Lecture and screening of The Fall, considered by Whitehead to be his most important film.
“A Romantic identifies with injustice.” – Peter Whitehead
Introduced by Paul Clarke, University of Bristol
Considered by Whitehead to be his most important film, The Fall is an extraordinary piece of filmmaking, an extremely personal statement on violence, revolution and the turbulence of New York between October 1967 and June 1968. The attempt to come to grips with the collapse of an era, via the images he has shot, brings Whitehead to his own emotional collapse.
“In The Fall, a fashionable filmmaker on a trip to New York looks for meaning in life, while dramatic events occur around him (the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King). He explores a love affair with a model, enters artistic and counter-cultural circles, while frenetically researching the montage forms offered by cinema and video – ceasessly returning to his electronic self-portrait, which he relentlessly distorts and tortures … But in the end he becomes a participant in a concrete struggle, the occupation of Columbia University by students protesting the Vietnam War and the collaboration of their Uinversity with the CIA, alongside Mark Rudd, Bernardine Dohrn, Tom Hayden and the Black Panthers, there to support the strike.
Director: Peter Whitehead
Country: UK
Year: 1969
Durations: 120mins
(Free for UWE / University of Bristol staff/students with ID – Free tickets are available on the day)
Lecture 6.30pm / Screening 7pm
