebrated essayist Thom Andersen and the original sci-fi
game changer Ghost in the Shell, currently the subject of a controversial
remake starring Scarlett Johansson.
Image: Ghost In The Shell
Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (PG) + The History of Motion in
Motion + La Jetée
Thu 12 Jan 8.30pm, Cinema 3
US 1975 Thom Andersen 56 min Digital presentation
US 1966 Dir Stan VanDerBeek 12 min 16mm presentation
France 1963 Dir Chris Marker 28 min Digital presentation
Audiences understand the movies are a lie and that the movement on screen
is just a bunch of still images. But the magic of the movies – as in
enchantment and illusion – began here, with this ability to present motion.
Historians have traced moving images as far back as 400 years or more and
one of the most compelling stories is that of Eaedward Muybridge and his
proto-cinema experiments in the 1880s. This compelling and celebrated
documentary from leading American essayist Thom Andersen at his practice
of motion study, as well as his 1879 invention, the zoopraxiscope, for
displaying motion pictures. “One of the best essay films ever made on a
cinematic subject” (Jonathan Rosenbaum)
+ The History of Motion in Motion
A hasty history of motion pictures beginning with The Kiss (1896) and ending
with Jean-Luc Godard.
+ La Jetée
Chris Marker’s famous 1963 sci-fi short is a reminder, like no other, that the
filmic illusion of motion is always composed of a series of still images.
Constructed from discontinuous stills, each held at some length, its true centre
is the single, split-second of 24-frames-per-second when a woman, the
beloved, opens her eyes and looks directly at the camera.
Pan’s Labyrinth (15)
Wed 18 Jan 8.45pm, Cinema 3
Mexico/Spain/US 2006 Dir Guillermo del Toro 120 min Digital presentation
Beginning as a fairground attraction, cinema was the world’s first
industrialised mass-entertainment. By the early 1900s film had evolved into an
industry in its own right, with its own buildings and advertising, and in the late
1930s nearly everyone in the Western world went to the movies, often once a
week.
Though the American film industry rose to global predominance, other nations
had, and continue to have, huge global cinema hits. Though Mexico enjoyed a
‘golden age’ in the 40s, when it dominated the film market in Latin America, its
biggest-ever success came in 2006 with Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s
Labyrinth. Set in 1943 in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, the story
centres on a young girl, Ofelia, who escapes into the magical labyrinth of her
fantasies. Vividly beautiful and hugely imaginative, its combination of
children’s fantasy, adult parable and historical drama grossed more than
US$80 million worldwide.
Sun 22 Jan 4pm, Cinema 1
Cops + Seven Chances (U)
+ live piano accompaniment from Guenter A. Buchwald
US 1922 Buster Keaton 22 min Digital presentation
US 1925 Buster Keaton 56 min Digital presentation
The critic David Thomson observed that the stories developed in films often
rely on “hooks, rollercoasters and big bangs… suspense and mystery, on
what happens next”. Chase scenes are emblematic in this regard - from The
Great Train Robbery (1903) to Bullitt (1969) and beyond - and the expression
“cut to the chase” was coined in the era of silent cinema. Cops and Seven
Chances showcase two of Buster Keaton’s greatest chases, which find him
variously pursued by an angry horde of policemen and an enthusiastic gaggle
of would-be fiancées.
In partnership with Slapstick Festival, Bristol
Ghost in the Shell (15) + Lapis
Thu 26 Jan 8.45pm, Cinema 3
Japan 1995 Dir Mamoru Oshii 83 min Digital presentation
US 1966 Dir James Whitney 10 min 16mm presentation
The large sums of money invested to produce a film create an imperative to
reach a large audience, which in turn has implications for storytelling. From its
earliest days, film has relied on visual spectacle to lure us to the cinema and
in 1995 a then cutting-edge combination of traditional cell animation and
the latest CGI took the world by storm - Ghost in the Shell.
It’s 2029, and people are using cybernetic bodies (‘shells’) as downloadable
surrogate selves. Now a female government cyborg, Major Motoko Kusanagi,
leads a police unit in hot pursuit of The Puppet Master – a computer virus
capable of hijacking host bodies and altering victims’ memories. Oshii’s
masterpiece endures as one of cinema’s must stunning sci-fi spectaculars.
+ Lapis
James Whitney was one of a number of American filmmakers in the 60s who
sought to construct and explore film as visionary experience. Executed over
the course of three years and made using primitive computer technology, this
dazzling, mystical, abstract film is a classic work in the field.
Los Angeles Plays Itself (15)
Sun 29 Jan 3pm, Cinema 3
US 2003 Thom Andersen 170 min Digital presentation
In the guise of Hollywood, Los Angeles gave us the movies. As Rayner
Banham wrote in his famous 1971 study of the city, LA has seen “the greatest
concentration of fantasy-production, as an industry and an institution, in the
history of Western man.”
