Here is the endgame of endgames.
       —Iain Sinclair

Last Movies
Stanley Schtinter

Tenement Press / Yellowjacket 10
978-1-7393851-1-8 / 324pp / £18.50.

With a foreword / 
Programme Notes 
by Erika Balsom, 
with an intermission 
from Bill Drummond, 
& an afterword 
by Nicole Brenez 

All films are haunted, both by the immortal light of the sooner-or-later dead that they curate, and by the filaments of meaning they extrude into unscripted human lives. Last Movies is an unexpectedly revealing catalogue of final interchanges between imminent ghosts and counterpart electric spectres on the screen’s far side. Profound and riveting, Schtinter’s graveyard perspective offers up a rich and startlingly novel view of cinema, angled through cemetery gates before the closing credits. A remarkable accomplishment.   
        —Alan Moore

Wade more than a dozen pages into Last Movies and these connections start to reveal themselves like constellations on a cloudless night.
        —Ryan Gilbey,
        The Guardian


A publication, durational artwork, and moving-image experience, Schtinter’s debut collection, Last Movies, is an alternative account of the first century of cinema according to the films watched by  a constellation of its most notable stars shortly  before (or at the time of) their deaths.
        An extensive and exhaustive research project—a holy book of celluloid spiritualism and old canards—Schtinter questions and reconfigures common knowledge to recast the historic column inches of cinema’s mythological hearsay into a thousand-yard stare. 
        Via a series of interlinked vignettes, here we’ve a book in which Manhattan Melodrama, directed by W.S. Van Dyke and George Cukor, is seen by American gangster John Dillinger, only for him to be gunned down by federal agents upon leaving the cinema. In which George Cukor watches The Graduate and dies thereafter. In which Bette Davis—given her break by Cukor—watches herself in Waterloo Bridge (the 1940 remake Cukor had been meant to direct), before travelling to France and failing to make it back to Hollywood. In which Rainer Werner Fassbinder watches Bette Davis in Michael Curtiz’s 20,000 Years in Sing Sing, and suffers the stroke that kills him. In which John F. Kennedy watches From Russia with Love at a private ‘casa-blanca’ screening prior to the presidential motorcade reaching Dealey Plaza; in which Burt Topper’s War is Hell exists only in a fifteen-minute cut, considering this is as much as Lee Harvey Oswald would have seen at the Texas Theatre in the wake of JFK’s killing. 


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Read an excerpt via LitHub. 

Listen to a conversation between Schtinter
& Gareth Evans on Last Movies
(as publication / as roving programme).


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Negotiating between the worlds of the living and the dead, as does cinema, Schtinter’s roving programme, ‘Last Movies,’ gives its audience the opportunity to ‘See what those who see no more last saw’ care of an international durational moving-image experience.


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18:30 / 22-23.01.26
Last Movies at the Greek Film Archive /
(παρουσία του καλλιτέχνη.)

(22.01)
Franz Kafka (d.1924)
       The Kid (Charlie Chaplin, 1921)
John Dillinger (d.1934)
       Manhattan Melodrama 
       (W.S. Van Dyke / George Cukor, 1934)
Sergio Leone (d.1989)
       I Want to Live! (Robert Wise, 1958)
Pier Paolo Pasolini (d.1975)
       Oedipus Rex (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1967)

(23.01)
Bette Davis (d.1989)
        Waterloo Bridge (James Whale, 1931)
Bruce Chatwin (d.1989)
        Herdsmen of the Sun (Werner Herzog, 1989)
Kurt Cobain (d.1994)
        The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)
Stanley Kubrick (d.1999)
        Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

Greek Film Archive
48 Iera Odos St 
& 134–136 Megalou Alexandrou St.
Kerameikos, Athens

(See here.)

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18:00 / 23.09.25
Last Movies at the Pleasuredome

Uccellacci e uccellini / Hawks & Sparrows
       (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1966) +
An excerpt of a Swedish Pornographic Film
from the mid-1970s.

