Container #28 The Sweet East screening
...as well as interesting experimental screenings at GoMA, and vale Terence Davies.
Hello. Thank you once again for joining us.
Next Tuesday’s Screening:
The Sweet East, Sean Price Williams, 2023, 104m
A picaresque journey through contemporary America, undertaken by a young woman granted access to the strange sects and cults that proliferate in this country by a series of gatekeepers eager to win her over.
Everything will happen. Lillian (Talia Ryder) is an obscure object of desire whose appearance inflames the (largely rightwing) men she meets in an accidental road trip across the US. An entry point to and a trigger for chaos. The debut feature from America’s key underground cinematographer Sean Price Williams (the go-to cinematographer for the Safdie Brothers, Alex Ross Perry and Jessica Oreck amongst others), The Sweet East is a densely textured and surreal state of the nation address.
Unrated 15+ and with thanks to Static Vision | Facebook Event RSVP
Additional Reading (for those who have the time and curiosity):
Our favourite two pieces on The Sweet East are interviews with its director Sean Price Williams in Cinema Scope here and with Williams and its scriptwriter (and critic) Nick Pinkerton in Filmmaker here.
Upcoming Screenings:
10 October: Sean Price William’s The Sweet East
24 October: Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius (above) & Pictures of Ghosts
7 November: Kelly Reichhardt’s Showing Up
21 November: Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Bacurau
5 December: Michael Mann’s Black Hat
12 December: Greg Mottola’s Confess, Fletch
Vale Terence Davies, one of the great English filmmakers whose stylised camerawork blurred memory and working class ritual. He passed away suddenly after a short illness—his recent interviews focused on upcoming projects, and only a few weeks ago he debuted a new short film (above) as part of Film Fest Gent’s celebration of music and film.* Michael Koresky, the author of the book Terence Davies, has written a touching obituary here.
*More information, as well as other commissioned shorts by Helena Wittmann, Laura Citarella, Bi Gan, amongst others, can be found here.
Some upcoming screenings at the Australian Cinematheque:
The most recently announced screenings at GoMA include their richest selection of experimental films in a long time: a convergence of their Colour Box series and its exploration of geometric forms, their showcase of Mati Diop’s more recent shorts as part of their profile on Mati Diop and her uncle Djibril Diop Mambéty, and—we think the most special selection—The Films of Ute Aurand, Robert Beavers and Gregory J Markopoulos with Aurand and Beavers in person to present their films (above.)
Thank you. We look forward to catching you on Tuesday for our screening of Sean Price William’s The Sweet East, a chaotic dirtbag picaresque appropriate for the contempoary US. Then a fortnight later we screen two of Kleber Mendonça Filho’s films—the great Aquarius and his Cannes 2023 documentary Pictures of Ghosts (pictured above.)