The film focuses on two formative years of the first non-European Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s adolescence, exploring the moments that shaped the young Bengali poet and thinker.

The London Bengali Film Festival (LBFF) is an annual event celebrating Global Bengali Cinema, particularly focusing on underrepresented South Asian cinema and independent filmmakers from Bangladesh, India, and the South Asian diaspora. Founded in 2016, LBFF is a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting Bengali cinema as an essential cultural heritage in the UK. As the largest Bengali film event in the UK and Europe, the festival spans six days in and around London, providing a platform for Bengali-linked films to reach both the mainstream UK audience and the substantial Bengali community of over half a million people.

UK Premiere of 4K Restoration. The screening on 6 May will be introduced by the season curator Millie Zhou.

One of the most acclaimed, though underseen films of the Hong Kong New Wave, Allen Fong’s Ah Ying is an almost documentary-like work which takes a more realistic and intimate approach than many of the more genre-based or experimental offerings of the movement. The winner of multiple awards and nominations at the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Berlin International Film Festival, Ah Ying uses real life for its inspiration, portraying authentic living conditions and flourishing film scene in Hong Kong in the early 1980s.

Based on the autobiographical story of lead actress Hui So-Ying, the film follows Ah Ying, who yearns to be an actress, but is stuck working at her parents’ wet market fish stall while living in a cramped apartment in a rundown housing estate. Taking a job at the Film Culture Centre in return for being allowed to sit in on acting classes, she strikes up a friendship with her Chinese-American teacher, who takes an interest in her life and becomes determined that they should make a film together. 

This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. In Cantonese with English subtitles.

OTHERFIELD presents a screening of Almost Heaven, Carol Salter's 2017 tender and reflective portrait of Ying Ling, a young woman training to become a mortician at one of China’s largest funeral homes, was awarded Best Documentary at the 2017 British Independent Film Awards.

Despite being away from home for the first time, and her fear of ghosts and dead bodies, Ying Ling learns the spa rituals; cleaning and massaging corpses while grieving families look on. She finds solace in her macabre role through playful banter with another young mortician, and together, they spend their time off talking about their hopes, fears and plans for the future. As one of many rural-to-urban teenagers working to support her family, Ying Ling must immerse herself in the surreal and grinding world of China’s industrialisation of mortality.

With intimate access and moments of black humour, Almost Heaven follows Ying Ling as she learns about life while surrounded by death.

“An insightful pleasure” - Sight & Sound

★★★★  “Salter’s well-observed portrait.” - The Sunday Times

 ★★★★ “Potent filmmaking” - Time Out

“A vibrant, human story” - Hollywood Reporter

Best Documentary, British Independent Film Awards 2017

Best Documentary nominee, Berlinale 2017

Crystal Bear nominee, Berlinale 2017

Carol Salter

Carol Salter is an award-winning documentary filmmaker with a background in fine art.

Her critically acclaimed feature ALMOST HEAVEN, is a tender portrait of a young teenager, training to become a mortician in China. It won Best Documentary at the British Independent Film Awards 2017 and was double-nominated for the Glashütte Original Documentary Award and a Crystal Bear at Berlin International Film Festival 2017.

Her previous films have been screened internationally. UNEARTHING THE PEN (2011), a young Ugandan boy’s struggle for the right to an education, picked up 10 Awards including Best Documentary at Encounters, the Al Jazeera Golden Award and Aesthetica Film Festival Best Film. MAYOMI (2009) about a Sri Lankan woman’s attempt to put her life back together after the Tsunami, also won several awards and was screened internationally.

A graduate of the National Film and TV School, Carol has worked as a director, a self-shooter, and film editor.  Her films are intimate stories about the individual, exploring the wider social and political issues of the human condition.

Otherfield

Launched in 2011 and dedicated to re-imagining the possibilities of nonfiction filmmaking, Otherfield is a grassroots gathering of non-fiction filmmakers and film lovers who have come together to create a space where we can discuss, share and support one another through the creative processes, ethics, politics and well being needed in our field of making, away from industry pressure. Our aim is to empower through dialogue and bring together filmmakers from all walks of life to listen, learn and grow in an environment which is fun, safe and away from the big smoke.

Tickets are on sale for this year’s edition which will be taking place from 1 – 3 August 2025 at Laughton Lodge, East Sussex.

