Performance

Identities are fluid and psychedelics flow in this dizzying experiment. Bloody gangster shakedowns kick things off before a London thug flees to a bohemian bedsit. There he acquires a new state of mind when his housemates – including a rocker – usher in a whirl of hallucinogens and free love. Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, making directing debuts, opened their film with intense cross-cutting before settling into a string of identity and gender flips. Studio bosses who’d wanted a simple pop flick with Mick Jagger were appalled, and held the film for re-editing. Performance still perplexed on release, but shines now as an influential and trippy cult fave.

18/5 (Sat): Film talk with Lau Yam