Close-Up on Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke has established himself as one of cinema’s most original, daring and controversial filmmakers. This season brings together 5 of his most acclaimed, groundbreaking and successful work, including the original version of Funny Games.
 |
Tuesday 29 September 8pm THE SEVENTH CONTINENT Directed by Michael Haneke 1989 | Austria | 104 mins | Colour |
| Addressing themes that would inform much of his later work - the breakdown of society, violence and the media - Haneke’s first theatrical feature is a disturbing portrait of familial disintegration which he describes as a depiction of his native Austria’s ‘progressive emotional glaciation’. Set over a three year period, it documents how the mundane day to day routines of a middle class family alienate them from the world and each other until, suddenly and shockingly, their lives self- destruct. |
| Venue: The Workingmen’s Club, 44-46 Pollard Row, London E2 6NB | Ticket: £5/FREE to Close-Up members |
 |
Tuesday 6 October 8pm BENNY’S VIDEO Directed by Michael Haneke 1992 | Austria/Switzerland | 115 mins | Colour |
| Michael Haneke’s disturbing film portrays the alienation of a young boy, whose experience of the world is refracted through the lens of his video camera and his television screen. Arno Frisch, later to play one of the psychopathic young men in Funny Games, plays the 14 year-old Benny, who brings a girl home to his parents’ empty apartment where he commits a shocking act of casual violence. As with his later Funny Games, Haneke poses provocative and challenging questions about voyeurism and violence - both actual and imagined. |
| Venue: The Workingmen’s Club, 44-46 Pollard Row, London E2 6NB | Ticket: £5/FREE to Close-Up members |
 |
Tuesday 13 October 8pm 71 FRAGMENTS OF A CHRONOLOGY OF CHANCE Directed by Michael Haneke 1994 | Austria | 95 mins | Colour |
| Haneke’s articulate critique of the isolating effects of western society, the media and television in particular, is composed of an intricate series of unrelated scenes, culminating in an apparently motiveless act of violence. Perfectly paced and executed, Haneke’s skilful weaving of these tableaux into a coherent and compelling whole is mesmerising and masterfully composed. |
| Venue: The Workingmen’s Club, 44-46 Pollard Row, London E2 6NB | Ticket: £5/FREE to Close-Up members |
 |
Tuesday 20 OCtober 8pm FUNNY GAMES Directed by Michael Haneke 1997 | Austria | 104 mins | Colour |
| The unforgettable original version of acclaimed filmmaker Michael Haneke’s classic exploration of screen violence is an uncompromising, sometimes uncomfortable but never less than compelling experience. Arriving at their remote lakeside holiday home, a middle class family is alarmed by the unexpected arrival of two young men who soon begin to subject them to a twisted and horrifying ordeal of terror. With characteristic mastery, Haneke turns the conventions of the thriller genre upside down and directly challenges the expectations of his audience, forcing viewers to question the complacency with which they receive images of casual violence in contemporary cinema. |
| Venue: The Workingmen’s Club, 44-46 Pollard Row, London E2 6NB | Ticket: £5/FREE to Close-Up members |
 |
Tuesday 3 November 8pm THE PIANO TEACHER Directed by Michael Haneke 2001 | France/Austria | 129 mins | Colour |
| Isabelle Huppert gives a performance of astounding emotional intensity as Erika Kohut, a repressed woman in her late thirties who teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory and lives with her tyrannical mother, with whom she has a volatile love-hate relationship. But when one of Erika’s students, the handsome and assured Walter Klemmer, attempts to seduce her, the barriers that she has carefully erected around her claustrophobic world are shattered, unleashing a previously inhibited extreme and uncontrollable desire. |
| Venue: The Workingmen’s Club, 44-46 Pollard Row, London E2 6NB | Ticket: £5/FREE to Close-Up members |
