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2001: A Space Odyssey (U)

Outdoor Cinema at the Sculpture Court

This summer, we’re showing films where no cinema has gone before, with our first-ever outdoor, on-site cinema surrounded by the Barbican’s dramatic architecture.

Confounding, meditative, and hypnotic, 2001: A Space Odyssey is perhaps Stanley Kubrick's defining masterpiece: exploring questions of philosophy, the future and the folly of man, with some of the most memorable sequences in cinematic history. 

As the opening notes of Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra play, we see a group of prehistoric ape-men, bewildered by the appearance of a mysterious black monolith. Moving forward millions of years, we meet American scientist Dr Heywood Floyd as he ventures out to a lunar outpost to investigate a perplexing discovery. 

Months later, astronauts David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) are bound for Jupiter on the spaceship Discovery. Their only company on-board are three hibernating colleagues and HAL-9000, the talking computer in control of the whole ship, who bears all of the technical skills of the scientists that made it – and all of their flaws.

 

US 1968 Dir Stanley Kubrick 149 min 

Please arrive promptly at the advertised start time

Proof of ID may be requested on entry to films, in compliance with BBFC ratings

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