Bangalore Film Society, is signing off the films-filled year with specially curated Cinema Under the Influence ensemble bouquet of triad films from December 28 to 30 at 6.30 pm at Ashirvad, 30, St Mark’s Road Cross, Opposite State Bank of India. For details call 2549 2774/ 2549 3705/ 9480090128.
The weekend with celebrated works begins with Italy’s internationally acclaimed modernist auteur late Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 Blow Up, inspired by a short story Las Babas del Diablo by Argentinian writer Julio Cortazar, and stylised on the work, habits, and mannerisms of London photographer David Bailey. The film, which tells the story of a photographer’s involvement with a murder case, is about reality and how we perceive it or think we perceive it. Taking viewers through the decadent swinging London of 1960s, the highly influentional and hallmark film follows a fashion photographer who tries to solve the mystery of a murder which may or may not have occurred.
It is followed by a cult, uproarious black comedy Withnail & I by Bruce Robinson about two unemployed actors, living in Camden Town, at the end of 1960s. Desperately seeking an escape from mundane existence that has become their lives they find release from their small and suffocating London flat in the form of blissful weekend out in the country cottage with sleaze-bag of an Uncle Monty. The fairly plotless, but compelling character-based story appeals to a wide range of people with its impeccable cast who come up brauvra performances.
The outing closes with avant-garde auteur Guy Maddin’s The Saddest Music in the World based on a screenplay by Booker Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro. Set in 1930s Winnipeg, in the midst of an economic depression, the film, is a sort-of musical, where a double-amputee beer baroness — Lady Port-Huntly, organises a contest to find the saddest music in the world and where the finest drinkers are. Musicians from around the world descend, including the Baroness’ former lover, on the city to try and win first place — $25,000 prize. A dazzling melange of melancholy, music and beer, and surreal tongue-in-cheek social satire and musical melodrama forms the core of this expressionistic film that combines a loving homage to early days of cinema with sheer strangeness of life. Admission by membership.
