Blow Up - An Italian Film By Michelangelo Antonioni

As a tribute to the legendary Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni who passed away on 30th July, 2007, the Hyderabad Film Club is screening Blow Up, on 12th August, at the Sarathi Studios. Blow Up (also rendered as Blow-Up) is an award-winning 1966 British-Italian art film directed by Antonioni, and was the director's first English language film. The film stars David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, John Castle and Jane Birkin.

As a professional photographer, the main character mixes with the rich and famous in the London of the '60s. One day he chances upon two lovers in a park and takes photos of them. The woman of the couple pursues him, eventually finding his apartment and desperately trying to get the film. This leads the photographer to investigate the film, making blow-ups (enlargements) of the photos. This process seems to reveal a body, but the director cleverly uses the heavy film grain and black and white imagery to obscure the image. This drives the photographer to keep making blowups and trying to find the truth.

Michelangelo Antonioni was born on September 29, 1912, in Ferrara, Italy, and was an Italian modernist film director whose films are widely considered as some of the most influential in film aesthetics. Antonioni's first feature film was Story of a Love (1950). His best-known films are his trilogy The Adventure (1960), Night (1961) and Eclipse (1962); Red Desert (1964), his first color film; Blowup (1966), his first English-language film; Zabriskie Point (1970); and The Passenger (1975).

Please contact Bh S S Prakash Reddy of the Hyderabad Film Club at 2373-0841/93910-20243 for further details.