Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

[Jonathan S]

Night Will Fall (see BFI thread) will be broadcast on Channel 4 tonight at 9pm.

[GaryC]

Night Will Fall (see BFI thread) will be broadcast on Channel 4 tonight at 9pm.

Interestingly, it's a 75mins film (72 mins with PAL speed-up) showing in an 80-minute slot. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's showing without commercial breaks.

[jlnight]

I vaguely remember a showing on C4 in the 1980s, which I didn't see, but I could be wrong.

My first viewing of Kaspar Hauser was an 80s C4 screening. Also in the season is Stroszek, which infamously was the film Joy Division's Ian Curtis watched just before hanging himself.

I've had a look at the notes and, believe it or not, Aguirre, Kaspar Hauser, Stroszek and Woyzeck all turned up on ITV in the 80s! (London area at least). The C4 screening you mention seems to be dated 28/03/84. Would that tally up?


Film4 also seem to have scheduled The Punk Singer late night on Friday 30th January.

[GaryC]

I vaguely remember a showing on C4 in the 1980s, which I didn't see, but I could be wrong.

My first viewing of Kaspar Hauser was an 80s C4 screening. Also in the season is Stroszek, which infamously was the film Joy Division's Ian Curtis watched just before hanging himself.

I've had a look at the notes and, believe it or not, Aguirre, Kaspar Hauser, Stroszek and Woyzeck all turned up on ITV in the 80s! (London area at least). The C4 screening you mention seems to be dated 28/03/84. Would that tally up?

Which film was on in March 1984 - Heart of Glass? If so, that would be about right.

The showing of Stroszek that Ian Curtis saw was its TV premiere, on BBC2 in the Film International slot, on 17 May 1980. It finished at 10.45pm and Curtis must have killed himself sometime after midnight, as his death date is 18 May.

Foreign films did turn up late at night on ITV London in the 1980s from time to time - and as often as not subtitled rather than dubbed. Ones I saw then included Fear Eats the Soul, Switchboard Operator and another now very rare Fassbinder, called on that showing Wild Game (Wildwechsel also known as Jail Bait).

[colinr0380]

That is something that seems to have been lost with ITV losing, or merging, its various separate regions together into one single national channel from around the 2000s. Before then (and while there are still regional new programmes and various regional production companies, such as ITV Granada) there was the block of primetime programming that was consistent across the entire country but then late night, or early afternoon weekend, schedules used to get a variety of programming dependent on the region, often including entirely different film screenings being scheduled. I seem to remember films such as Une homme et une femme or Wim Wenders' follow up to Wings of Desire, Faraway, So Close (also known as the film that gave Mikhail Gorbachev his first acting role!) also turned up from time to time. They were rare occurrences but happened much more often than they do now, with the overnight output of ITV having been given over to live roulette gambling shows.

(There is even a listing in Helen McCarthy's Anime Movie Guide that states that Hayao Miyazaki's Laputa: Castle In The Sky, despite not getting an official UK home video release until a decade or so later was: "shown on British Independent television (some regions only) 1989 and 1992, dub")

[jlnight]

Which film was on in March 1984 - Heart of Glass? If so, that would be about right.

No, I meant Kaspar Hauser. I can't find a listing for Heart of Glass.

(There is even a listing in Helen McCarthy's Anime Movie Guide that states that Hayao Miyazaki's Laputa: Castle In The Sky, despite not getting an official UK home video release until a decade or so later was: "shown on British Independent television (some regions only) 1989 and 1992, dub")

A London listing for 31/12/1988. Billed as "Laputa - The Flying Island".

[thirtyframesasecond]

Where do you find these listings? The BBC has the Radio Times archives available online now but I would love to know how to search for whether something has been broadcast on any channel.

[Dr Amicus]

And as a follow up to Night Will Fall, PBS America is showing Memory of the Camps tomorrow at 9pm.

[Altair]

Film4 are premiering The Wind Rises on Sat. 7th Feb at 15:25; that's very quick, seeing as the film was released only in 2013.

[colinr0380]

Film4 are premiering The Wind Rises on Sat. 7th Feb at 15:25; that's very quick, seeing as the film was released only in 2013.

