Past Imperfect: Screening of La Chimera (2023)

The Past Imperfect Seminar will be celebrating a productive year of discussion, community-building, and thinking together with a final epic event on 1 May in the purpose-built cinema at UCL East (1 Pool Street E20 2AF).

We will be screening the 2023 Italian film "La Chimera" (dir. Alice Rohrwacher) beginning at 5 pm. The screening will be followed at 7:30 by brief responses from the disciplinary perspectives of art history, archaeology and film studies by our own Aparna Kumar and Allie Stielau, along with Kirsty Sinclair Dootson (UCL SELCS) and Kate Franklin (Birkbeck), which will open into a discussion with audience members. We'll end the evening with a wine reception at 8 pm. 

Starring Josh O'Connor, Isabella Rossellini, Alba Rohrwacher and Carol Duarte, "La Chimera" tells the story of a group of tomb-raiders in 1980s Italy. Its depiction of the illegal trade in Etruscan antiquities is certainly pertinent to our discipline. We have chosen to screen it for the variety of issues it raises relevant to Past Imperfect's annual theme ("Slowness"), especially its portrayal of object-centered perspectives on the passage of time. 

YouTube Widget Placeholderhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkIC8YI9-eU

This event will exceed three hours in length! We are trying to recreate a night out at the movies, thus the emphasis is decidedly on pleasure. We've inserted a break in the schedule so that attendees may come just for the screening, or just for the discussion and reception afterward.

If you'd like to watch La Chimera on your own time, it is available in the UK through the following streaming services: 

Apple TV
Youtube+
MUBI
BFI
Curzon Home Cinema
Sky Store

It's more fun, though, to see it for the first time in a theatre with others. Previous screenings have elicited audible gasps from the audience!