Thursday 17 April 2008

The genius of Nicolas Roeg, live in North London this Sunday

This Sunday 20 April 2008 the Phoenix in North Finchley offers a Nicolas Roeg double bill - The Man Who Fell to Earth (1975) and Bad Timing (1980) after which Nic Roeg himself will take the stage for a Q&A with the audience, a session that I will have the pleasure of 'chairing'. I'll be writing about this at greater length after the weekend, but I should just quickly take this space to say some obvious things, i.e. 1) that Roeg is as brilliant a filmmaker as Britain has ever produced, the golden era of his work (roughly the 20 years from 1966-1985) being comparable to the best of anybody else's ever, 2) that a lot of us out there feel this way, and 3) that I will never forget the first time I 'met' Roeg (i.e. got his autograph) after a screening of Insignificance and Q&A at the Queen's Film Theatre, Belfast, in November 1985. Theresa Russell was at his side that night, and I couldn't have been more in awe if the proverbial Martian had fallen to earth and sat itself beside me in the front row. (The photo of Roeg herewith is by fikirbaz (Ozgur Poyrazoglu) from the Flickr site, and was taken at the Antalya 44th Golden Orange Film Festival & 3rd Eurasia Film Festival.)

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