London Calling in Paris
Until the 29th of February, the film series ‘London Calling’ is being presented at the Forum des Images in Paris. The name of the series has been taken from a song from the third album of the British band The Clash to represent the charm that this city has for filmmakers.
The series is organized around films produced in London and they reflect the importance that the city has had in films throughout time, both for its cosmopolitan character as well as its landscape and the singular identity that the mist gives it, a natural element that made it famous in some thriller films.
We have to acknowledge tat London has inspired great creators, artists, novelists and that William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens paid a tribute to it in their works. It has also been recreated in children’s films such as Mary Poppins and many others that are part of world film.
In the series they have chosen different styles of narratives. In ‘Everyday London’ they show realistic stories that take place in everyday London, set in a popular area where life goes on with the classic problems from this type of areas, such as unemployment and precarious work.
The film is close to being a documentary, despite that the traces of subjectivity of the plot remind us that it’s not. The stories explore the wishes of emancipation of a population deep into marginalization due to its origins or sex.
Wonderland is one of the films in this series that plays with a delicate aesthetic, where his director Michael Winterbottom does a great job to show the bucolic image of the city with its cobbled streets with music by Michael Nyman. This film is screened until the 19th of February.
‘Apocalyptic London’ is a series of films that will be screened between the 21st and 29th of February 2012. Among them there are fiction and reality films that are set in a destroyed city. There’s a documentary on how the city and its citizens survived the Second World War Blitz, where the resistance to total destruction is in each action of the city’s population.
For Londoners, apocalyptic or total destruction fiction has been an obsession since the vulnerability that they went through during the Second World War and the persisting threat over them during other world conflicts. We have to remember that during the Cold War, the recommendations on how to survive a nuclear conflict in London became famous. Hence, this film series is an interesting way to understand the psychology of Londoners facing any natural or human catastrophe.
In this apocalyptic angst, many films have shaped filmography, such as the futuristic ‘Clockwork Orange’, where Stanley Kubrick plays with devastation through arbitrary and generalized violence.
For more information: http://www.forumdesimages.fr/fdi/Cycles/London-Calling
Nancy Guzman
It’s always a good time to rent apartments in Paris so make some plans and prepare your luggage for a deserved break.
