Forms in Revolution

Cinema, after its first youth and now needing a change of pace, takes up with music: an almost adolescent Garrel recording the Who; Peter Whitehead filming the public scrambling onto the stage with the Stones at the Royal Albert Hall. Cinema as an aesthetic revolution, the irruption of a new form, potential for change, in time with the music: after these 1960s rock precedents, the session presents Lech Kowalski’s mythical film about the controversial first Sex Pistols tour to the USA. Using a 16-mm camera, with a raw, fast and furious style and a vibrant editing process, Kowalski captures the intensity of the Sex Pistols live, along with other materials that made up the conservative post-hippy context in which they emerged; the film includes performances and the music of other bands such as The Clash and Dead Boys, the public’s reactions, often of rejection or disapproval, and an interview with Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen shortly before her death, following the group on the tour that ended with its split in California. [Video screening]

Les Who enregistrent, Philippe Garrel y Michel Taittinger, 1967, 5 min;

Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Peter Whitehead, 1966, 4 min;

D.O.A., Lech Kowalski, 1979, 90 min.