Ticket link: https://www.otherfield.uk/

The screening on 3 May will be introduced by Tony Rayns.

Feature debut from Eddie Fong with fiercely feminist and erotic New Wave take on the classical Chinese historical drama. Produced by the Shaw Brothers, the film is a provocative exploration of passion and oppression, which won awards for its gorgeous art direction and a slew of nominations for its score and cast.

Yu Xuanji, a freethinking young scholar, becomes a Taoist priestess to avoid the traditional roles designated to her as a woman by the society during the Tang Dynasty. However, while this allows Yu to continue her studies and to achieve fame as a poet, her affairs with a wandering swordsman and her maid gradually lead her to scandal and self-destruction. Turning the usual gender roles on their heads, the film is powerful tale of desire and rebellion that plays out against a backdrop of sensual visual poetry. 

This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. Courtesy of Celestial Pictures Limited. In Cantonese with Chinese and English subtitles.

Our screening on Friday 23 May will be introduced by MINT Film Festival co-director Dr. Carol Rennie. The screening on 27 May will be introduced by MINT co-curator Wenqi Zhang.

Chinese writer-director Lou Ye (Summer Palace, Suzhou River) recalls the COVID lockdown via a hybrid of documentary, web videos, and fragments from his past films, spinning a powerful docufiction out of a nation’s collective trauma.

In 2019, filmmaker Mao Xiaorui and his team discover fascinating old footage from a project abandoned 10 years earlier. This unfinished work (reminiscent of Lou’s acclaimed Spring Fever) brings back nostalgic images of the past. Hoping to realise a project dear to him, Xiaorui reunites his original crew to complete it. But their efforts are disrupted by the onset of COVID-19 in Wuhan, forcing the group into lockdown.

The Garden Cinema View:

Lou Ye’s latest is slippery, ever shapeshifting, meta-docufiction that refracts a variety of early pandemic experiences. Initially an entirely believable depiction of a filmmaker’s attempt to recover and restart his lost film (mirroring Lou’s own motives almost exactly), before morphing into a kind of post-apocalyptic thriller as Wuhan locks down at frightening speed. Ultimately An Unfinished Film weaves in real-life media to present a very moving return to some emotional high and low points of that time. Whilst destined to never finish his intended film, Lou demonstrate how art can be so effective as an emotional memory container and generator for shared moments of trauma.

Mint in Cinemas: The UK Release of An Unfinished Film by Lou Ye is a women-led Chinese cinema release project, presented by MINT Chinese Film Festival (MINT CFF) with the support of the BFI, awarding funds from the National Lottery.

Follow MINT CFF on:

 Instagram: @mintchinesefilmfestival

 Xiaohongshu: @薄荷紫华语电影节

For more info, please visit their website:

 www.unicornscreening.com  

Introduction by festival director Marketa Uhlirova & fashion curator Isabella Coraça.

Inspired by the dialectical montage of Soviet cinema, this programme stages a visceral collision between two opposing views of fashion: as sublime allure, and as a global industry rooted in extraction and violence. Featuring a sequence of short films produced between 1910 and 1950, Animal Matters juxtaposes glamorous garments and accessories crafted from skins, furs and feathers with newsreels exposing the hunting and processing of animal materials, also including human hair. This deliberate contrast, designed to unsettle, forces fashion’s disconnected narratives to sit side by side, illuminating what is typically obscured. The programme culminates in a lighter note with the recently restored film The Dancing Fleece, a charming ballet-fashion film commissioned by the British wool industry in 1950.

The silent shorts will be accompanied with live music by Stephen Horne

Content warning: This content includes images of dead animals and scenes involving animal skins, which may be distressing for some viewers.

