Spook Who Sat by The Door (1973) 102 min. FIRST TIME EVER ON BRITISH SCREENS !!
Plus: Infiltrating Hollywood: The Rise and Fall of the Spook who sat by the Door (2011) 56 mins
Sat 26th May 2-5pm
BFI Southbank, Belvedere Road SE1
Tube: Waterloo
Admission £6.50 best to book early
Hollywood did not want this film made and blocked the funding. The producers then went as far afiled as Nigeria to raise the funds. They got the money, then the system blocked their permits to film . The producers found ways around this too. Then Hollywood tried to block distribution. The film got out nevertheless and was filling up cinemas and making money. Then the FBI went round, collected and destroyed every single copy of the film they could find..apart from two that had been filed under the wrong name. If the only colour that matters in Hollywood is green why was this black film destroyed and pushed underground for 30 years?
For the first time ever on British cinema screens we show the film itself and the documentary made 30 years after about how and why the film was blocked and banned. Plus Q and A with Margaret Busby who published the book the film was based on
The once effectively banned cult action film in which CIA operative Dan Freeman returns to Chicago and prepares his brothers for revolution. This fanciful conceit is both a biting satire and a razor-edged provocation in response to the urgency of its times, and features a highly charged score from Herbie Hancock. This ‘not to be missed’ rarity screens with a new documentary putting into context an extraordinary piece of film history: Infiltrating Hollywood – The Rise and Fall of The Spook Who Sat by the Door (USA 2011, dir Christine Acham & Clifford Ward, 57min).