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The Golden Boat (15*)

Part of: The Grime and the Glamour season

,Barbican Cinema 3
A still from the Golden Boat

An experimental look at the scene from filmmaker Raul Ruiz; a mix up of genres from telenovelas to police procedurals, taking us on one last, strange trip downtown in New York City.

Chilean-French filmmaker Raul Ruiz (Time Regained) was teaching at Harvard when he completed this absurdist, film noir/Mexican telenovela mash-up, set on the streets of a still-seedy, early 1990s downtown Manhattan. 

Seemingly the whole of indie New York was involved: various future super-producers, including Christine Vachon (Carol), and luminaries from the downtown theatre and art worlds, including actors from the Wooster Group and Squat Theater, film directors Jim Jarmusch and Barbet Schroeder, artist Vito Acconci, writer Kathy Aker, and performance artist Annie Sprinkle. The soundtrack is courtesy of avant-gardist John Zorn.

An unlikely jumble of sight gags, gangster movie clichés, and Waiting for Godot-style existential ponderings, it’s an oddity for sure. But it's talked about as capturing the last gasp of the downtown scene, before its decline. 


 

Tagged with: Cinema The Grime and the Glamour

US 1990 Dir Raul Ruiz 83 min, Digital presentation

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