On Friday March 27 BAFTA will host a tribute evening to Nic Roeg under the banner 'The Magician With A Movie Camera.' And I will have the privilege and fun of being emcee for the night. Here as a refresher is the piece I wrote on the maestro last year for Film In Focus. And the BAFTA site trailers the event with the following text (in which you may note the prominent and valued endorsement of Danny Boyle, a director currently enjoying the best of times):"Visionary director Nicolas Roeg has created some classics of modern cinema as well as inspiring several generations of world-class filmmakers by virtue of his poetic eye and iconoclastic approach to storytelling. Danny Boyle considers Roeg to be as important as David Lean in the history of British cinema, and it's impossible to keep track of the number of contemporary filmmakers who cite Don't Look Now as among their key influences. With Performance, Bad Timing, The Man Who Fell To Earth and Walkabout, Roeg cemented his place in the modernist canon - but his influence owes as much to his uncompromising approach as to the detail of his personal creative vision. Join us for this evening where some extraordinarily special filmmakers pay tribute to a cinematic hero."
Hero, indeed. Join us, indeed. (The photo of Roeg above is by Dave Sidaway for the Montreal Gazette.)
2 comments:
Thanks for that, very interesting. I think Roeg is one of the most influential film makers ever, sans caveats. I recall attending a screening of Eureka with Roeg in attendance at Lancaster Duke's Film Theatre. He'd had a spat with the distribution company I recall, and I think (though am probably wrong)he had to buy back (?) a print and could only allow it to be screened if he was in attendance. Is that correct? Did Eureka ever get a cinema release?
(NUFC looking shaky, but when were they never these last three seasons? Mind you, the formidable Barça lost to Atletico Madrid 4-3 last night - excellent match) From former Durham resident now in Barcelona. All the best.
Thanks for posting, Haarlson. You get around, don't you? Durham to Barca... (One of my best mates is a Barca fan despite hailing from the Burra...)
Per your comments, the Roeg evening will likely be one you'd enjoy, since the format is that distinguished directorial colleagues will be saluting his influence from the stage.
Eureka is one of his favourites, I think, and one of mine too. The print story is probably as you remember. The movie was financed and distributed by MGM during a dire period for that studio's management, briefly released in UK cinemas in early 1983, and dumped in a few drive-ins in the US the year after. Not a happy story, but then most of Roeg's films have struggled a bit to be born...
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