The New Fashion: Rattlesnake Skin Footwear (La Nueva Moda: Calzado de Piel del Serpiente de Cascabel)

USA, 1918. Dir. Unknown (Gaumont America), 45sec

The Snake Leather Industry (De Slangenlederindustrie)

The Netherlands, 1925. Dir. Unknown (Pathé Amsterdam), 4min44sec

A Fitting at the Furrier Henri Vergne by Miss Varesca (Un Essayage Chez le Fourreur Henri Vergne par Mlle. Varesca)

France, 1913. Dir. Unknown, 40sec

Clothing Factory, Česká Kamenice (Ošacovací závody, Česká Kamenice)

Czechia, 1928. Dir. Unknown, 6min (clips)

Untitled

France, c.1915. Dir. Unknown, 2min1sec

Paris Fashions: Hats of the House of Francine Arnould

France, 1912. Dir. Unknown, 1min17sec (clip)

Paris Fashions: Latest Creations in Hair Dressing

France, c.1912. Dir. Unknown, 13secs (clip)

Hunting for Egret Feathers in Africa (Chasse a l'aigrette en Afrique)

France, 1911. Dir. Alfred Machin (Pathé), 5min17sec

Untitled (Birds of Paradise)

France, c.1925. Dir. Unknown (Pathé), 8min22sec

Hair and Frills (Cheveux et Chichis)

France, 1911. Dir. Unknown (Pathé), 4min30sec

The Dancing Fleece

UK, 1950. Dir. Frederick Wilson, 20min

Newly restored in 4K from 35mm nitrate Technicolor film elements preserved by the BFI National Archive

A delightful blend of promotional film and avant-garde dance, this vivid Technicolor production celebrates British wool manufacturing through every stage of its journey. Commissioned by the National Wool Textile Export Corporation and costumed by Norman Hartnell – then a rising star in British couture – the film juxtaposes meticulous, tactile close-ups of wool yarns and fabrics with Lotte Reiniger’s animations and expressive dance choreographies (including a sheep ballet). The film’s dreamlike, quasi-surrealist aesthetic unfolds through scenes where mannequins are ritualistically dressed. Various sequences highlight wool’s transformation: shearing, spinning, dyeing, and weaving, culminating in a glamorous fashion show finale.

With thanks to the BFI National Archive.

All That Is Solid: the third Animate OPEN sets out to celebrate, subvert and confound expectations of what animation can be.

The fifteen short films, selected from an international open call, are from Austria, Belgium, England, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Scotland, South Korea, the USA and Wales. They explore subjects that range from intimate, personal stories to wider geopolitical events, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine, and the climate crisis. They consider the places we call home, and our need to connect with other humans, animals and nature. The diverse animation techniques represented include photo cut-out, Risograph, kitchen lithography, timelapse, charcoal, pinscreen, 3D, stop motion, and hand-drawn on paper.

Running Order:

High Street Repeat, Laurie Hill and Osbert Parker, 4 mins 25 secs, 2023, UK

In The Garden: Giggles In The Greenery, Dominica Harrison, 4 mins 34 secs, 2024, UK

Silent Panorama, Nicolas Piret, 5 mins 9 secs, 2024, Belgium

NATURA 2040, Hantao Li, 11 mins 5 secs, 2024, UK

TWENTYTИƎWT, Max Hattler, 7 mins, 2023, Hong Kong        

Dull Spots of Greenish Colours, Sasha Svirsky, 10 mins 32 secs, 2024, Germany

Raining through my bones,Meghana Bisineer, 5 mins, 2022, USA

Noggin, Case Jernigan, 7 mins 10 secs, 2024, USA

Liminal Roots, Aliyah Harfoot, 4 mins 20 secs, 2024, UK

Contradiction of Emptiness, Irina Rubina, 3 mins 6 secs, 2024, Germany        

FLORE, Emily Sasmor, 2 mins 12 secs, 2022, USA

Pigeon Holding, Olivia Dugdale, 1 min 41 secs, 2023, UK

I Am a Horse, Chaerin Im, 7 mins 58 secs, 2022, South Korea

Adulting, James Duesing, 8 mins 10 secs, 2024, USA

Mokosh, Anna Dudko, 4 mins 45 secs, 2023, Austria

Animate champions experimentation in animation. Our mission is to engage the public with the creativity and craft of the artform. We do this through supporting artists to create thought provoking projects, engaging with audiences across digital and physical contexts, and promoting critical debate.

animateprojects.org

Some of the films deal with issues that may be sensitive or distressing to some viewers.

Content includes:

Depictions of emotional distress, intense situations, nudity, racism, and COVID-19 lockdown; discussion of trauma, mental health, depression, anxiety, war, torture, death, illness, sex, animal injury and the Ukraine invasion.