And it will also be repeated on Film4 on Friday 13th at 6.25 p.m. I'm assuming that both of these screenings are of the dubbed version as the Radio Times is a little weirdly crediting Gary Rydstrom (the English language ADR director) as co-director along with Hayao Miyazaki. Usually Film4 are good about scheduling a late night or even morning mid-week slot for a subtitled screening too, so that might also be worth keeping an eye out for.

And 90s film list compilers there is another chance to see Michael Douglas's bare bottom in Basic Instinct on Film4 later on the evening of the 13th! Followed by Secretary! Which I guess is to kinkily coincide with Fifty Shades of Grey coming out at the cinema. Film4 also have Sam Taylor-Wood's John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy on again on Tuesday 10th too. Although if Film4 were a little more daring they perhaps should have scheduled a screening of the explicit portmanteau film Destricted, which features Taylor-Wood's Death Valley!

[colinr0380]

Frank Tashlin's Caprice, with Doris Day and Richard Harris is on Film4 Wednesday 25th February at 3.15 p.m.

Citizenfour is on Channel 4 at 11.05 p.m. on Wednesday 25th February too, and at 9.00 p.m. on Thursday 26th February Film4 is premiering Michael Haneke's Amour.

[Dr Amicus]

And Kim Longinotto's Love is All is on BBC4 on Saturday at 9pm - 9 days after it's theatrical release.

[jlnight]

Film4 have pencilled in a screening of Fritz Lang's Metropolis for late night on Friday 6th March. Described as a "restored version of the near-complete print found in Argentina in 2008".

I've seen the film before but I can't remember where or indeed what version it was. Maybe it was on the old Sci-Fi Channel?

[colinr0380]

And Kim Longinotto's Love is All is on BBC4 on Sunday at 9pm - 9 days after it's theatrical release.

This was really great, although if being slightly uncharitable to it the film could be seen to play as a giant promotional project for various of the BFI's DVD projects over the years! But it is much more than that, in that it explores all forms of love and romance in the UK over the last hundred years of film, with an emphasis on social revolutions and upheavals.

This is done through lots of different kinds of footage, from decrepit and partially-destroyed Decasia-style material (for the ruder stag reel-stuff!) through documentary footage to sex hygiene educational films through to features themselves, occasionally interspersed with home movie footage. And while some footage is from silent films, all have had their soundtracks removed (though occasionally the original sound pokes through in the form of character's dialogue or voiceovers!) and replaced with a excellent soundtrack of songs that provide the emotional through-line to the footage. In a way, although this film is also taking footage from elsewhere and putting a new soundtrack over it, I think something like Love Is All is a much more valuable and ambitious project than say the BBC's recent re-scoring of Drive. Instead of just changing one aspect, such as the soundtrack, instead Love Is All is taking existing footage, cutting it up and re-presenting it in a new form to tell its own narrative. A narrative that might not really have been intended from the original material (especially in the rather moralising sex ed films!), but one which has teased out similar key details about tolerance and celebration of love in all its forms.

I'll reproduce my notes from watching below, which might better illustrate how the film is edited. I did not recognise all of the footage but I'll mention the clips that I could place as we go along:

We start with courtship and seduction section of romance, starting with kissing sequences from early silents. Then there come snippets from The Mystery of Marriage that was on the BFI's The Joy of Sex Education (now called The Birds and The Bees) set: the scene of the guy and girl in the country talking about getting married intercut with the birds twittering away in the branches.

Then, as a grungy rock riff kicks in, we get into the raunchy sex section of the film. Its not that explicit, more rolling in the hay stuff but the degraded, roughed up quality of the film footage here is quite sad in its own way for suggesting a whole aspect of human behaviour that is denegrated, hidden away or forgotten until it barely exists on film anymore.

Following on from that we get to the fantastic paen to Anna May Wong, with an entire section of the film (and song with the wonderful lyric "There's a storm coming") dedicated to the actress and her role in the silent film Piccadilly. The précis of the film we get here reminded me of how great it was, and coming off of the quality of the previous footage, this looks stunning. I can only hope this is upcoming for a Blu-ray upgrade.

That is an example of love going wrong, and the first hint of interracial love that will be a key theme of the film. We go back to the courtship and seduction material now, with footage of disapproving relatives and more relationships where class divisions force love apart. (The great short A Test For Love gets re-told in this section).

