Nicolas Roeg and Spike Lee seasons coming to GFT
Glasgow Film Theatre have two great retrospectives lined up for their Cinemaster retrospectives this summer: Nic Roeg and Spike Lee
Film fans received a blow late last year with the loss of the great Nicolas Roeg, but his daring, innovative movies live on. Glasgow Film Theatre will be paying tribute to this visionary filmmaker throughout July, crowning him their latest Cinemaster.
This mini-retrospective features three of Roeg's most revered 70s films, as well as a virtuosic but still underappreciated feature from the 80s. First up there's his most celebrated work, Don't Look Now, which follows Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland as a couple trying to get over the tragic death of their daughter. Most of the film is set in Venice, and the romantic floating city never looked more creepy and unnerving, not least because there's a serial killer on the prowl and a blind mystic is communing with the couple's dead daughter.
Next is that underrated 80s number: Eureka!, starring Gene Hackman as a gold prospector who becomes hideously rich but remains thoroughly miserable. The near-wordless opening section in which Hackman's character digs for his fortune in ruthless mining country is among Roeg's finest cinematic achievements. It's screening on 35mm.
Roeg’s expressive editing style that saw personas collide and time elide are in full force in The Man Who Fell To Earth and Walkabout. David Bowie is mesmerising in the former as an alien who stumbles upon mankind's many vices when he visits our planet. And the latter follows an English brother and sister as they try to survive the pitiless Australian Outback.
Spike Lee is GFT's Cinemaster in August
Glasgow Film Theatre have also revealed who they'll be crowning as Cinemaster in August: Spike Lee. The season kicks off with Lee's masterpiece Do the Right Thing, which is receiving a 30th anniversary release throughout the UK.
The four other films screening in the season demonstrate Lee's ability to skip from styles and genres while still making films that ooze his personality and politics. There's his lively interracial romance Jungle Fever, a maelstrom of a movie that, like Do the Right Thing, constantly feels like it's about to boil over. In the sinuous thriller Inside Man, we find Lee at his most slick and controlled, delivering a deeply satisfying heist flick buoyed by brilliant performances from Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lee regular Denzel Washington.
Next up is Lee's more idiosyncratic Chi-Raq, his wily remake of Aristophanes's Lysistrata, which takes the myth to modern-day Chicago, where a group of women go on a sex strike to end Chicago street violence. The season rounds off with Lee's most recent triumph BlacKkKlansman, a blistering period film in which a black cop finds himself infiltrating a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. The setting is 1971, but there's no doubt Lee is speaking to the racial tensions of today, and that's clear even before he ends the film with footage of torch-wielding Nazis marching on Charlottesville in 2017.
GFT Cinemaster screenings: July & August
Nicolas Roeg: Cinemaster
Don’t Look Now (4K) – 5-7 July
Eureka! (35mm) – 15 & 16 July
The Man Who Fell To Earth (4K) – 22 & 23 July
Walkabout – 29 & 30 July
Spike Lee: Cinemaster
Do The Right Thing (4K) – 2-4 August
Jungle Fever – 11 & 12 August
Inside Man – 18 & 20 August
Chi-Raq – 25 & 27 August
BlacKkKlansman – 1 & 3 September
Tickets and more info at glasgowfilm.org/shows/cinemasters-nicolas-roeg and glasgowfilm.org/shows/cinemasters-spike-lee