ICA is closed from the 30 May – 3 June inclusive.
Tuesday 3 Oct – Tuesday 12 Dec 2023
Gray Wielebinski:
The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low
‘Cinema has been one of the most significant influences on The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low thanks to the exhibition’s engagement with science fictional ideas and aesthetics, as well as the importance of the sun and artificial and alien sources of light. Of the films I’ve selected for this screening program, only one, Sunshine (2007), would straightforwardly be considered science fiction; the others blend genre in surprising ways. Tangerine (2015) can be considered an existential Western set on the streets of central LA, Safe (1995) is a domestic drama with science fictional overtones, and Querelle (1982) is a kitsch pornographic thriller with a noticeable lack of urgency.
Querelle, dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, West Germany / France 1982, 104 min., English, 18
Gray Wielebinski:
The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low
‘Cinema has been one of the most significant influences on The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low thanks to the exhibition’s engagement with science fictional ideas and aesthetics, as well as the importance of the sun and artificial and alien sources of light. Of the films I’ve selected for this screening program, only one, Sunshine (2007), would straightforwardly be considered science fiction; the others blend genre in surprising ways. Tangerine (2015) can be considered an existential Western set on the streets of central LA, Safe (1995) is a domestic drama with science fictional overtones, and Querelle (1982) is a kitsch pornographic thriller with a noticeable lack of urgency.
‘Each film foregrounds the question of paranoia. Some characters, such as the elderly patriarch at the centre of Akira Kurosawa’s I Live in Fear (1955) or Julianne Moore’s troubled housewife in Todd Haynes’ Safe, are so tormented by apparent apocalyptic threats in their day-to-day life that they are judged by others (including, perhaps, the viewer) to be insane. Yet each film invites us to question the point at which conspiratorial thinking might actually be logical, particularly for those pushed to society’s margins. The polarity of private and public creates worlds riven with secrets, as Huw Lemmey and Onyeka Igwe’s Ungentle (2020) shows. In all of these films, moments of beauty arise and disappear, as everything is not quite what it seems.’
– Gray Wielebinski
Tickets £12, £5 if you’re 25 or under.
Free for Red Members, half price for Blue Members. Join today
Event ticket includes free entry to the exhibition that day.
Tickets £12, £5 if you’re 25 or under.
Free for Red Members, half price for Blue Members. Join today
Event ticket includes free entry to the exhibition that day.
Programme
Fassbinder’s striking final film centres a handsome sailor on shore leave in the port of Brest.
Tuesday 17 October, 8:45pm
Todd Haynes’ profoundly unsettling drama about a troubled housewife suffering from a series of intensifying chronic afflictions.
Danny Boyle’s space odyssey is a dazzling exploration of the sun and our relationship to it.
Tuesday 14 November, 8:30pm
Huw Lemmey and Onyeka Igwe’s investigation of the historical convergence of British espionage and homosexuality.
Akira Kurosawa’s haunting exploration of life in the atomic age is as profoundly moving as the filmmaker’s best known works.
Tuesday 12 December, 8:45pm
Sean Baker’s iPhone-shot L.A odyssey follows two trans sex workers in a plot of intrigue, jealousy, revenge, humor, survival and sisterhood.
no. 236848.