After a career of nearly 60 years, renowned photographer and filmmaker William Klein is to visit Dublin to present his most famous film Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, as part of a season of his works running between the 14th and 20th February and presented as a collaboration between Irish Film Institute & the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, with screenings also taking place at Light House Cinema.
A fashion photographer and street documentarian based in New York, Klein remains one of the most influential of 20th Century photographers. He began to create films in the 1960s through his association with the likes of Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, and in the decades since has made many films, documentaries and commercials. Audacious, satirical, anarchic and controversial, Klein’s subjects cover areas as diverse as Algerian folklore, Eldridge Cleaver, Muhammad Ali, Little Richard, Hollywood, the French Open and the Parisian fashion scene.
Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, Klein’s first feature, is a stunning black-and-white art house parody positioned somewhere between the mockumentary and the moralistic fairytale. With Parisian high fashion and haute couture in the satirical crosshairs, the film pre-visualises contemporary society’s obsession with the transitory nature of media and celebrity. Klein will take part in a post screening Q+A with James Armstrong, Lecturer in Visual Culture at NCAD.
Messiah is Klein’s impressionistic visualisation of Handel’s Messiah, as performed by numerous international choirs including the Dallas Police Choir, a drug rehab choir in Harlem, and the Lavender Light Gay and Lesbian Interracial Choir. The takes the viewer and listener all over the world and includes female boxers at the Taj Mahal Las Vegas, a Paris Christmas party for the homeless, wealthy arts patrons at Houston’s annual Hair Ball and a Danish woman having her belly covered in religious tattoos.
In the televisual hyper-reality of The Model Couple, the French Ministry of the Future chooses a couple to inhabit a prototype living space. The constant televisual broadcast, the pschyo-sociologial experiment will determine what is needed for the French citizen of the future. But as the audience lose interest, the experiment descends into farce and anarchy.
A giant of 20th Century visual culture, this is a wonderful opportunity to see Klein’s film work in the cinema and to hear him discuss and reflect on his film works.
William Klein screenings at the IFI
15.30 14th Feb Messiah
18.30 17th Feb The Model Couple
18.00 20th Feb Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?
William Klein screenings at the Lighthouse
16.00 18th Feb Mr Freedom
18.00 18th Feb Mode in France
16.00 19th Feb Muhammed Ali, The Greatest
Tickets cost €11 for evening screenings and €7 for matinees. Tickets and information for IFI screenings are available from the IFI Box Office on 01 679 3477/www.ifi.ie, and the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival box-office on 01 687 7974/ www.jdiff.com.