Friendship's Death (1987)The BFI National Archive’s 4K remastering of Peter Wollen’s Friendship’s Death (1987) has been selected for Cannes Classics 2020, the festival’s sidebar dedicated to restored classics.
Written and directed by Peter Wollen and produced by Rebecca O’Brien, the film stars Tilda Swinton as Friendship, a female extraterrestrial robot on a peace mission to Earth who misses her intended destination of MIT and lands in Jordan during the Black September conflict in 1979. This impassioned film weaves elements of science-fiction with powerful political commentary through conversation between Friendship and journalist Sullivan (Bill Paterson), who is there covering the conflict between Palestinians and Jordanians. It was produced by the BFI, Channel Four Films and Modelmark.
The death of Wollen in December 2019 robbed us of one of Britain’s foremost film theorists, whose writings revolutionised the study of the moving image. But Wollen was a significant thinker on many subjects, turning his sharp intellect on a range of cultural areas. His forays into filmmaking demonstrate this eclecticism. A champion of the avant-garde, he put his theory into practice through several screen projects, most notably, and most accessibly, with Friendship’s Death.
Swinton was fresh from her collaboration with Derek Jarman on Caravaggio (1986), and has acknowledged Wollen’s profound influence on her work. Her performance set a template for later, ghostly roles, such as a vampire in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive (2013). Playing the journalist who befriends her is Bill Paterson, currently enjoying renewed celebrity due to his role in the hit TV series Fleabag.
The BFI National Archive’s 4K remastering of the film is from the original Standard 16mm colour negative. The soundtrack was digitised directly from the original 35mm final mix magnetic master track. The remastering was undertaken by the BFI’s Film Conservation team in collaboration with the film’s producer, Rebecca O’Brien, and cinematographer, Witold Stok.
As the physical edition of the Cannes Film Festival was cancelled this year due to the pandemic, Cannes Classics 2020 will be hosted, in whole or in part, by the festival Lumière in Lyon (10-18 October 2020) and by the Rencontres Cinématographiques de Cannes (23-26 November 2020). Details of the screening to be announced. Other restorations screening this year include Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000), Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960), Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’avventura (1960) and, in his centenary year, two films by Federico Fellini: La strada (1954) and Variety Lights (1951).