Red Desert (1964)

Thursday, October 12, 2017 @ 7:00 PM
The Plaza Theatre - 1133 Kensington Road NW, Calgary, AB
$12 General | $10 Members/Seniors/Students | $40 5-Pack Punch Pass | $99 Season Pass

RED DESERT | Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni | 1964 | 117 min
Presented in Italian with English subtitles

Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960's panoramas of contemporary alienation were decade-defining artistic events, and Red Desert, his first colour film, is perhaps his most epochal. This provocative look at the spiritual desolation of the technological age—about a disaffected woman, brilliantly portrayed by Antonioni muse Monica Vitti, wandering through a bleak industrial landscape beset by power plants and environmental toxins, and tentatively flirting with her husband’s coworker, played by Richard Harris—continues to keep viewers spellbound. With one startling, painterly composition after another—of abandoned fishing cottages, electrical towers, looming docked ships—Red Desert creates a nearly apocalyptic image of its time, and confirms Antonioni as cinema’s preeminent poet of the modern age. – the Criterion Collection

Awards
1964 VENICE FILM FESTIVAL - WINNER (FIPRESCI Prize | Michelangelo Antonioni, Golden Lion | Michelangelo Antonioni, New Cinema Award, Best Film | Michelangelo Antonioni)
1965 NEW YORK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS - 2ND PLACE (NYFCC Award, Best Foreign Language Film | Italy)
1965 GOLDEN GOBLETS, ITALY - WINNER (Golden Cup | Angelo Rizzoli , Golden Goblet | Best Actress, Monica Vitti)
1965 ITALIAN NATIONAL SYNDICATE OF FILM JOURNALISTS - WINNER (Silver Ribbon, Best Cinematography, Color | Carlo Di Palma), NOMINATED (Silver Ribbon, Best Director | Michelangelo Antonioni, Best Score | Giovanni Fusco)
1967 KANSAS CITY FILM CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS - WINNER (KCFCC Award | Best Foreign Film)

Red Desert is the first work in our FOCUS: LANDSCAPES series.

FOCUS: LANDSCAPES

More than a mere setting , a landscape and the representation of it undergoes differing treatments in cinema. At the intersection of topography and narrative, there are films that evoke, and exercise a landscape’s capacity as a kinetic and tactile character. 

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