Barbarella and Whitaker Malem chat at The Garden Cinema, Covent Garden - Friday 19 May
Rebel Reel Cine Club present AN ENTIRE CINEMA take over for an evening to celebrate
Barbarella
Dir. Roger Vadim 1968
1hr 38mins
Friday 19th May
DJ Martin Green from 7pm and after the film
The Garden Cinema, Covent Garden
Come with us into deep space and into the 41st Century … fire up the orgasmatron as Barbarella takes on the evil Durand Durand whose Positronic Ray threatens us all!
“See the mind-boggling super-chromatic Universe”
Director Roger Vadim’s iconic 1968 film introduces the liberated icon Barbarella played, with her tongue firmly in her cheek, by Jane Fonda wearing Paco Rabanne’s iconic costumes (The film’s other costumes were designed by Jacques Fonteray).
Before the film I’ll be in conversation with Whitaker Malem
You may not know their name straight away but inspired in part by Barbarella they have created an amazing body of work in film, art and fashion.
They have dressed British artist Allen Jones' hypersexualised, hyper-realistic sculptures for over 25 years now and have collaborated with fashion visionaries such as Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, Giles Deacon, Christian Louboutin and Tommy Hilfiger.
They are the craftsmen behind craftsmen behind Captain America's nylon horse blanket suit, Wonder Woman's armour, Christian Bale's Batsuit for The Dark Knight, Death Eaters' pointed, snake-etched leather hats, Bellatrix Lestrange's leather corsets, Brad Pitt's skirt in Troy and Madonna's fencing gilet in Die Another Day.
I’ll be talking to them about Paddy Whitaker’s start at St Martins, their work with designers from Alexander McQueen to Charles Jeffrey to their ongoing work with Allen Jones … as well as their love for cinema …
Figure 1. Kate Moss - Photo: Allen Jones.
Figure 2. Doja Cat - Photo: David Lachapelle - Styling: Brett Nelson.
Figure 3. Whitaker Malem – Photo: Frederic ArandaThe film - taken from Jean-Claude Forest’s comic - follows the adventures of Barbarella, as she travels across deep space encountering weird creatures, underground rebels, a tyrannical queen and feral children.
Thomas Haroldson called it “part dream, part fetish, part reality and part nonsense.
Read Hank Malone’s review in Fifth Estate magazine October 1968
See Barbarella. Run. Absolutely. See The Fonda fly and run through the husband Roger Vadim’s spiralling Grande Ballroom playpen of the 25th century. See the mind-boggling super-chromatic Universe. Listen to the haze-of-illusion music. Let the wax drip in your ears. Let Time slide out of you. Touch the Starfish. Listen to the thundering bubbles of the daybreak chambers. Hurl yourself into the images of images of images.
Except for her tight-little-trim-60-watt-bulb body, Jane Fonda makes little contribution to the film, very little. Surrounded by a gigantic and brilliant production staff (doing their Things) and a marvelously hokey screenplay by none other than Hollywood’s own Dr. Strange-love—Terry Southern, Jane is quickly swallowed up and forgotten.
With the exception of a few moments of Velvet Underground dressing/undressing scenery, Jane remains largely invisible as the giant Grandfather of a film lifts off the Earth and heads toward the star-lined corridors of timelessness.
This is a very Fun film, weird and cosmic but with none of the strangely fashionable seriousness of a silent empty wilderness in which one is supposed to figure out the ultimate Meaning of the Secret depths of Wisdom. etc. Barbarella is not a spiritual landing-barge. It is instead a seemingly unending cornucopia of deliciously glowing oil bubbles and furious roars, an authentic fairy tale.
Despite the ingenuity of its conception by Jean Claude Forest, there is much in this film that harbors visibly and highly respectable remnants of The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, Bulfinch’s Mythology, The Velvet Underground, The Perils of Pauline, Dr. No, Candy, and Buck Rogers.
It is a playful picture (though perhaps overly-hokey with Jane Fonda’s vacant ineptitude as Barbarella) in the most marvelous and rare sense of the word; a banquet of dreams, illusions, and blossoms.
See Barbarella. And do your own thing.