Press room

Barbican Cinema, Barbican Centre
May 2019 highlights
barbican.org.uk/whats-on/cinema

Curated by the Barbican:  

• Science on Screen: Whiplash + presentation by Elaine Chew
• Adrian Wootton’s Hollywood Legends: Barbra Streisand
  & screening of Funny Girl
• Salvador Dalí’s Lost Marx Brothers Film + ScreenTalk
• Salvador Dalí – In Search of Immortality
• Architecture on Film: Agnès Varda Triple Bill
• Bebop New York: Birth of the American Indie

Event Cinema:

• Afternoon Arts: Oscar Wilde Encore: An Ideal Husband
• Met Opera Live in HD: Dialogues des Carmélites
• NT Live: All My Sons
• Royal Opera House Live: Within the Golden Hour/ World Premiere/
  Flight Pattern
• Afternoon Arts: Exhibition on Screen - Renoir - Revered and Reviled

Curated by the Barbican:

Whiplash (15) + presentation by Elaine Chew
Science on Screen
Life Rewired
US 2014, Dir Damien Chazelle, 106 min
Tue 7 May 6.15pm, Cinema 2

A young drummer enrols at a cut-throat music conservatory with a mentor who will stop at nothing in pursuit of perfection. Elaine Chew presents on how computers understand rhythm and its applications.

Adrian Wootton’s Hollywood Legends: Barbra Streisand
Members’ event
Wed 8 May 6.25pm, Cinema 2

Adrian Wootton will give one of his characteristically animated discussions of the life and career of one of Hollywood’s great stars, Barbra Streisand, ahead of the screening of Funny Girl.

Funny Girl (U)
Adrian Wootton’s Hollywood Legends
US 1968, Dir William Wyler, 155 min
Wed 8 May 8.10pm, Cinema 3

This lavish musical biopic marked the sensational screen debut of Barbra Streisand, as she brilliantly embodied the extraordinary vaudeville star Fanny Brice.

Giraffes on Horseback Salad with a side of Animal Crackers: Salvador Dalí's Lost Marx Brothers Film + ScreenTalk
Thu 9 May 6.20pm, Cinema 2

Giraffes on Horseback Salad is Josh Frank’s new graphic novel adaptation of a lost Marx Brothers-Dalí screenplay. The author and illustrator will be in discussion, following a screening of Animal Crackers (USA, 1930, Dir Victor Heerman)

Salvador Dalí – In Search of Immortality (PG)
Andorra 2018, Dir David Pujol, 105 min
Sun 12 May 3.50pm, Cinema 3

David Pujol’s documentary explores the life and work of Salvador Dalí and his muse Gala, from the height of his surrealist powers in 1929 to his death in 1989.

Agnès Varda Triple Bill (12A*)
Architecture on Film
Tue 21 May 6.30pm, Cinema 1

- Diary of a Pregnant Woman [L’opera-mouffe] (France, 1958, Agnés Varda, 17 mins)

- The So-Called Caryatids (France, 1984, Agnés Varda, 13 mins)

- Daguerroéotypes (France, 1975, Agnès Varda, 75 min)

A triple bill presenting Agnès Varda’s cinematic explorations of her Parisienne neighbours – from lovers and drifters to shopkeepers and statues.
Three rarely screened films journeying from the lives of the silent majority to Baudelaire, via the magic of film.
Curated by the Architecture Foundation in partnership with the Barbican.

Bebop New York: Birth of the American Indie

23 May & 28 May

This Barbican season – throughout May and June - presents a selection of films made in New York from the mid-50s to the mid-60s, all emerging from the city’s burgeoning bohemia. At a time when Hollywood films set in New York were still shot on Californian backlots, here are films shot on location, which capture urban life in its raw, unrefined state. Allied to this, there is a sense of spontaneity and immediacy that is new, and a first-person, experiential, shooting style which allows us to inhabit the filmmaker’s way of seeing.

The season opens with John Cassevates’ Shadows (US 1959) a stunningly innovative film that was a harbinger of the coming New American Cinema and charts the existential crises of three African-American siblings in Manhattan in the late 1950s.


Also screening this month is Brakhage: An Adventure of Perception, a series of three shorts (made between 1958- 59) that show how this filmmaker broke with traditional convention that a film should record and tell a story; and instead documented everyday events from his daily life and pioneered a direct, first person experiential shooting style, achieving a new level of intimacy in cinema.

Event Cinema

Oscar Wilde Encore: An Ideal Husband (U)
Afternoon Arts
Thu 9 May 2 pm, Cinema 2

Filmed live at the Vaudeville Theatre, this encore screening shows Wilde’s tale of an upper-class party gone drastically and hilariously wrong is as relevant today as it was in the 1890s.

Dialogues des Carmélites #
Met Opera Live in HD
Sat 11 May 5pm, Cinema 1

As the French Revolution begins, shy Blanche (Isabel Leonard) becomes a novice nun under an elderly (Karita Mattila), in Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s production of Poulenc’s masterpiece.

All My Sons (12A)
NT Live
Tue 14 May 7pm, Cinema 1

Broadcast live from The Old Vic in London, Academy Award-winner Sally Field (Steel Magnolias) and Bill Pullman (The Sinner, Independence Day) star in Arthur Miller’s blistering drama.

Within the Golden Hour / World Premiere / Flight Pattern (12A)
Royal Opera House Live
Thu 16 May 7.15pm, Cinema 2

The contemporary face of The Royal Ballet is shown in works from three of today’s leading choreographers: Christopher Wheeldon, Crystal Pite and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.

Exhibition on Screen: Renoir – Revered and Reviled (U)
Afternoon Arts
Thu 23 May 2 pm, Cinema 2

This is a fresh biography of the artistic giant that uncovers the rarely told story of his later years, placing Renoir as a critical link between the old and the new.

New Releases: 

Vox Lux #
US 2018, Dir Brady Corbet, 114 min
From Fri 3 May

Natalie Portman is Celeste, a child pop star created out of the trauma of surviving a school shooting. Eighteen years later, she’s on a comeback tour trying to fight her demons.

Tolkien #
US 2019, Dir Dome Karukoski, 145 min
From Fri 3 May

Tolkien explores the formative years of the orphaned author (Nicholas Hoult) as he finds friendship, love and artistic inspiration among a group of fellow outcasts at school.

Woman at War #
Iceland/ France/ Ukraine, Dir Benedikt Erlingsson, 101 min
From Fri 3 May

Halla is a 50-year-old environmental activist who crusades against the local aluminium industry in Iceland. As her actions grow bolder, her life changes when she’s granted permission to adopt a girl from the Ukraine.

High Life #
UK/ US/ France/ Germany/ Poland, Dir Claire Denis, 110 min
From Fri 10 May

Claire Denis turns to sci fi with this spectacular drama following a father (Robert Pattinson) and his daughter’s struggle to survive in deep space where they live in isolation.

FAMILIES 
Barbican Family Film Club 
Every Saturday 11am, Cinema 2

The May screenings for families will feature films with some of the greatest music across the ages, including a free monthly workshop and a regular show and tell introduction. And look out for a very special free live event on Sat 18th May as part of Sound Unbound in Cinema 1.  For more information please go to:
www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/series/family-film-club

Parent and Baby Screenings 
Specially tailored screenings of the best new films every Monday and Saturday mornings for parents and carers with babies of twelve months and under
For more information please go to: www.barbican.org.uk/parentandbaby.