Some films include flashing images or stroboscopic effects, intense soundtracks, sudden loud sounds and startling visual effects.

Viewer discretion is advised.

Nina is a skilled obstetrician at a maternity hospital in Eastern Georgia. After a tragedy strikes in the delivery room, the grief stricken father demands an inquiry into her methods. The resulting scrutiny threatens to bring to light Nina’s other, secret job - driving, through the stunningly beautiful countryside, to the village homes of pregnant girls and women to provide unsanctioned abortions – and to destroy the work that is the only source of meaning in her life.

Dea Kulumbegashvili's highly anticipated second feature won the Special Jury Prize at Venice Film Festival and reunites Kulumbegashvili with key collaborators from her debut feature Beginning (2020), including award-winning actors Ia Sukhitashvili and Kakha Kintsurashvili.

The Garden Cinema View:

April is a daring and challenging film that boldly experiments with visual language while tackling a difficult subject matter. Addressing abortion ethics and patriarchy in Georgia's obstetrics profession, it transcends straightforward narratives and reassuring closures.

Formally, the film draws inspiration from various sources ranging from Tarkovsky to Jonathan Glazer, and even The Substance, combining documentary elements with the grotesque. Its flow is intercepted by unsettling POV sequences featuring animalistic breathing and erratic environmental surveillance, creating a disorienting experience that is amplified by the magnificently eerie sound design by Matthew Herbert.

The most fascinating aspect of the film is its complex protagonist - sympathetic in her mission to help women access abortions, yet carrying unspecified emotional baggage that adds depth to her character whilst also provoking suspicion. This ambiguity makes explanations elusive and adds to the film's desolate charm.

To celebrate the launch of their new book Intimate Animation, Skwigly Editor in Chief Ben Mitchell and Dr. Laura-Beth Cowley have curated a programme of animated films that explore the sensitive, sensual - and sometimes saucy - side of animation. Based on the long-running Skwigly podcast of the same name, Intimate Animation tours the landscape of contemporary animated films that deal with themes of love, intimacy, relationships, anatomy and sexuality – and the incredible artists behind them. Following the screening there will be a panel discussion with participating filmmakers hosted by Chris Shepherd. Books will be available for purchase at an exclusive Bar Shorts discount. Films so far included in the programme are....

Le Clitoris (Dir. Lori Malépart-Traversy), Canada, 2016, 3:17

Hold Me (Ca Caw Ca Caw) (Dir. Renee Zhan), USA, 2016, 11:25

Venus (Dir. Tor Fruergaard), Denmark, 2010, 8:10

Salmon Men (Dir. Veronica L. Montaño, Manuela Leuenberger, Joel Hofmann), 2020, Switzerland, 6:06

Private Parts (Dir. Anna Ginsburg), UK, 2015, 3:34

Natural Disaster (Dir. Joseph Wallace), UK, 2014, 4:47

SUMMER'S PUKE IS WINTER'S DELIGHT, (Dir. Sawako Kabuki), Japan, 2016, 2:59

I'll Be Your Kettle (Dir. Tobias Rud), Denmark, 2021, 9:24

Soft Animals (Dir. Renee Zhan), UK, 2021, 3:35

A Love/Hate Relationship (Dir. Anna Ginsburg), UK, 2020, 1:08

Manivald (Dir. Chintis Lundgren), Croatia, 2017, 12:57

Master Blaster (Dir. Sawako Kabuki), Japan, 2015, 4:00

Northern China, 1999. The grisly discovery of several corpses is made in a small town. A bloody incident during the attempt to capture the alleged murderer leaves two police officers dead and another badly injured. The surviving officer Zhang Zili is suspended from duty; he takes a job as a security guard at a factory. Five years later, another series of mysterious murders occurs. Aided by a former colleague, Zhang decides to investigate under his own initiative.

Diao Yinan's Golden Bear winning third feature is a noirish thriller in drained colours which, whilst playfully alluding to the genre, also invites us into the lives of very ordinary people

In 1960, a young Irish woman named Edna O’Brien wrote a sexually frank debut novel, The Country Girls. She became a literary sensation, writing for The New Yorker, delivering provocative interviews, and authoring screenplays. Her success enraged her writer husband and made her a pariah in her

native Ireland, where her books were banned and burned. She would make her home in London, where she conducted numerous love affairs, hosted star-studded parties, and made and lost a fortune.

