This film was released 14th October 2016, and is no longer screening.

★★★★★ Metro

★★★★★ The Skinny

EXCLUSIVELY AT IFI

In July 1974, 29-year-old Florida-based television reporter Christine Chubbuck shot and killed herself live on air in the opening segment of her own talk show. Stunning viewers and colleagues alike in an era when depression was barely acknowledged, let alone discussed, this harrowing event allegedly motivated Paddy Chayefsky to write the Sidney Lumet-directed Network (1976), albeit with a number of significant departures from the facts. Of the (remarkably) two films about Chubbuck that featured in this year’s Sundance Festival, Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine is the more innovative, discarding the tired biopic formula for a documentary of re-enactment in which we follow actress Kate Lyn Sheil as she prepares to play Christine in a film that never materialises. A study not just of Chubbuck, but also of what it means to assume the mindset of someone so disturbed and out of reach, this is a rare and provocative accomplishment. (Notes by Alice Butler.)

This month’s Bigger Picture screening is Network on Monday, October 17th at 20.00.

Don’t forget we now schedule weekly.