Then marriage footage, segueing into love in the Second World War. Then post-war, when race starts to come to the fore, both immigration and mixed race relationships (cue more footage of disappointed relatives and landladies!). Then post the miscegenation revolution the film brings up homosexuality using footage from the short film Dream A40 (brought out by the BFI on its Encounters set), and makes great use of the moment from that film in which one character uncomfortable with obvious displays of intimacy with his boyfriend in a cafe looks across at a mixed race heterosexual couple with a mixture of annoyance and jealousy at their casual intimacy, as if they've now been accepted whilst his love remains in some senses 'forbidden'.

Now comes a section showing children and working class tenement life of the 1950s and 1960s, a world soon to be demolished for the concrete tower blocks that the film will deal with later on. For now though there's dancing with the footage mostly 50s beatniks, though then we get clips of 70s punks in colour footage...and black guys in the 80s breakdancing...and Cruising-style gay clubbers...and finally back to the 60s with long haired hippie-types. All this energy seems to be about showing off to impress your object of affection, something which gets amusingly literalised at the end of this section as the film speeds through 'ave You Got A Male Assistant Please, Miss? in double speed until finally slow motioning through the last couple of shots of the beckoning girl and the chap brandishing a condom throwing himself back into bed!

Now we're into the world of work with footage from Growing Up (the section with the voiceover matter of factly stating that "Men are better at giving birth to thoughts and ideas. They are, in fact, usually more inventive and creative" as a man directs his secretary to do his bidding in an office and we see a chap driving a digger), but then immediately move into Don't Be Like Brenda showing another messed up relationship (I'm glad the film kept the waiting for the phone call montage sequence and the fur-coated mother being rude to Brenda over the telephone!). The song playing over the footage did show that you don't really need a moralising voiceover when the right soundtrack and images can combine to convey the same message!

Back to love across the racial divide, as the film also moves into feature films by replaying scenes from My Beautiful Laundrette (the imagery from the final scene of the sex scene taking place at the same time as the other couple are dancing in the next room fits beautifully into the thesis of this film).

Then into Brick Lane, which also works as a perfect encapsulation of the themes from earlier - we're now inside a flat inside one of those concrete apartment blocks (the lyrics of the song saying "open up the door" suddenly resonate even more) and can see the way that attraction can blossom even there. That even when being repressed it is still expressing itself. The way that Love Is All tackles the footage from Brick Lane makes it seem like a Wong Kar-Wai film, full of stock footage intercut with modern life and themes of requited and unrequited love and issues of feeling a betrayal by acknowledging your feelings.

Then as a coda we get footage of mixed race marriages moving into the first images of gay marriages.

Its a beautiful film, but I really hope that along with seeing this film that it also inspires people to check out those BFI DVDs. I myself haven't properly looked into the BFI's British Transport Films releases yet, but can only assume that all of the 'James Joyce in Dubliner's-style' phallic images of trains steaming into and out of tunnels at key moments of the film must be the filmmakers way of saying that people should pick up the BFI releases of those too!

[colinr0380]

I've seen the film before but I can't remember where or indeed what version it was. Maybe it was on the old Sci-Fi Channel?

The only, albeit terrestrial channel, screenings I can remember were of the Giorgio Moroder-scored version on Channel 4, one in their great 1993 "New Nightmares" season and again in 1995 during their "Sci-Fi Weekend". Other than that, I couldn't say.

[perkypat]

The Horror Channel is now on Freeview. Quite a bit of Hammer coming up, some reprehensible looking exploitation and a lot of 21st century horror. Plus all the Dr Who you could shake a stick at.

[jlnight]

April 22nd, late night, Film4: Belly of an Architect.

I swear that Holy Motors was scheduled for Film4 as well, but a second look suggests it has been changed.

[GaryC]

There's a 1947 British (Scottish) film on BBC2 on Saturday morning, The Silver Darlings. Radio Times doesn't indicate it as a premiere, but the BBC TV guide and BBC Genome don't bring up an earlier showing, not on the BBC at least. Might be worth a look, and according to the BBC TV Guide it should be available on Iplayer after broadcast.