In July 2024, Edna passed away and this film provides a final testimony from her, aged 93, as she reflects upon her extraordinary life for filmmaker Sinéad O’Shea’s camera.

Granting the director access to her personal journals - read aloud in the film by the Oscar nominated Irish actress Jessie Buckley - and with additional perspectives offered from Gabriel Byrne, Walter Mosley and an array of renowned writers, Edna does not shy from any subject.

The Garden Cinema View:

This illuminating documentary deploys interviews, archive footage, and readings of Edna O’Brien’s memoirs to foreground her importance to literature alongside the appalling misogyny she suffered throughout her career. Whilst a deep analysis of her writing is not central to this study, there is a firm sense of O’Brien as a hardworking, principled, and resilient artist who faced relentless personal attacks and sexism, from the media and even in her private life. The centrepiece of the film is a remarkable interview with O’Brien, conducted shortly before her death in 2024, which shows her as spikey as ever, but with renewed empathy.

The screening on 21 April will be introduced by Chris Berry (KCL).

Among the most important films to come out of the Hong Kong New Wave, Ann Hui’s devastating Boat People focuses on the experiences of refugees forced to flee their country in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

A film with urgent contemporary resonance, Boat People sees Ann Hui documenting the hopelessness felt by many, and shows how the severity of life post-War led many people to take the dangerous decision to step into boats in hope of a better existence. For her fourth feature, which screened as part of the Official Selection at Cannes, the director takes a deeply humanistic approach to a harrowing and urgent subject.

Three years after the Communist takeover, a Japanese photojournalist (George Lam) travels to Vietnam to document the country’s seemingly triumphant rebirth. When he befriends a teenage girl (Season Ma) and her destitute family, however, he begins to discover what the government doesn’t want him to see: the brutal, often shocking reality of life in a country where political repression and poverty have forced many to resort to desperate measures in order to survive.

This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. Supported by the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office London. In Cantonese with English subtitles.

While scoring high-profile credits as a screenwriter (including The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark), Lawrence Kasdan made his directorial debut with this steamy, contemporary film noir in the tradition of Double Indemnity and other classics from the 1940s. In one of his most memorable roles, William Hurt plays a Florida lawyer unwittingly drawn into a web of deceit spun by Kathleen Turner (in her screen debut) as a married socialite who plots to kill off her husband with Hurt's assistance.

The screening on 28 June will be introduced by filmmaker and critic Jasper Sharp.

Seijun Suzuki's delirious 1967 hit-man film has drawn comparisons with contemporaries Le samouraï and Point Blank and influenced directors such as John Woo, Jim Jarmusch, and Quentin Tarantino among others.

The story of laconic yakuza Hanada (Joe Shishido), aka 'No. 3 Killer', the third rated hit-man in Japan who takes an impossible job from the mysterious, death obsessed Misako. Hanada bungles the hit and finds himself the target of his employers and a bullet ridden journey leads him to face the No. 1 Killer.

Shot in cool monochrome with beguiling visuals, Branded to Kill is an effortlessly cool crime film with a jazzy score that caused Suzuki to be fired by the studio's executives but is now rightly recognised as his masterpiece.

Alan Parker’s BAFTA-winning ganster musical Bugsy Malone might seem an unlikely idea for a film- a musical comedy set in the 1930s criminal underworld with a cast made up entirely of young teens - but it works brilliantly. 13-year-old Jodie Foster gives an incredible performance as Tallulah.

In late-20s New York, rival gangs led by Fat Sam (John Cassisi) and Dandy Dan fight to control the city. Bugsy Malone (Scott Baio) and his sweetheart Blousey dream of a new life in Hollywood but get caught in the – custard-filled – crossfire.

On Sunday mornings our Family Screenings are followed by a free activity for Children.

The screening is Pay What You Can, which means you’re free to pay as much or as little as you can afford. By paying for a ticket, you will enable us to keep offering Pay What You Can screenings to families struggling with the cost of living. Thank you

Bye Bye Brazil (Bye Bye Brasil) is screening as part of the retrospective celebrating LC Barreto: 60 Years of Brazilian Film Production. The retrospective is screening at The Garden Cinema and the ICA from 25 April- 10 May, in partnership with Instituto Rouanet and the Embassy of Brazil in London.

