Orson Welles NFT season in London, UK - September/October

[Narshty]

I haven't seen anyone else post this as of yet, so forgive me if I'm needlessly duplicating information. A gigantic retrospective of his work, it'll contain all of his films (Chimes at Midnight is, as yet, unconfirmed, due to rights issues) and some astonishing rarities, including footage from The Other Side of the Wind, The Dreamers, Moby Dick, The Deep, a fair chunk of his television work and the complete Filming The Trial and Filming Othello documentaries.

Here's full details and listings. Go forth and peruse.

[AndersE]

Thanks Narshty,
you made my day!
Living in London, and being a frequent visitor to the nft I canät understand how I could have missed this! But I had no clue. I suppose that speaks volumes about the PR efforts of the nft.
I almost missed their huge Melville retrospective this summer for pretty much the same reason.
The nft do a lot of really good stuff, but are very carful not to tell anyone about it. :angry:

This one really looks fantastic!!!

Anders

[71-1045893605]

God forbid any U.S. foundation should financially back a similar event as the NFT. I've been to a few Welles retrospects since 1985 and they were all too brief with a lack of any good screenings or guests. Munich and London seem to know how to put on a good Welles retro. The U.S. should take notes.

GA

[Glenn Anders]

Narshy is certainly a fount. Perhaps, after the bemoaning we do here, we who live in other places should pitch in to charter a plane for London. Think of it, two months of Orson Welles' work, with some of the survivors from his time in attendance.

Also, it strikes me as an irony which Welles might have appreciated that there are these retrospectives in Munich and in London -- but not one in the United States, which produced him.

Glenn

[Lance Morrison]

America has had a hard time actually appreciating the greatness it produces....whereas it is crazy about the subpar...

[Jaime N. Christley]

I doubt all of England and all of Germany appreciates Welles as much as the Munich and London film centers, and conversely, these Welles films would not seem out of place at all in American film centers like Lincoln Center or the Museum of Modern Art. I think we might be cautious about lamenting the way "America" has treated Welles: in the past eighteen months, I've seen F FOR FAKE, THE STRANGER, TOUCH OF EVIL, and CONFIDENTIAL REPORT screened once or more in New York. His American films show up all the time on Turner Classic Movies. And in September, the Makor/Steinhardt Center will be screening a 35mm print of THE TRIAL several times.

I don't know if cinephilia in America is as widespread as it is in, say, Paris, or Tokyo, or wherever. But the packed houses I've witnessed for Nicholas Ray, Ernst Lubitsch, Robert Bresson, and Michelangelo Antonioni films seem to indicate that there's no special "problem" with appreciating a great artist "like Welles" in the US.

That said, I would be very surprised if I saw the rare/incomplete/suppressed Welles films shown to the public at a US film center. And we know the reasons for that. I'm thinking of how a video of FILMING 'OTHELLO' could be shown locally, just to spite Beatrice.

[Noel Shane]

Well said.

[Jaime N. Christley]

Hang on: I just heard from one of my Brit colleagues that the TV stuff is sold out already. Maybe you Limeys really do appreciate OW more than us Yanks!

[Jaime N. Christley]

Also Chimes = cancelled. Sorry British dudes. The Spanish DVD is really good, though.

[Noel Shane]

The National Film Theatre has received confirmation from the BBC that it is the UK's current distributor of Citizen Kane and received its authorisation for the forthcoming screenings as part of our Orson Welles retrospective (One of our classics is missing, G2, August 29). We are delighted to have resolved this problem.

We are also pleased that the rights issues surrounding another Welles classic, Chimes at Midnight, which has been unavailable to cinema audiences for many years, is nearing resolution through the courts.

Hopefully this film will be available again in the not too distant future.

Brian Robinson
NFT press officer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1033797,00.html

[- sorry for the multiple posts of this; seemed warranted]