Stop Making Sense
UW Cinematheque 821 University Ave., UW Vilas Hall, Room 4070, Madison, Wisconsin
press release:
USA | 1984 | 35mm | 88 min.
Director: Jonathan Demme
No band characterized 80s new wave sounds and styles more than the Talking Heads. Director Demme’s concert film, photographed over three performances at Los Angeles’ Pantages Theater, captures the band, particularly frontman David Byrne, at the pinnacle of their creativity. Demme’s minimally invasive style foregrounds the music, and keeps the audience rapt with subtle visual quirks.
Jonathan Demme & George Romero: Heroes of Cinema
With four screenings this fall, we will commemorate the careers of two remarkable and enormously influential directors who passed away in 2017. Jonathan Demme (1944-2017), known for his energized, music loving and often humanistic body of work, will be represented by his totally unpredictable 1986 screwball comedy Something Wild and his revered 1984 Talking Heads concert movie, Stop Making Sense. George A. Romero (1940-2017) announced his arrival on the movie scene in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead, the first in his hugely popular cycle of flesh-eating zombie horror satires and a movie that launched an entire sub-genre in entertainment. Often shown in inferior copies, a glorious new restoration of Night of the Living Dead will be shown, along with Romero’s fun variation on his zombie cycle from 1973, The Crazies.
All Cinematheque screenings are free and open to the public.