Zita Folkets Bio
Birger Jarlgatan 37
Stockholm
Sweden

(See here.)

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19:00 / 11.12.24
Last Movies / Films Cut by Death

Charlie Parker (d.1955)
       One O’Clock Jump, Count Basie (1955)
Boris Vian (d.1959)
       I Spit on Your Grave (Michel Gast, 1959)
Lee Harvey Oswald (d.1963)
       War Is Hell (Burt Topper, 1961)
Sergio Leone (d.1989)
       I Want to Live! (Robert Wise, 1958)
Stanley Kubrick (d.1999)
Eyes Wide Shut, Trailer (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)
+ a mystery maker 
& a mystery film (d.2022)

Teatteri Union Esitää
Helsinki, Finland

(See here.)

*

18:30 (& on & on & on.) / 04.12.24
Last Movies / A continuous screening

InLaguna Film Festival, 4th Ed.
Venice, Italy

(See here.)

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21:00 / 15.06.24
‘An Evening with Stanley Schtinter’

Filmhaus 
Cologne, Germany

(See here.)

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16:00 & on / 04.05.24
Last Movies II / An 18hr screening

F.W. Murnau (d.1931)
       Tabu: A Story of the South Seas
       (F.W. Murnau, 1931)
Yves Klein (d.1962)
       Mondo cane / A Dog’s Life
        (Jacopetti, Cavara & Prosperi, 1962)
John F. Kennedy (d.1963)
       Tom Jones (Tony Richardson, 1963)
Lee Harvey Oswald (d.1963)
       War is Hell [Excerpt] (Burt Topper, 1961)
Elizabeth Ruth ‘Betty’ Grable (d.1973)
       A Star is Born (George Cukor, 1954)
Bernard Herrman (d.1975)
       God Told Me To (Larry Cohen, 1989)
Agatha Christie (d.1976)
       Murder on the Orient Express
        (Sidney Lumet, 1974)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder (d.1982)
       20,000 Years in Sing Sing 
       (Michael Curtiz, 1932)
Diana Spencer (d.1997)
       Jerry Maguire (Cameron Crowe, 1997)
Jean-Luc Godard (d.2022)
       Film anonce du film Drôles de Guerres,
       1er tournage
       (Jean Luc Godard, 2022)

Batalha Centro de Cinema
Porto, Portugal

(See here.)

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14:00 / 31.03.24

Pier Paolo Pasolini (d.1975)
       Oedipus Rex (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1967)

Watershed, Bristol

(See here.)

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20:15 / 28.03.24
Last Movies / Unfinished Films

Close-Up Film Centre
London

(See here.)

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14:00 / 24.03.24

Stanley Kubrick (d.1999)
       Eyes Wide Shut, Trailer 
        (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) 
        & Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)

Watershed, Bristol

(See here.)

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12pm to 12pm / 23.03.24
Last Movies / A 24hr screening

(Book launch, 17:00.)

ZDB Gallery
Lisbon, Portugal

(See here.)

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14:00 / 17.03.24

Joseph Breen (d.1965) 
       The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965)

Watershed, Bristol

(See here.)

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18:30 / 12.03.24

Olaf Palme (d.1986)
       Mozart Brothers (Suzanne Osten, 1986) 
        & Alamut: A Journey into Iran (1986) 

(With CM Von Hausswolf.)

The Institute of Contemporary Arts, 
London

(See here.)

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14:00 / 10.03.24

Kurt Cobain (d.1994)
       The Piano (Jane Campion, 1994)

Watershed, Bristol

(See here.)

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19:00 / 08.03.24
Last Movies / (A reading.)

Bookhaus, Bristol

(See here.)

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14:00 / 03.03.24

Lee Harvey Oswald (d.1963)
& John F. Kennedy (d.1963)
       War is Hell [Excerpt] (Burt Topper, 1961)
       & From Russia With Love 
       (Terrence Young, 1963) 

Watershed, Bristol

(See here.)