This incredible 2003 essay-film, also by Thom Anderson, delves into the
tangled relationship between the movies and their hometown, Hollywood, LA.
Again and again, LA has been forced to play other cities, or been pressed into
service as an anonymous backdrop. Are LA’s buildings really that nondescript? Or is it the cultural dominance of Hollywood itself that’s denied LA
the ability to be distinct?
Beau Travail (15)
Wed 1 Feb 8.45pm, Cinema 3
France 1999 Dir Claire Denis 93 min 35mm presentation
Though the cinema can hardly be said to have invented it, there is one
narrative device that has become synonymous with ‘Hollywood’ storytelling:
the happy ending. Whilst not all forms of cinema have pursued the happy
ending as aggressively as Hollywood, a failure to offer one can trigger a film’s
biggest talking point, think Chinatown, or No Country for Old Men. What is the
cultural impact of such an avalanche of happy endings?
Though not obviously ‘happy’, and in fact somewhat ambiguous, the ending to
Claire Denis’ Beau Travail is nonetheless glorious. A mesmerising jolt of
energy, the film nevertheless achieves its full resonance upon its conclusion a contrast to all that’s gone before. A languid study of jealousy and repressed
desire set in the tense, tightly disciplined world of the French Foreign Legion.
Unforgettable.
Sullivan’s Travels (PG)
Sun 5 Feb 4pm, Cinema 3
US 1941 Preston Sturges 91min Digital presentation
For half a century at least, audiences have come to assume that film deserves
appreciation on par with high art. And long before that, filmmakers aspired to
transcend film’s awkward dual status as art form and mass entertainment, to
produce great ‘art’. And yet, if the movies do nothing more than entertain, isn’t
that enough?
Sullivan’s Travels poses just such a question in a neat and hugely entertaining
way. The story of a successful Hollywood comedy director whose yearning to
make an important social drama lands him in some serious scrapes, Sullivan’s
Travels came about as a result of a yearning from director, Preston Sturges,
“to tell some of my fellow filmwrights that they were getting a little too deepdish and to leave the preaching to the preachers.”
Goodbye Dragon Inn (15)
Thu 9 Feb 8.45pm, Cinema 3
Taiwan 2003 Tsai Ming-liang 82 min 35mm presentation
Susan Sontag wrote that movie-going is an essential part of the experience
we want from film – the experience of surrendering to and being transported
by what’s on the screen. It’s not just a question of the size of the screen; to be
properly “kidnapped” in this way, she writes, “you have to be in a movie
theatre, seated in the dark among anonymous strangers.” It’s never the same
at home.
Now that there are so many other ways of watching movies, the centrality of
cinemas to the experience of film is sadly much diminished. This beautiful,
mournful 2003 film - a kind of Taiwanese Last Picture Show - is an
affectionate tribute to cinema and the pleasures of cinema-going.
The Fu-Ho cinema in Taipei is shutting down. One rainy night, this shabby
temple unspools its last attraction to a handful of devotees – the 1966 swordfighting classic Dragon Inn. A series of encounters play out among the staff
and audience, with the on and off-screen action subtly intertwined.
Gun Crazy (PG)
Sat 11 Feb 4pm, Cinema 3
US 1950 Joseph H Lewis
As neatly summarized by Jean-Luc Godard’s in his famous dictum “all you
need for a movie is a girl and a gun”, the dangerous elements of sex and
violence have often created great excitement – and great draw – within
movies across the decades.
A smaller subset of Girls and Guns are ‘Girls With Guns’ movies, represented
here by B-movie maestro Joseph H Lewis’ Gun Crazy. Hailed by The
Guardian as no less than “a masterpiece of flash and trash, unwholesome
obsession and criminal daring”, its electrifying love-on-the-run story concerns
a misfit couple who, drawn to each other by a mutual – and arguably Freudian
– love of guns, embark together on a life of robbing banks.
ENDS
Notes to Editors
For further information contact:
Sarah Harvey Publicity: 020 7732 7790
Sarah Harvey: [email protected]
Hayley Willis: [email protected]
Ticket prices:
barbican.org.uk/film Box Office: 0845 120 7527
* Local Classification
# Certificate to be confirmed
About the Barbican
A world-class arts and learning organisation, the Barbican pushes the
boundaries of all major art forms including dance, film, music, theatre and
visual arts. Our creative learning programme further underpins everything we
do. Over 1.8 million people pass through our doors annually, hundreds of
artists and performers are featured, and more than 300 staff work onsite. Our
architecturally renowned centre opened in 1982 and comprises the Barbican
Hall, the Barbican Theatre, the Pit, Cinema One plus Cinemas 2 & 3 on Beech
Street, Barbican Art Gallery, a second gallery The Curve, foyers and public
spaces, a library, Lakeside Terrace, a glasshouse conservatory, conference
facilities and three restaurants.
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