Thursday 10 April 2008, 18.30

Andy Warhol's legendary silent black-and-white movie, Blow Job (USA 1964, 36’) presents a youth filmed as he apparently experiences the sex act named in the title. Only the actor’s head and shoulders are shown, and his face reveals little more than distant reverie or boredom. The ennui, voyeurism and supposedly unmoving camera are all hallmarks of Warhol’s radical and influential filmmaking, renowned for creating a provocative tension between the serious and the absurd.

In Blow Job, the film process itself is inseparable from the act of the viewer's viewing. This special screening will be introduced by the pioneering experimental filmmaker Peter Gidal to mark the release of Andy Warhol: Blow Job, Gidal’s new publication about the film, published by Afterall Books. Gidal deciphers the structures, abstract and concrete, of Warhol’s crucial film.

Peter Gidal is the author of seminal books on Samuel Beckett, Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, and avant-garde film. Retrospectives of his film work have been held at Centre Pompidou, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, the London Filmmakers Co-op, LUX, and the National Film Theatre.

Tate Modern  Starr Auditorium
£5 (£4 concessions), booking recommended
Price includes drinks afterwards