Carlos Diegues’ rollicking road movie follows a ragtag troupe of musicians, magicians and rumba queens across a country on the cusp of change. This Cinema Novo classic is an ardent love letter to the sights and sounds of Brazil—with music by Chico Buarque!

Cinema Novo godfather Carlos Diegues directed films that were an integral part of the cultural and sociopolitical struggles facing Brazil in the 1960s, particularly the country’s underexplored Afro-Brazilian heritage. One of his most essential works, Bye Bye Brazil concerns a motley crew of traveling performers (led by José Wilker, the devilish spirit of Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands) entertaining various audiences across Brazil’s northwestern Amazonian landscape. Accordionist Ciço (Fábio Júnior) and his wife Dasdô (Zaira Zambelli) join the rollicking caravan, leading to a string of adventures and good songs. Diegues’s low-key road movie-cum-musical captures the country’s changing times—both the myth and the reality of Brazil’s underdevelopment—with documentary-like specificity. Upon its release, Vincent Canby in The New York Times called it “a psychological inventory of a country on the verge of extraordinary economic and industrial development, a travelogue through a nation that doesn’t yet exist.'

Restoration courtesy of L.C. Barreto Produções Cinematográficas.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the film's director Pablo Aravena, hosted by Cultural Architect Kish Kash.

Young people took to the streets with political muralism all over Chile in the late 60s, at the same time that young people in New York were starting modern graffiti, and May 68 took place in Paris. Chile Estyle is a documentary film which explores the past and present of Chile's unique street art tradition, which comes from a remix of political muralism and graffiti, and has been part of Chilean cultural and political life since the 60s. The result is a visually arresting, informative, and entertaining film.

This film was proposed by our members Beatrice Webb, Anna Rose and Noelle Pogue, who writes: 'I love Cinema Paradiso, for more reasons than I can write!'

Giuseppe Tornatore's loving homage to the cinema tells the story of Salvatore, a successful film director, returning home for the funeral of Alfredo, his old friend who was the projectionist at the local cinema throughout his childhood. Soon memories of his first love affair with the beautiful Elena and all the highs and lows that shaped his life come flooding back, as Salvatore reconnects with the community he left 30 years earlier.

We will be screening the 174-minute director's cut.

Please note, the screening on Tuesday 22 April is our free members' screening, while the one on Tuesday 29 April is a regular public screening.

Let your little ones discover cinema through short films. The Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival is one of the largest short film festivals in the world. This is a special chance to see some of their favourite animated short films for children, in one jam-packed programme.

The films won't have any dialogue and are suitable for children 6+.

Mojappi -It's Mine! (Nijitaro, Japan, 2024)

Mojappi, a trio of naughty kids who live in the forest, just love being naughty. One day, they find out that their friends are baking pancakes! They will do anything to get those pancakes!

Hoofs on skates (Ignas Meilūnas, Lithunia, 2024)

In a winter wonderland two friends are having a blast ice-skating on a frozen lake when suddenly a strange and unfamiliar world cracks open underneath them: now they must learn how to deal with the otherness, not letting the fear rule.

La Légende du colibri (Morgan Devos, France, 2024)

A fire breaks out in the Amazon rainforest, and frightened animals leave their habitat to take refuge on the other bank.

The Night Tunnel (Annechien Strouven, Belgium, France, 2024)

After digging a tunnel on the beach, two kids from different sides of the world meet each other. Together, they dig their way to the North Pole, where they discover a magical way to return home.

Los Carpinchos (Alfredo Soderguit, France, Chili, Uruguay, 2024)

Hunting season has begun. A family of capybaras seek refuge in a chicken coop, but the hens don't trust them. The curiosity of the youngest members of the families will create a union with unexpected consequences.

Yuck! (Loïc Espuche, France, 2024)

Yuck! Couples kissing on the mouth are gross. And the worst is, you can’t miss them: when people are about to kiss, their lips become all pink and shiny.

On Sunday mornings our Family Screenings are followed by a free activity for Children.