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20:40 / 14.03.24

Kurt Cobain (d.1994)
       The Piano (Jane Campion, 1994)

(With Elena Gorfinkel.)

The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London 

(See here.)

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18:20 / 30.01.24

Heaven’s Gate (d.1997)
        Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh, 1996)
       & Carlito’s Way [Excerpt]
       (Brian de Palma, 1994)

(With Adrian Dannatt.)

The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

(See here.)

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18:00 (EST) / 27.01.24
Last Movies / Montez Press Radio
New York, NY

The first instalment in a
year-long serialisation,
as read by the author.

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12.01.24 / 13.01.24
Last Movies / Terrassen

(12.01)    Films Cut by Death
Stage Show (Dorsey Brothers, 1955)
I Spit On Your Grave (Michel Gast, 1959)
I Want to Live (Robert Wise, 1958)
Carlito’s Way (Brian de Palma, 1994)
Eyes Wide Shut, Trailer (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

(13.01)
Film anonce du film Drôles de Guerres, 
        1er tournage (Jean Luc Godard, 2022) 
The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)

Husets Biograf 
+ Palads
Copenhagen

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18:45 / 12.12.23 

John Dillinger (d.1934)
& Rainer Werner Fassbinder (d.1982)
       20,000 Years in Sing Sing
        (Michael Curtiz, 1934) 
       Manhattan Melodrama
        (Van Dyke & Cukor, 1934)

The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

(See here.)

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09.12.23
Last Movies / PAF Olomouc 2023

The 22nd Edition of the Festival of Film, 
Animation, & Contemporary Arts 

(See here.)

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20:40 / 22.11.23                                    
Last Movies / Programme
& Book Launch

Lee Harvey Oswald (d.1963)
& John F. Kennedy (d.1963)
       War is Hell [Excerpt] (Burt Topper, 1961)
        & From Russia With Love
        (Terrence Young, 1963)

(With Erika Balsom.) 

The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

(See here.)

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04.11.23                                
Last Movies / New YorK, NY
A multi-venue day & night screening.

Spectacle + 
Nitehawk (Williamsburg) + 
Light Industry

20,000 Years in Sing Sing
        (Michael Curtiz, 1932)
Waterloo Bridge
        (James Whale, 1931)
The Kid
         (Charlie Chapin, 1931),   
With live score by Dan Arnés 
        & Erik Gundel.
Stage Show 
        (Dorsey Brothers, 1955)
I Spit On Your Grave 
        (Michel Gast, 1959)
I Want to Live! 
        (Robert Wise, 1958)
Eyes Wide Shut, Trailer
         (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)
War is Hell [Excerpt] 
        (Burt Topper, 1961)
Manhattan Melodrama 
        (Van Dyke & Cukor, 1934)
Oedipus Rex 
        (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1967)

New York City, NY

(See here.)

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29.04.23 / 30.04.23
Towards the Last Movies
A night & day screening 
(17:15 through 10:45).

Manhattan Melodrama
        (Van Dyke & Cukor, 1934)
The Lighthouse by the Sea
       (Malcolm St. Clair, 1924)
I Spit on Your Graves [Excerpt] 
        (Michel Gast, 1959)
Oedipus Rex
       (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1967)
Cape Fear
       (J. Lee Thompson, 1962)
The Mozart Brothers 
        (Suzanne Osten, 1986)
I Want to Live! [Excerpt] 
        (Robert Wise, 1958)
Waterloo Bridge (James Whale, 1931)
Wodabbe: Herdsman of the Sun 
        (Werner Herzog, 1989)
The Piano 
        (Jane Campion, 1993)
Secrets & Lies 
        (Mike Leigh, 1996)
Eyes Wide Shut, Trailer 
        (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

Batalha Centro de Cinema
Porto, Portugal

(See here.)

*

Endless.


*        *        *

(Praise for Schtinter’s Last Movies.)

