Michael Cimino at Bozar

On 21 October, Bozar will roll out the red carpet for a Hollywood icon! Director Michael Cimino will be at the Brussels Centre for Fine Arts to present his controversial 1980 western Heaven's Gate in a digitally restored director’s cut. Not to be missed by fans of the New Hollywood cinema.

In the 1970s, Michael Cimino ranked as one of the stars of the New Hollywood generation, a group of (creatively and financially) extremely successful young film-makers – with members like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, and William Friedkin – who enjoyed unprecedented creative freedom and had a major impact on the way the established major studios viewed film-making. After his triumphant film classic The Deer Hunter – the film that won him four Oscars, including one for Best Director and Best Film –, Cimino pictured himself en route for a new hit with Heaven's Gate in 1979.

But the director’s megalomaniacal and perfectionistic nature – resulting (according to legend) in certain shots needing 50 takes and enormous, expensive sets being wasted – made the shooting of the film a true descent into hell: filming Heaven’s Gate took Cimino nearly a year and the process used up three times the budget that was foreseen. The relationship between director and studio management had gone so sour that all efforts to promote the lengthy film were relinquished. Upon its release on 18 November 1980, the epic western with Christopher Walken, Kris Kristofferson, and Isabelle Huppert in the leading roles, failed miserably at the box office. In its fall to bankruptcy, the mega production didn't just take down the United Artists studio with it, it also marked the end of New Hollywood and saw the advent of the blockbuster, an age in which marketing people and producers would be calling the shots.

(Michael Cimino and Kris Kristofferson)

Six months after the première, the film was re-released for a short while in a cut that took 40 minutes off the original running time. It’s this shortened version that until now was distributed and ended up on the DVD. The screening of the full direcor’s cut at Bozar is a unique opportunity to discover Cimino's work on the big screen, just as the film-maker had intended. 20 November, the original cut of Heaven's Gate will also be released on DVD and Blu-ray.

SCREENING HEAVEN'S GATE
21/10, 19.00, Bozar, rue Ravensteinstraat 23, Brussel/Bruxelles, www.bozar.be