Part of Music city Mondays
Pivoting from the U.K. mods of BLOW-UP, Michelangelo Antonioni set his sights on the youth revolt of late ‘60s America in ZABRISKIE POINT — a widescreen psychedelic vision of anarchy vs. capitalist excess via young love on the run to the depths of the California desert. Original music is credited to Jerry Garcia and Pink Floyd, with a soundtrack filled out by the likes of John Fahey, Roscoe Holcomb and more Pink Floyd (See also: SQUARING THE CIRCLE: THE STORY OF HIPGNOSIS, screening Mon, Jul 26).
Blow Up Your TV: Antonioni’s ZABRISKIE POINT Two Shows Only at Belcourt —Jim Ridley, Nashville Scene (Aug 9, 2013) “It was a midwife to the desert reveries of David Lynch, and provided an acid flashback to Hitchcock’s NORTH BY NORTHWEST…. ZABRISKIE POINT created its own docu-surrealism by casting non-professional unknowns and meshing real campus-unrest footage with experimental waywardness. It is superior, in my heretical view, to his 1966 film BLOW-UP.” —Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian “The film that virtually destroyed his American reputation, offers ample proof of both the Italian director’s brilliance and his neglect of filmmaking particulars that Americans seemingly will not stand for…. But if one keeps in mind that Antonioni thinks through his camera more than through his scripts — and that realism is far from his intention — one can see this film as an astonishingly beautiful achievement. —Jonathan Rosenbaum (1984)