[colinr0380]

The Radio Times seems a little uncertain about whether the films on Channel 4's current Indian film season are premieres too. In the case of both Bhuvan Shome last Sunday and Mirch Masala this coming Sunday, both have been marked as repeats in the listings and premieres in their film section, which is a little confusing!

[colinr0380]

Well I caught up with Lee Daniels's The Paperboy when it was premiered on Film4 last night. An extremely strange film that made me want to rub my eyes in disbelief at a few points (OK, during the entire film), but strangely I sort of like it. It sometimes feels like a nightmarishly twisted version of The Pelican Brief, or another John Grisham film. I have far fewer qualms about this than I had about Precious (which somehow just kept getting more and more problematic as it got its worldview validated during the awards season). Really The Paperboy reminded me a lot of the similarly lunatic Lee Daniels film, Shadowboxer.

The Paperboy is a film that is so over-ripe that it is on the verge of being rotten, but it does probably feature the best recent aquatic animal attack scene, at least until somebody gets around to filming Gravity's Rainbow (I enjoyed Kidman pushing the other women out of the way to ensure that she marked her territory!). I liked that the film isn't just defined by Kidman's notorious scene, but instead it constantly features great actors in weirdly demeaning situations that I never really wanted to see them in (mostly Zac Efron in tighty-whities)..

SpoilerShow

(and on that note, I have serious issues with a film that kills everyone else but somehow allows Zac Efron to get away with being the only survivor!)

It has a great final shot though which kind of made the entire film for me but, cripes, even Tennessee Williams would ask the characters in The Paperboy to tone things down a little!

[neilist]

There's a 1947 British (Scottish) film on BBC2 on Saturday morning, The Silver Darlings. Radio Times doesn't indicate it as a premiere, but the BBC TV guide and BBC Genome don't bring up an earlier showing, not on the BBC at least. Might be worth a look, and according to the BBC TV Guide it should be available on Iplayer after broadcast.

Watched this earlier on iPlayer, certainly not a bad little film. Interesting to note it was produced by Karl Grune, of 'Die Straße' fame! It's on iPlayer for a couple more days.

[colinr0380]

This coming Sunday 26th April at 8 p.m. BBC4 will be screening Juliette Binoche: Antigone at the Barbican, a filmed version of the Sophocles play that Binoche has been appearing in recently. Here's a piece about the stage production.

[colinr0380]

The big news of this week has to be BBC4 screening Frederick Wiseman's National Gallery at 8 p.m. on Sunday 3rd May.

National Gallery appears to also be kicking off a "BBC4 Goes Slow" season which includes Dawn Chorus: Sounds of Spring on Monday 4th May (one hour of non-computer based twittering), three half hour episodes of a series called Handmade (which follow the process of making objects in glass, metal and wood), and on Tuesday 5th May at 8 p.m. there is All Aboard! The Canal Trip, which is a two hour real-time journey on a canal boat!

Channel 4's Indian film season continues with Mani Kaul's 1971 film Ashad Ka Ek Din on Monday 4th May at 3.30 a.m., and at 8.25 p.m. on Thursday 7th May (polling day in the UK election) More4 is screening a live production of a play from the Donmar Warehouse theatre, The Vote, starring Judi Dench and Timothy West .

[jlnight]

Horror Channel has some interesting stuff coming up:

3rd May: Zombie Flesh Eaters (watch it in a double bill with National Gallery!)
7th May: Twisted Nerve (a few people will have that on Election Night)
8th May: Shivers (late night)
10th May: The Lair of the White Worm (Ken, Ken!), and Amer (late night).

[colinr0380]

I really liked National Gallery and was especially interested by the sense that the film is constantly throwing up individual people to try and comment on the significance of or meaning behind a piece of work, some of whom make a big impression and an interesting argument, and some of whom...sort of...um...don't. I wonder if it was intentional to allude to the way that the official organised gatherings of people to listen to somebody pontificate over a piece of work more often than not don't seem to work properly, while the off the cuff conversations mostly do. There are two exceptions which prove the rule though: the restorer talking a group through his recent work, which was fascinating. And on the other hand the more intimate discussions with the couple of overseas curators about a piece of sheet music shown in a painting, which got kind of annoying!

