Want to see Mick Jagger in more eyeliner than that kid from Idol? You certainly have specific taste. But! You’re in luck, because Melbourne’s ACMI is presenting two such films in the month of May. Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil and UK gangster film, Performance (both starring Jagger and various Stones) were controversial at their time of release, asking audiences to reflexively explore politics, power and culture.
French New Wave auteur Godard made Sympathy for the Devil after the 1968 student riots in Paris. He filmed the Rolling Stones as they recorded the film’s title track against a backdrop of youth rebellion.
In Performance, Jagger plays a… well, rock star. Directors Cammell and Roeg employed the full arsenal of dislocating tropes drawn from experimental and underground cinema and hardly pulled their punches when it came to depictions of drug-spiked sex and violence.
Sympathy for the Devil will be on from Saturday 12 to Wednesday 30 May 2012
Performance will be on Saturday 19, Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 May 2012.
Tags: acmi, anita, godard, jagger, mick, pallenberg, performance, rolling, stones, sympathy for the devil
