Watch That Man: David Bowie, Movie Star
Tickets
With a new album and a sold-out museum exhibition in London (sure to travel), one of the ultimate icons of rock is back—call 2013 the Year of David Bowie. In honor of the singer-songwriter’s genius for shapeshifting, we present a retrospective of his finest work on the big screen—plus special rarities from the BBC archives. Series programmed by Gavin Smith.
Absolute Beginners
A cameo-packed kaleidoscopic musical pastiche in which a teenage photographer pursues his elusive dream girl through the bohemian scene of late 1950s London, with Bowie as the smooth-talking advertising exec who offers to get him into the big time.
Baal
In this BBC-TV adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s first play, Bowie is debauched artist-poet Baal, who defies bourgeois society and roams the countryside womanizing, brawling and, finally, committing murder.
Basquiat
Bowie costars in this biopic about painter Jean-Michel Basquiat (Jeffrey Wright), playing the artist’s friend and collaborator Andy Warhol in a performance widely hailed as the definitive onscreen incarnation of Warhol.
Christiane F
Special Event: afterparty with DJ at August 6 screening! A co-presentation with Viva Radio and New Wave.
A rare screening of the harrowing true story of a 13-year-old Berlin girl’s heroin-addicted hell, featuring a soundtrack of songs from Bowie’s 1977-79 Berlin phase—plus, when Christiane (Natja Brunckhorst) attends a Bowie concert, a stunning live performance of “Station to Station.”
Cracked Actor
Screening as a free bonus with David Bowie: The Music Videos 1979 - 2013 and Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars!
A candid, haunting and ultra-rare documentary portrait shot during the 1974 Diamond Dogs tour featuring much behind the scenes footage that reveal Bowie’s fragile mental state as well as live performances of nine songs.
David Bowie: The Music Videos 1979 – 2013
Nine David Bowie music videos screen with Alan Yentob’s Cracked Actor (1975), a candid, haunting and ultra-rare documentary portrait shot during the 1974 Diamond Dogs tour.
Five Years + Reality
Free screening! Reality director Steven Lippman in person for Q&A!
A treasure trove of rare and unseen footage, this close-up look at Bowie is a crash course for the ravers with material culled from archives all over the world. Presented by BBC Worldwide / Showtime. Screening with Reality (Steven Lippman, 2003, 28m).
The Hunger
In this outrageously sleek cult classic, Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie are Miriam and John, vampire lovers who spend their nights stalking New York’s club scene in search of fresh blood. With its famously bold visual aesthetic, the film is an ultra-stylish archetype of the high-gloss, high-concept storytelling that dominated early 1980s Hollywood.
Just a Gigolo
Producer and co-writer Joshua Sinclair in person for Q&A at August 7 screening!
An ironic picaresque set amidst the decadent demimonde and political ferment of Weimar Germany, the film details the misfortunes of a Prussian officer (Bowie) reduced to working as a paid escort to make ends meet.
Labyrinth
Family Film! Special ticket price: $6 for everyone!
In Jim Henson’s live-action and puppet fairy tale fantasy, Bowie’s Jareth, the villainous Goblin King, tempts and torments Jennifer Connelly, who must negotiate an otherworldly labyrinth to rescue her baby brother.
The Man Who Fell to Earth
Nicolas Roeg’s loose interpretation of Walter Tevis’s novel is a puzzlingly beautiful, mixed-genre hallucination unlike any other science-fiction film. Bowie—willowy, aloof, and elegant as ever—made his unforgettable screen debut as the extraterrestrial humanoid who builds a billion-dollar corporate empire to save his dying home world.
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
Bowie plays a guilt-ridden but duty-bound British POW imprisoned in a Japanese prison camp on Java, where an unspoken fatal attraction develops with the camp commander Captain Yonoi. Profound, ferocious, and heartbreaking, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence is one of Oshima’s greatest successes and a testament to Bowie’s uncanny magnetism on screen.
The Prestige
Nolan insisted that only Bowie could play the pivotal part of legendary real-life inventor Nicola Tesla in this fantasy thriller about two rival 19th-century magicians (Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale) who compete over an astounding magic trick made possible by the scientist’s invention.