One of the rarest David Bowie films is set for a comeback, six months after the star’s death.“David Bowie Is,” a documentary based on the blockbuster 2013 exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, is being re-released in Vue cinemas and selected venues across the UK on July 14.The 95-minute movie includes an interview with Jarvis Cocker, the front man of rock band Pulp and a big Bowie admirer. Also featured is the Japanese fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto, who created some of the late star’s most famous costumes that were included in the museum show, such as a wide-legged outfit for the Aladdin Sane tour in 1973. With the suit’s absurd flares and stack heels, one wonders how Bowie could have walked anywhere without falling over.The film, shot on the closing night of the Kensington exhibition in 2013 and first shown in 2014, has an edited soundtrack of Bowie’s songs, many familiar and some less so. It offers fans another opportunity to explore the retrospective, which has been on tour after its first showing in London and which is now heading to Italy.“David Bowie Is” became the V&A’s fastest-selling exhibition. It shifted sold more than 42,000 advance tickets alone, more than twice the pre-sales for any other show. While the V&A has held other music-related events, this one showcased a star’s influence not just on fashion and music, but also graphics, design, theater, and video. The event won acclaim and included unheard demos, handwritten lyrics and drawings, costumes, family photos, sketches for set designs, Bowie’s instruments and much more from over five decades.Among the revelations: in the 1970s, Bowie was earning half a million pounds a year, then a huge sum, and was reported to employ a manicurist just for his silver nail varnish. Some of his best-known songs were reworked right up to the point of recording, as seen in the scribbled lyrics for “Five Years” with endless crossings-out. Bowie also used cut-up words on straps of paper, inspired by author William Burroughs, which the musician endlessly threw about and rearranged in the studio.The film, directed by BAFTA award-winner Hamish Hamilton, has exhibition curators Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh as guides, with insight into never-before-seen letters and diary entries. The two, from the V&A Department of Theatre & Performance, said they were deeply saddened by Bowie’s death: “His far-reaching influence on cultural life is unparalleled and the film offers illuminating detail about key objects from the David Bowie Archive.” The museum had been granted unprecedented access to the archive, similar to that given by the Rolling Stones for the “Exhibitionism” event at the Saatchi Gallery in London.For cinema tickets and information: http://DavidBowieFilm.com. The worldwide distributor is More2Screen. The “David Bowie Is” show is at the Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna (MAMbo), Bologna, Italy, from July 14 through November 13 and moves to Warehouse TERRADA G1 Building, Tokyo, Japan from January 8, 2017. It has already travelled to Toronto, São Paulo, Berlin, Chicago, Paris, Melbourne and Groningen in The Netherlands. Information: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/touring-exhibition-david-bowie-is/
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