A few days from now, January 10 will mark the one-year anniversary of David Bowie’s surprising death and the beginning of the unending parade of horrors that was 2016. The tributes poured out in the wake of the announcement with commemorative parades and parties taking place in cities across the globe. But while the flow of memorials to the musical pioneer may have ebbed, it hasn’t stopped completely. A new report from Variety indicates that later this year, Bowie’s spirit will continue to live on at cineplexes across Europe with what is now the closest a person can get to attending an actual David Bowie concert.
Variety reports that in March, European viewers (more specifically, audiences in the U.K., Finland, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Germany, and France) will get the chance to catch famed documentarian D.A. Pennebaker’s concert picture Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars in theaters during a special re-release engagement. The chronicle of David Bowie’s 1973 performance at London’s Hammersmith Odeon — his last in the Ziggy Stardust persona — remains a crucial artifact in the history of rock, and the only way to truly appreciate it is with the grand scale of a theater. As an added bonus, Mojo Magazine has produced a new short film about Bowie, his life and works (with a special focus on the Ziggy Stardust years) exclusively to accompany the rerelease of Pennebaker’s classic.
The best concert documentaries turn their exhibitions into a raucous rock show all their own; it’s not uncommon for crowds to rush the front during repertory screenings of Stop Making Sense and spastically dance along with Talking Heads frontman David Byrne. Doing the same for Bowie would be more than just a cathartic way to work through lingering grief — it’s an expression of individualistic joy Bowie would’ve been proud of.
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars- The Motion Picture from michele on Vimeo.