Curzon Cinemas, Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, screens in cinemas nationwide from June 6 and will be followed later in the year by the most comprehensive Blu-ray box set of the filmmaker’s work to date.
“Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth.” – Michael Haneke.
Michael Haneke occupies a unique position among arthouse filmmakers, combining mainstream cinema approaches with counter-cinema techniques. Throughout his illustrious, decades-spanning career, the director has consistently delivered films aimed at provoking his audience with questions of bourgeois complacency, alienation, repression and disconnect.
Having developed a style that articulately fuses social critique with a cinema of transcendent beauty in its precision, purpose and humanity, Haneke’s films consciously engage the spectator in thinking about morality without imposing a universal moral value system, a process that deliberately thwarts the easy pleasures and welcomed distractions of mainstream film and TV.
A two-time winner of the prestigious Palme d’Or, Haneke has also had a string of breakout hits, including Hidden in 2005, The White Ribbon in 2009, and Amour in 2012.
Predicting compassion fatigue and numbing contemporary news cycles with eerie prescience, Haneke stares where others fear to glance. In his world, we are all complicit. Holding us accountable, albeit with empathy and often dark humour, these films challenge us to see through societal malaise and interrogate our place in the world. If you hold their gaze long enough, you might see that place more clearly.
Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective brings his films back to the big screen, allowing audiences to explore the auteur’s work, filmmaking techniques and his lasting legacy on the filmmakers of today.
Later in the year, Curzon will also release the most comprehensive Blu-ray box set of the filmmaker’s work to date, featuring Three Paths to the Lake (TV movie), Lemmings 1: Arcadia (TV movie), Lemmings 2: Injuries (TV movie), The Seventh Continent, Benny’s Video, The Rebellion (TV movie), 71 Fragments Of A Chronology Of Chance, Funny Games, The Castle (TV movie), Code Unknown, The Piano Teacher, Time of the Wolf, Hidden, Funny Games U.S., The White Ribbon, Amour and Happy End.
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