UPDATE: This release will actually be the most recent restoration of the film. Hurrah! Read more here.

Welcome to your latest Lulu alert, courtesy of a website in danger of needing to rename itself “Pabst London”. I assure you that I am working on some non Pabst-related content, which will be with you soon.

Anyway, the Big News is … that the BFI is giving Pandora’s Box a theatrical re-release in June this year. The version that will be shown is a 2K DCP of the 1997 Munich Film Museum restoration, not the more recent one, which is slightly disappointing, but that said, I saw this version on a big screen recently and it really is grand. The print really does well by Gunther Krampf’s complex patterns of light and shade in his cinematography, and there is enough detail to highlight all the nuances and symbols lurking in the background. Louise Brooks sparkles as she ought to, of course.

Pandora’s Box will open at BFI Southbank and “selected cinemas UK-wide” on 1 June 2018. Worth keeping an eye on the BFI website to find out whether it is playing near you. The DCP comes with an excellent score by Peer Raben, which worked frequently with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, but I wonder whether some venues might like to add some live music. Hmmm …

Also at the BFI Southbank in May, may I draw your attention to two 35mm screenings of a Pabst talkie? His wonderful The Threepenny Opera (1931) is screening twice, on 13 May in NFT3 and on 23 May in NFT2. I highly recommend the second date, as the film will be introduced by the eloquent and authoritative Margaret Deriaz. The film is showing in the Big Screen Classics strand, in a season called “Money, Money, Money…” a theme GW Pabst was consistently interested in exploring.

It would be remiss of me not to mention that in preparation for the re-release of Pandora’s Box you may like to, ahem, buy my book, which recently received rather glowing reviews from Lulu oracle Thomas Gladysz of the Louise Brooks Society, on his blog, and on Amazon and Goodreads. Thank you so much, Thomas!