With this spring’s release of High-Rise – an adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s 1975 novel – Jason Wood, our Artistic Director of Film, finds time to explain the enduring appeal of all things Ballardian.
You won’t just see High-Rise at HOME this spring. Coinciding with Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump’s film, which we preview with producer Jeremy Thomas in attendance, is our broader celebration of J.G. Ballard. Ballard remains one of the most influential and inspirational of all film writers – when it comes to talking about film, for example, who hasn’t heard the term ‘Ballardian’? And the reason for that influence is because J.G. Ballard’s work began at the cutting edge of science fiction before mining the dystopia of modern living; an extreme metaphor for the essential incompatibility of mankind and the (often questionable) impact that technology has on us all.
Ballard was a known admirer of cinema, with a particular interest in mondo films, that Italian genre of exploitation documentary-style film that exemplifies the violence, death and the taboos of late 20th century life. These are themes that run through Ballard’s later novels, short fiction and innumerable essays, while Alphaville and Mad Max 2 are just two films that he expressed an admiration for. One of the author’s final masterpieces, meanwhile, is ripe for the screen, big or small. Super-Cannes is a jaw-droppingly prescient look at wealth, privilege and organised violence – and it also sticks the boot into the pomposity of the Cannes Film Festival, memorably describing it as “a cultural Nuremberg”.
While critics may argue that Super-Cannes and many of his novels, are unfilmable, in fact Ballard’s work has made it onto screen several times. Perhaps his best-known novel – Empire of the Sun – was turned into a film by Spielberg, and while it may have been shot a little conventionally it did bring Ballard newfound fame and wealth. An avant-garde collection of vaguely interrelated short stories, The Atrocity Exhibition, was also filmed, this time by Jonathan Weiss, while most famous is Cronenberg’s Westminster-baiting Crash, an audacious tilt at Ballard’s seminal novel that is a hymn to the highway of human desire. Crash, incidentally, was produced by Jeremy Thomas, which brings us nicely back to High-Rise. (As a further aside, Ballard was involved in the Harley Cotkis-directed Crash!, a genuine oddity hailing from 1971 that’s a compelling blend of synthesisers, sci-fi futurism and architectural modernism.)
We will be showing many of these titles during our Ballard celebration (although sadly not Crash, due to the unavailability of 35mm prints in the UK and Cronenberg’s preference for screenings only in this format), which in turn follows on from our Chris Petit season – which includes Petit’s short TV portrait of Ballard. In many ways, Ballard and Petit are entirely simpatico, with Petit doing for the moving image what Ballard did for literature. And there is new work in our Ballard season, too: Always (crashing) by Simon Barker and myself is influenced by Crash! and takes as its focus some abiding Ballardian tropes: the car, modernist architecture, and environments founded on the notion of control that are – in reality – teetering on the brink of collapse.
Always (crashing) runs from Fri 18 Mar – Fri 8 Apr. Find out more about the season and book here.
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