Very strange, and deeply thought-provoking.
        —Laura Mulvey 

Here is the endgame of endgames. A commendably perverse demonstration of how it is possible for something to be assimilated, by way of rumour and manipulated history, without being experienced. 
         —Iain Sinclair,
         Sight & Sound

In Last Movies, artist-curator Stanley Schtinter turns the idea, that film captures the dead and turns them into ghosts, on its head. Rather than focus on deceased people onscreen, he finds out (or, occasionally, makes an informed guess at) what was the last film that various important twentieth-century political and cultural figures had watched, bringing together a potted history of the medium itself.
       —Juliet Jacques, 
        ArtReview

A scintillating labyrinth of synchronicities, where Schtinter’s meticulous research and encyclopaedic knowledge are as impressive as his intriguing speculations. Essential reading for film buffs, conspiracy theorists and high-end pub quizzers everywhere.
       —John Smith

The more details Schtinter’s Last Movies uncovers the more mysterious his project becomes. What are we meant to understand from learning that Franz Kafka’s last movie was The Kid (1921) by Charlie Chaplin? Or that Chaplin started casting it just one week after the death of his son Norman? Or that Norman’s tombstone read only ‘The Little Mouse’? Or that, after Chaplin himself died in 1977 (his last movie was Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon), his coffin was dug up from a Lausanne cemetery by two refugees and held to ransom? Perhaps it’s the freedom to speculate, the unanswerability of those questions, that is its own reward. Boldface names, lurid details, strange connection. Schtinter, always eager to deflate pomposity, likens his project to an ‘occult version of OK! magazine.’ I myself can’t help wondering: what if we were to watch every movie as if it were our last?
       —Sukhdev Sandhu,
        Prospect





Last Movies raises the status of the film programme to that of monumental artwork. 
        Mortality and the movies are now unarguably one: death and life twenty-four times a second.
        —Gareth Evans

A highbrow Wikipedia hole full of fascinating coincidences. 
        —Clive Martin,
         Plaster Magazine

Last Movies is a puzzle book in which one must decide what to believe.
        —Lilian Crawford, 
        The Times Literary Supplement

Last Movies brings together its selections by the force of an external event, one which bears not on the films themselves but on little-known details of their exhibition histories, and then orders them not according to any curatorial vision but by date of disappearance. It abandons all those calcified criteria most frequently used to organise cinema programmes: period, nation, genre, director, star, theme. Nothing internal to these films motivates their inclusion, their ‘quality’ least of all. Although Schtinter can choose a death to research, the title to be shown is dictated by history. This is all to say that Last Movies embraces chance, an avant-garde strategy its orchestrator has been known to marshal in previous undertakings. And so it should be for a programme about death. The tenacity of the ‘life review’ flashback as a trope in fiction films could be attributed to the fact that people who have had near-death experiences claim to have encountered the phenomenon. It is more likely that this convention endures because it satisfies a reassuring fantasy: that life will ultimately attain coherence. The fantasy of that ‘last movie’ is undone by the reality of Schtinter’s Last Movies. They are often random and in large part unchosen; they throw significance into crisis and demand acquiescence to externality. They are, in other words, like death itself. 
        —Erika Balsom

Stanley Schtinter has been described by writer Iain Sinclair as ‘the last accredited activist, the last avant-garde.’ He recently presented the premiere of his ‘endless’ video-work, The Lock-In, at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, and exhibited the work as a solo presentation at the Barbican Centre in London during July 2022 (reviewed for The Guardian by Jonathan Jones as ‘an epic film [...] spellbinding, Warholian’). From May 2021 until May 2022 he presented Important Books (or, Manifestos read by Children) at Whitechapel Gallery in London. In 2021, he published the edited collection, The Liberated Film Club (Tenement Press, 2021). Schtinter is the artistic director of purge.xxx; an ‘anti-’ record label (‘anti-’ everything) wherein he curates and publishes a catalogue of sound-works, soundtracks and collaborations.