But on the whole the larger public gatherings seemed a lot more forced, with very enthusiastic (or, if being uncharitable, desperate) guides trying all the tricks to bring the paintings alive for their audiences. There is an early scene of a class in which a Pizarro painting is being described to a group of blind or at least partially sighted people. It seems like a noble thing to do, and there was obviously demand for the class based on the attendance in that scene (although the audience is left not really knowing if this actually is a regular class or more a one-off event type thing), but I was also left with the feeling of that parable of the blind men trying to describe an elephant in the sense of how inadequate mere words were in being able to describe the tone and texture of a painting.

That scene gets followed up by a guide teaching the religious principles behind some paintings to a group of children (trying to get them interested in Moses?). Then another uncomfortable scene about some older teens being told that some of the paintings were funded through the slave trade, which is obviously terribly wrong (I kept cringing, waiting for the guide to say something to one of the black teens in the group that the film keeps cutting to along the lines of being so dreadfully personally sorry for what had happened to his ancestors). Then it develops further with another guide entirely focusing on historical context behind why a painting was produced (to show a King what his prospective bride looked like). There's also that life drawing art class with the rather uncomfortably chatty teacher (I'd have asked her if she could back off and let me draw, but the students in this class seem much more polite! And some of her comments about the nude models would have made me blush if I were them! I also like the way that the first life drawing class ends with the sound of a police car. The film is cutting to crowds waiting outside the gallery at that point, and the siren is coming from a police car passing in the background of that scene, but I did burst out laughing at the thought that the teacher might suddenly shout "It's the cops! Run!", with everyone leaving hurriedly leaving just the bemused nude model behind!) At around the halfway mark these discreet scenes develop into actual interesting lectures and conversations but even with the best of them, they usually involve just one 'expert' talking about just one aspect of the painting. So we get someone talking about light in the context of the shadow of a frame, or someone describing the restoration process, someone else mentioning the purchase history of a painting before it got into the hands of the National Gallery, someone else on the obscurity and elitist art qualities of a painting. And brilliantly the famous painting of Samson and Delilah gets returned to twice, the first time the guide focuses on interpeting the action and the expression of Delilah (whilst almost obtusely skirting around Samson getting his hair cut, except to briefly and strangely describe the guy cutting the hair as "making the first incision"!), and the second time it is entirely in the context of the use of light in the painting, the way that it falls and the way that the setting for the painting makes all the difference to its interpretation. I much preferred the second discussion of that painting, even if it too was approaching the painting not as a whole piece of work but more for a particular aspect picked out for discussion! The power of art seems more about the interaction between all of these separate aspects (composition, where the piece is being displayed, the economic realities then and now, the historical context then and now, the condition of the painting, etc) and an eye of the beholder approach teases out trains of details but leaves the whole woefully unappraised.

I wonder if this ties into that early behind the scenes meeting about trying to broaden out the National Gallery's appeal to wider audiences. That discussion about tying in the National Gallery with the marathon going on outside, and getting associated Sports Relief sponsorship, made me cringe all the way through. Not just for the crass opportunism of a quick sponsor deal or of devaluing the brand (although I entirely agreed with the one gentleman arguing against it. Though he's obviously part of an old guard fighting a losing battle against an ambitious cabal of younger members of the organisation with their own ideas about its direction!), but really for the whole idea of trying to target seemingly uninterested 'general audiences' through blatantly obvious tactics. I know there are a lot of issues around funding in the arts and keeping an organisation going through keeping attendance figures up, but chasing after an elusive and fickle (and arbitrarily defined) general audience only runs the risk of destroying the core values of the organisation in the process. Hard economic decisions might have to be made, but surely museums and galleries perhaps also need to provide access to material that might be more challenging or uneconomical to do, but provides a cultural resource of equivalent (or greater) worth. It is probably best not to entirely play to the general public and give them shows that they already know that they want or have proved that they will flock to, but rather build up interest in other areas as well and broaden the cultural horizons rather than narrow them.

Plus the Sport Relief tie in seemed a ridiculous idea, with no real tie to the National Gallery apart from the publicity that would come from the TV cameras catching the end of the marathon outside! I'd always suggest not jumping on a pre-existing bandwagon but instead create your own bandwagon to do with your own admirable qualities of your organisation, and trumpet those from the rooftop instead! It might be harder, but that would seem likely to pay off more in the long term. Though that discussion meeting does contrast interestingly with the later scene of the Greenpeace activists running their own banner from the front of the building! Obviously Greenpeace wanted a bit of the National Gallery's prestige to rub off on their own cause too!

