Look Now: The Universe According to Nicolas Roeg

When the Swinging Sixties faded away and the Hollywood money dried up, the postwar generation of British directors fled to America, leaving their native cinema to sink into the doldrums. Enter ace cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, DP on a dozen high-profile movies such as Petulia and Far From the Madding Crowd (included in this series) who made his move and crossed over into directing, rapidly establishing himself as one of the key UK directors of the Seventies. What followed were a string of singular, dazzling, and intricately-structured puzzle films that applied dynamic and often hallucinatory visuals and ingeniously fragmented editing to the exploration of grown-up subject matter. In Roeg’s films, sexuality is foregrounded in a series of fraught, troubled relationships that are often tested to breaking point and beyond, while his steady, overarching concern remains the disorderly flux of the human psyche—and the universe.

Past Screenings