July 1, 2010, 9:31 AM
Nocturnalist | At a ’60s Flick, Mod Reigns
By SARAH MASLIN NIR
Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times
It was a mod night when Future Cinema, an English company that screens films, celebrated its New York opening at the Shangri-La Studio on Sutton Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Up a candlelight-flickered staircase, through a darkroom cobwebbed with clotheslines bearing ruby-lit pictures, past a writer’s desk strewn with photographic proofs, guests at a film screening in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, stepped into the past on Wednesday night: a Swinging ’60s photo studio where a Britpop band rocked out while a gaggle of actors with Twiggyesque doe eyes struck poses in the center of the room, vying for their moment in front of a photographer’s lens.
It was the New York opening of Future Cinema, an English company that screens films, and it was held at at the Shangri-La Studio on Sutton Street. The film was “Blow-Up,” the 1966 film by Michelangelo Antonioni, set in London and starring an Austin Powers prototype — an ennui-ridden fashion photographer named Thomas (David Hemmings).
The intent was for guests to feel as if they were models at a casting. As the line to enter stretched down the sidewalk before doors opened at 8 p.m., guests said, a vintage British car pulled up, spilling forth a live-action “Thomas” followed by a cluster of screaming girls, who would later become the mod models in the photo-shoot-turned-party. [Read more...]