That behind the scenes wrangling over the direction of an institution seems very much in Frederick Wiseman's comfort zone (I haven't had the chance to see it yet but hear that At Berkeley has a lot of those kind of scenes in it), along with the day-to-day operations. It seems much more in the background here though as the final section of the film focuses much more on the various exhibitions and lectures which pushes the paintings to the fore again. I found though that this material made me think of the link between a particular piece of art and the patrons it was originally produced for - it has now been long removed from its original context and placed in these rather artificial spaces surrounded by other paintings (that occasionally 'sing', or harmonise in tune with it, or not) and flat lighting, with people pontificating about its meaning, or speculating about original intentions, or simply just looking at it, taking everything or nothing away with them (on that note, I know that it is a cliché shot for any film set in an art gallery, but does anyone else find the shot of someone walking off and away from a painting quite moving and even slightly upsetting? A shot of a person at the point of wandering away from a stunningly beautiful and complex image that is forever broadcasting its power seems somehow slightly condemnatory of them for not appreciating it properly. But perhaps the individual might have gotten a deep experience out of the painting and shouldn't be imposed on with an outsider's perspective like that! But that's perhaps one reason why I'd never really want to go to an art gallery - I'd end up feeling guilty in walking out on the pictures!)

Yet the art isn't existing in a vacuum - every piece in that gallery has been chosen and curated for a purpose, for its attraction to audiences or usefulness to the current era. As with any piece of media, the audience should always ask themselves why someone is wanting them to view it now, at this current moment. What agenda is being promoted that has brought this piece out onto the walls instead of one of a thousand others locked away in a vault somewhere?

This might not even have to be for particular political reasons or biases for or against a particular artist. It might be more practical considerations of availability and condition of a particular piece of art which turns it into more of a 'go to' piece to be put onto the walls of a gallery. How easy is it to return something back to a viewable condition? (In the terms of our forum, think of the way that certain great films are unavailable or prevented from being seen through lack of elements or rights issues as much as from any 'agenda' that a particular video label might have in terms of what they release). There are all sorts of reasons behind why something is elevated and something else falls into obscurity, and they don't just have to do with whether a piece of work is 'good' or not.

Also, while modern art of course doesn't feature in this film (all those pieces being in the Tate Modern), this in a roundabout way brings us (or at least my thoughts in tangential way) to the classic versus modern art debate. Pictures produced for private collectors from long past periods existing almost in an acontextual manner, or rather in an entirely newly curated context, set against pieces of modern art sculptures, exhibits and conceptual pieces that really could only exist in the performance space of a gallery. Pieces produced for the exhibition context that now currently exists (all that wall and floor space to constantly keep full) and which would seem to lose their power and purpose outside of a place where they can be viewed by the public, certainly not having the same impact in a private collector's collection. Who cares that you have a shark in formaldahyde in your garage (apart from health and safety-wise, and monetarily from owning the piece with the value appreciating while it is off the market), but stick the piece in a gallery and it suddenly acquires a 'meaning'.

Is any piece of art 'pure'? Or is it always being manipulated, if only to keep it looking its best? Even if nothing physically is being done to the painting to spruce it up according to current thinking in restoration trends, a particular piece is still at the mercy of critical and commercial tastes, not to mention individual interpretation. Which is not entirely a bad thing, I hasten to add! Debate around and fluctuation of a piece of art's reputation can be an interesting thing in studying a culture! I'd just perhaps be a bit more personally concerned about ranging beyond the comfort zone into lesser explored territory too, which is something that can also end up illuminating the critical darlings in return!

Occasionally it can seem as if the focus is a little too narrow, as if some of the people in the film cannot see the wood for the trees. Or the guy playing the guitar for the slightly awkwardly positioned sheet music. Or the painting for the construction of the wooden frame surrounding it. Or the gallery itself for the opportunity of the Sports Relief marathon going on outside. Sometimes that myopic view focusing only on the tiniest detail can pay off (the restoration scenes), other times it could potentially be damaging to the whole.