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The Cannibals (Cannibali), dir. Liliana Cavani, Italy 1970,
Book tickets
The dead must be mourned, but how? The Machine that Kills Bad People presents a double bill that puts catharsis, protest, and personal transformation at the heart of grief.
In Mitchell's Death (1977) performance artist Linda Mary Montano works through the accidental passing of her ex-husband and close friend Mitchell Payne. Framed in close-up, with her face pierced by acupuncture needles, Montano narrates her experience, from when she hears of his death to when she visits the morgue to see his body. Her monotone voice recalls Buddhist chanting, creating a trance-like incantation.
In The Cannibals (1970), Liliana Cavani offers a countercultural retelling of Antigone in fascist state, set to an Ennio Morricone soundtrack and starring Bond girl Britt Ekland and 1960s’ icon Pierre Clémenti. Made four years before the succès de scandale of The Night Porter (1974), The Cannibals uses spectacular imagery to tell the story of two young people who refuse to submit to the government's brutality and insist on burying the murdered rebels, whose bodies have been left lying in the street. The film was made near the beginning of the violent turmoil of Italy’s Years of Lead, leading Cavani to later call it a “tragic prophecy.”
With a specially commissioned essay by CAConrad.
Programme:
Mitchell's Death, dir. Linda Mary Montano, USA 1977, 22 min
The Cannibals (Cannibali), dir. Liliana Cavani, Italy 1970, 88 min.
In Mitchell's Death (1977) performance artist Linda Mary Montano works through the accidental passing of her ex-husband and close friend Mitchell Payne. Framed in close-up, with her face pierced by acupuncture needles, Montano narrates her experience, from when she hears of his death to when she visits the morgue to see his body. Her monotone voice recalls Buddhist chanting, creating a trance-like incantation.
In The Cannibals (1970), Liliana Cavani offers a countercultural retelling of Antigone in fascist state, set to an Ennio Morricone soundtrack and starring Bond girl Britt Ekland and 1960s’ icon Pierre Clémenti. Made four years before the succès de scandale of The Night Porter (1974), The Cannibals uses spectacular imagery to tell the story of two young people who refuse to submit to the government's brutality and insist on burying the murdered rebels, whose bodies have been left lying in the street. The film was made near the beginning of the violent turmoil of Italy’s Years of Lead, leading Cavani to later call it a “tragic prophecy.”
With a specially commissioned essay by CAConrad.
Programme:
Mitchell's Death, dir. Linda Mary Montano, USA 1977, 22 min
The Cannibals (Cannibali), dir. Liliana Cavani, Italy 1970, 88 min.
The Machine That Kills Bad People is, of course, the cinema – a medium that is so often and so visibly in service of a crushing status quo but which, in the right hands, is a fatal instrument of beauty, contestation, wonder, politics, poetry, new visions, testimonies, histories, dreams. It is also a film club devoted to showing work – ‘mainstream’ and experimental, known and unknown, historical and contemporary – that takes up this task. The group borrowed their name from the Roberto Rossellini film of the same title, and find inspiration in the eclectic juxtapositions of Amos Vogel’s groundbreaking New York film society Cinema 16.
The Machine That Kills Bad People is held bi-monthly in the ICA Cinema and is programmed by Erika Balsom, Beatrice Gibson, Maria Palacios Cruz, and Ben Rivers.
The Machine That Kills Bad People is held bi-monthly in the ICA Cinema and is programmed by Erika Balsom, Beatrice Gibson, Maria Palacios Cruz, and Ben Rivers.
Book tickets
06:30 pm
Tue, 14 Jan 2025
Cinema 1
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Cinema 1
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