The Cinematheque

“A brilliantly incendiary feminist satire.”

Suzi Feay, Financial Times

In her most ambitious work to date, the incomparable Scottish multimedia artist Rachel Maclean ​“takes a cyber cleaver to art history,” a weapon made no less dangerous by its pink and purple glitter-coated handle. Siri, the protagonist, ​“finds herself at the centre of what appears to be an impossible game show, helmed by the Figurehead, an ornately dressed Maclean lip-syncing to Kenneth Clark’s [classic 1960s BBC TV series] Civilisation. Constituting a beauty clinic-cum-brainwashing cult, Siri and her fellow cohort are dressed in scant yet elaborately adorned outfits, competing against one another in a heteropatriarchal, capitalist clamour for top place in the symbolic order of a Lacanian nightmare” (Tara Judah, Sight & Sound). With the help of Alexa, Siri’s only hope is to sabotage the narrative.

This DIM screening of Make Me Up was originally scheduled for March 2020, but was cancelled due to the original outbreak of COVID-19. Two years (almost to the day) later, we are pleased to offer this rescheduled presentation. 

“Your eyes are saturated by Maclean’s oppressively bright computer-rendered universe. Her work would prove bludgeoning if it weren’t so viciously hilarious.”

Jamie Dunn, The Skinny

“Deeply strange … A surrealist critique and freaky satirical nightmare, with something of Lewis Carroll [and] Terry Gilliam.”

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian