Hail the new puritan

9 SEPT | 20:30 - 22:00

Cinema Elvire Popesco

Bd Dacia, nr. 77

Documentary, 85', 1987 (uk)
Director: Charles Atlas
Choreographer: Michael Clark

The film will be introduced by artist, writer and lecturer Claudia Kappenberg.

Exhuberant and witty, Hail the New Puritan is a simulated day-in-the-life "docufantasy" starring the British dance celebrity Michael Clark. Atlas' fictive portrait of the charismatic choreographer serves as a vivid invocation of the studied decadence of the 1980s post-punk London subculture. Contriving a faux cinema-verite format in which to stage his stylized fiction, Atlas seamlessly integrates Clark's extraordinary dance performances into the docu-narrative flow.

Focusing on Clark's flamboyantly postured eroticism and the artifice of his provocative balletic performances, Atlas posits the dance as a physical manifestation of Clark's psychology. From the surreal opening dream sequence to the final solo dance, Clark's milieu of fashion, clubs and music signifies for Atlas "a time capsule of a certain period and context in London that's now gone."