5.15pm–10.45am

Before committing suicide one morning in 1980, Ian Curtis watched Stroszek (1967) by Werner Herzog on television. Bette Davis passed away in the presidential suite of San Sebastián’s finest hotel, where she had received the Donostia award and watched one of her earliest roles in Waterloo Bridge (1931), by James Whale. The Swedish Prime Minister, Olof Palme, was shot and killed as he left a Stockholm cinema, having just seen Suzanne Osten’s The Mozart Brothers (1986). With no arrest, the gangster John Dillinger was shot by the FBI outside the theatre where he had just seen Manhattan Melodrama (1934), by W. S. Van Dyke.

In this radical, surprising and perhaps macabre programme, we present a selection of films seen by icons of the 20th century just before their deaths. In many cases, these are the final images they saw immediately before leaving this world. These are the “last movies” of Anne Frank, Kurt Cobain, Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Heaven’s Gate cult, among others. Unravelling in “order of disappearance”, this is the ultimate cinephile experience. Proposing an endurance trial throughout the night and ending the following morning, this 17-hour continuous programme will have a single ticket, and awards for persevering audience members. Contestants that reach the end of the screenings having followed all the guidelines will be awarded a BFF card valid for 6 months.

Developed in close collaboration with Batalha and presented here for the first time ever, The Last Movies is an extensive and regenerating film programme curated by Stanley Schtinter, an artist, writer and programmer who has been described as an exorcist by various British tabloid newspapers.

Curated by Stanley Schtinter

Read the Guidelines here.

Tickets available here.