Cinema in Context at Presteigne Assembly Rooms on Sunday, will see film editor Tony Lawson placing L’Avventura by Michelangelo Antonioni (1960) in context before a screening of what has become a classic movie.

L’Avventura first met with derision, followed then by praise and astonishing success, with critics voting it best film of the year in 1961. Along with a handful of similarly striking films it had an enormous influence on other filmmakers.

Michelangelo Antonioni placed his muse, Monica Vitti, at the core of his films. In L'Avventura a young woman mysteriously disappears on a yachting trip to a remote volcanic island in the Mediterranean. Her disaffected lover and best friend embark on an illicit affair while they search for her. “We know that behind every image revealed there is another image more faithful to reality, and in the back of that image there is another, and yet another behind the last one, and so on, up to the true image of that absolute, mysterious reality that no one will ever seem,” said Antonioni.

Tony Lawson is one of Britain’s leading film editors, and has worked with some of the greatest directors in recent cinema history. His break came on the controversial film Straw Dogs where he worked with director Sam Peckinpah. He went on to work with Stanley Kubrick and recent collaborations have been with directors Nicolas Roeg and Neil Jordan.

Cinema in Context will be at the Assembly Rooms in Presteigne on Sunday, March 26, at 7pm. Tickets available on the door.