The 1st Fashion in Film Festival:

“Between Stigma and Enigma”

14-27 May 2006

Full Programme


Between Stigma and Enigma, the 1st edition of the Fashion in Film Festival is a retrospective showcase of film and video work on fashion. We are teaming up with three London venues – Ciné lumière (French Institute), The Horse Hospital and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) – to present a mix of early and classic cinema, contemporary art, as well as documentary, instruction and propaganda film. Films by distinguished filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock, Louis Buñuel, Vera Chytilová and Bruce Weber will be screened alongside documentary, instructional and propaganda films, newsreels, artist videos and fashion image-makers’ shorts.

Fashion in Film Festival is especially delighted to host a special screening of the rarely seen cult film Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? and welcome its director William Klein as the Festival’s 2006 Guest of Honour.

The programme features films and videos that have fashion and clothing as their central theme, bringing together a variety of genres that have reported on, promoted and documented fashion, otherwise “spoken” about it or used it to attract and entertain audiences. It explores the ambiguous relationship between the machines of Western fashion and film, revealing film’s tendency to discredit fashion while paradoxically celebrating its seductive power and enigmatic qualities. Clothing will be revisited as fashion’s proper subject, with the aim to establish an intimacy between clothing and the film viewer.

Film screenings will be followed by lectures, informal talks and Q&A sessions with filmmakers, artists, critics and fashion designers including Anna-Nicole Ziesche, Jean-François Carly, Penny Martin and Shelley Fox. Two silent films in the Shoes, Eroticism and Fetish programme, The Gay Shoe Clerk (1903) and the rare gem Amor Pedestre (1914), will be accompanied by music especially composed for the occasion by The WOLFMEN’s Marco Pirroni and Chris Constantinou.

Full Programme

Watch William Klein’s Q&A at Ciné lumière on the SHOWstudio website

Download the 2006 programme as PDF

Venue Information:

Fashion in Film is a collaborative research project based at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, and supported by numerous cultural and educational organisations internationally.

Programme Curators: Marketa Uhlirova and Christel Tsilibaris

Guest Curators: Roger K. Burton, Adrian Garvey, Edward Barber and Alistair O’Neill

Who Are You, Polly Magoo? Dir. William Klein, France 1966

Liquid Sky Dir. Slava Tsukerman. USA 1982

Ghosts Before Breakfast Dir. Hans Richter, Germany 1928

Enfant Terrible, dir. Anna-Nicole Ziesche,UK 2000

William Klein at Cine Lumiere, filmed by the SHOWstudio