The next Central Saint Martins Film Society screening will be Citizen Kane (1941) on Monday, 13 May in the LVMH 003 Lecture Theatre.
The supporting programme will begin at 6pm; the film will begin at 7.15pm.
Citizen Kane will be screened on Blu-ray. The evening will be presented by guest programmer Tony Centurion. There’ll also be five pairs of free tickets to be won for any film at BFI Southbank along with copies of this month’s Sight & Sound magazine!
The Central Saint Martins Film Society is open to all students and staff across UAL’s six colleges, bring anyone with a UAL pass. It’s free and booking is not required. You can come for the feature film, or the supporting programme, or both.
About Citizen Kane
Continually hailed by film-makers and critics alike as the greatest film ever made, the acclaim heaped upon Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane for decades is even more remarkable considering it was co-written, produced, directed and starred a 25 year old making his feature film debut (‘The first day I ever walked onto a film set was to direct Citizen Kane’). Incredibly, Welles was given a then-unprecedented, and highly controversial, ‘final cut’ clause in his contract.
The film is a biopic of newspaper magnet, Charles Foster Kane, told in flashback from his moment of death when he utters the enigmatic word, ‘Rosebud’. It is through the pursuit of the meaning of ‘Rosebud’ that we discover how Kane transformed from liberal idealist to ruthless businessman. Although a work of fiction, the film is partly based on newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst who, outraged, famously banned advertising, reviews and editorial on the film in all his newspapers across America and ran anti-Kane stories which resulted in many cinemas choosing not to book the film.
Citizen Kane was acclaimed in 1941 by The New York Times as ‘coming close to being the most sensational film ever made in Hollywood’. It is one of the first films to eschew the conventional ‘linear’ narrative (telling a story in chronological order) in favour of a fractured narrative – something very familiar to modern-day cinemagoers – and is told from several points of view, many of them unreliable narrators. Its frequent use of low angle shots, ceilinged sets, overlapping dialogue, film noir lighting, editing of montage sequences and deep focus cinematography is still astounding and arguably unsurpassed to this today. Even the trailer was audacious, featuring no images of Charles Foster Kane or for that matter no clips from the film at all (see link below).
Citizen Kane has had more books and documentaries about its making and influence than probably any other film. It has been acknowledged as a major influence by scores of filmmakers, from those currently active such as Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, Sam Mendes, Paul Greengrass and Richard Linklater back to Milos Forman, Stanley Kubrick, Sydney Pollack, John Frankenheimer and Sergio Leone.
‘I made Citizen Kane through ignorance, ignorance, ignorance,’ said Orson Welles, ‘there’s no confidence to equal ignorance.’
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dxh3lwdOFw
Plus! A headline grabbing supporting programme!
- Orson Welles’ early career, from the Mercury Theatre to RKO
- William Randolph Hearst, the real-life model for Charles Foster Kane
- Orson Welles’ concern for social justice
- The cinematic techniques and themes of Orson Welles
- Orson Welles: indie film-maker in a pre-indie age
- F for Fake and the final years of Orson Welles
- Orson Welles: bigger than Hollywood?
- The War of the Worlds: the notorious radio broadcast that panicked America
BFI Southbank
If you’ve never been to the BFI Southbank, check it out. It shows dozens of films every week – classics, cults, rarities, underground, experimental – and it’s only £3 for anyone 25 or under. That’s just the price of a coffee for two hours of cinema!
Screening Details
Date: Monday, 13 May
Venue: LVMH 003 Lecture Theatre
5.45pm: Doors Open
6pm: Supporting Programme
7.15pm: Citizen Kane
9.15pm: Finish
About The Central Saint Martins Film Society
The Central Saint Martins Film Society exists to develop an interest in, or encourage further knowledge of, cinema amongst students and staff. We show feature films – old and new, everything from animation to horror and each with a one hour supporting programme – relevant to Central Saint Martins and University of the Arts London courses and which are commonly referenced by collaborators throughout a creative career.