Sag Harbor Cinema: Rare Screening of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

As worldwide celebrations mark what would have been David Bowie’s 75th birthday (January 8th), Sag Harbor Cinema hosts a rare screening of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars on Sunday, January 16th at 7pm. DA Pennebaker’s film of David Bowie’s legendary final performance as Ziggy Stardust, held at the Hammersmith Odeon on July 3, 1973.

Part of the yearlong retrospective created by the Cinema to celebrate the work of DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, the special screening will offer the audience an exclusive opportunity to see the film in a 35mm print from the filmmakers’ personal collection. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Chris Hegedus and Founding Artistic Director, Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan.

Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars captured a defining moment in music history, a spectacular concert during which Bowie retired his fabulously fashionable alien rock star alter ego. The audience gasped and screamed as he uttered “..The last show we’ll ever do”, thinking that it was Bowie himself who would be gone forever.

A founding father of glam rock, “Ziggy” was in Bowie’s own words: “my Martian messiah who twanged a guitar….Someone who dropped down here, got brought down to our way of thinking, and ended up destroying his own self”. He would revisit a similar character in Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth.

“Ziggy’s androgynous, super sensual beauty and his otherworldly costumes designed by Kansai Yamamoto lent themselves naturally to Pennebaker’s trademark verité style, combining the electricity of live music captured on film with an eye for stylized, almost abstract images. This is one of Pennebaker’s most visually striking films. And it is a privilege that we can screen it in 35mm,” says SHC’s Founding Artistic Director, Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan.

The concert featured numerous fan favorites such as, “Ziggy Stardust,” “Moonage Daydream,” “Changes,” and “Space Oddity,” as well as a cover of the Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat.” While the footage shot behind the scenes shows us Bowie as he jokes and laughs with assistants, the veil of mystery is drawn, and no one seems to notice the camera crew catching them all utterly out of their element.

This screening is made possible courtesy of DCD Rights Ltd.

For tickets go to www.sagharborcinema.org