Blow-Up
Od–jazd Film Club meeting
Blow-Up, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, UK/USA /Italy 1966, 111'
Can a film not grow old with time, but become even more relevant instead? Living in a time of ubiquitous relativism and so-called post-truth, let’s see how Michelangelo Antonioni, in a film made over sixty years ago, predicts the direction we are heading towards. The accuracy of his forecast is both impressive and horrifying.
A young photographer is pursuing a career in the fashion industry. One day, he accidentally takes pictures of two lovers meeting, to which the photographed woman objects. As it turns out, however, the images have captured something that was supposed to remain a secret…
Decadent London and the times of the sexual revolution of the 1960s became the setting for the first film made by the Italian master outside his homeland. The film was a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or. Blow-Up became not only a faithful record of the spirit of the time, full of revolutionary formal and genre experiments, but also a universal self-reflection and an inexhaustible source of philosophical and ethical analyses, considerations and interpretations.
How does Antonioni play with the rules of genre cinema?
How is Blow-Up self-thematic?
How do we perceive the message of the film today?
We will try to answer these and many other questions together with our club’s expert, Diana Dąbrowska. We invite you to the screening and discussion, during which you will be able to ask questions and share your ideas on how to interpret the film. What do you think Blow-Up is about? We want to hear your opinion!
Diana Dąbrowska
Film scholar born in the south of Italy, film critic, educator, organiser of film events and reviews, artistic director of the Hommage à Kieślowski Film Festival in Sokołowsko (from 2019). She publishes, among others, on Filmweb portal, in ZNAK, Ekrany and KINO magazines. She runs the project “Accademia of Italian Cinema” which consists of educational online meetings and podcasts, where she looks at more or less known works of great cinema from the Italian Peninsula. Co-editor of the academic publication (together with Anna Miller-Klejsa, PhD) Kino włoskie po 1980 [Italian cinema after 1980] (University of Łódź, 2018). Author of the podcast Kieślowski 2.0 – Nauka o filmie poprzez twórczość Krzysztofa Kieślowskiego [Kieślowski 2.0 – Learning about film through the work of Krzysztof Kieślowski], featuring Agnieszka Holland, Janusz Zaorski, Michał Oleszczyk and Mikołaj Jazdon, among others. Winner of the second place in the prestigious Krzysztof Mętrak Competition for film critics (2020), the audience award in the National Competition of Film Speakers organised by the Polish Federation of Film Societies (2020) and the Leopold Staff Award for promoting Italian culture in Poland, with focus on cinema (2018). In 2022, she received the prize of the Polish Film Institute in the Film Criticism category. Her greatest treasure is Kędziorek, a cuddly canine friend, who is a known pup film expert and a regular at many film festivals.