The screening is Pay What You Can, which means you’re free to pay as much or as little as you can afford. By paying for a ticket, you will enable us to keep offering Pay What You Can screenings to families struggling with the cost of living. Thank you  

Please note, screenings taking place in our new Screen 3 will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

The Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival presents highlights and prize winners from this year's National Selection. The festival is one of the largest and most prestigious short film festivals in the world.

The films will be preceded by an introduction by the Clermont-Ferrand programming team.

Join us in the bar before and after for networking drinks.

FILMS SCREENING:

Papillon (Butterfly)

A man swims in the sea. As he does so, memories come flooding back. From his early childhood to his adult life, all the memories are connected to water. Some are happy, some glorious, some traumatic. This story will be the story of his last swim.

Annecy Animated Film Festival - Andre-Martin Award Winner - 2024

dir. Florence Miailhe | France | 2024 | 15min

Généalogie de la violence (Genealogy of Violence)

Without an apparent reason, a young man of North African origin, sitting in his car with his girlfriend, is violently searched by the police. Thanks to the use of modern techniques, such as 3D scan and AI, the film restores the experience of dispossession of one’s own body and the humiliation of the young man, witnessed by his incredulous girlfriend.

Grand Prix Winner - 2025

Special Effects Award (ADOBE) Winner - 2025

dir. Mohamed Bourouissa | France | 2024 | 15min

Mort d'un acteur (Death of an Actor)

One day, actor Philippe Rebbot hears on the radio news that he has been found dead. Even though he is alive and well, he can't stop the news from spreading.

Male Actor Award Winner - 2025

Fernand Raynaud Comedy Award Winner - 2025

dir. Ambroise Rateau | France | 2024 | 22min

Ni Dieu Ni Père (No God No Father)

This fiction documentary explores the intimate and unusual relationship a young man forms with the Internet. Where the absence of a father figure left him searching for guidance, he finds an unexpected mentor in Google.

Lab Competition Audience Award Winner - 2025

dir. Kermarec Paul | France | 2024 | 11min

Beurk ! (Yuck!)

Yuck. Couples kissing on the mouth are gross. And the worst is, you can't miss them: when people are about to kiss, their lips become all pink and shiny.

National Competition Audience Prize Winner - 2025

Cesar for Best Animated Short - 2025

dir. Loïc Espuche | France | 2024 | 13min

Please note, screenings taking place in our new Screen 3 will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

The Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival presents highlights from this year's international competition. The festival is one of the largest and most prestigious short film festivals in the world.

The screening will include an introduction by the programming team.

Join us in the bar for networking before and after the screening.  

FILMS SCREENING:  

Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

1993, Bosnia and Herzegovina. A passenger train is stopped by paramilitary forces in an ethnic cleansing operation. As they haul off innocent civilians, only one man out of 500 passengers dares to stand up to them.

dir. Nebojsa Slijepcevic | Croatia | 2024 | 14min

Are You Scared to Be Yourself Because You Think that You Might Fail?

Navigating the aftermath of top surgery, Mad grapples with emotional upheaval at home, supported by their partner and mother.

dir. Bec Pecaut | Canada | 2024 | 18min

Unspoken

1979. As volatile protests for Croatian independence break out across the city of Sydney, Croatian-born Marina is forced to expose a secretive love affair with her Australian boyfriend, as an escalating political storm spills into her childhood home with devastating consequences.

dir. Damian Walshe-Howling | Australia | 2024 | 21min

What if They Bomb Here Tonight?

Samir and Nadyn, a Lebanese couple, spend a sleepless night anxious and fearing an Israeli airstrike could shatter the glass walls of their home. With their children peacefully asleep, they battle with whether to flee or risk the worst and stay.

dir.Samir Syriani | Lebanon | 2024 | 16min

Last film TBC

Please note, screenings taking place in our new Screen 3 will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

The Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival presents the UK highlights from this year's edition. The festival is one of the largest and most prestigious short film festivals in the world, taking place in France with an audience of 200,000 visitors every year.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the film directors and networking in the bar.

FILMS SCREENING:

Progress Mining

Feed the monster, have a cup of tea, and if it's your first day - don't pay attention to anything peculiar in Sector 3. Nick shows a new worker around the crumbling Progress Mining Company, while Mary tries to get it shut for repairs.

dir. Gabriel Böhmer | United Kingdom | 2024 | 16min

milk

One filmmaker sets out on a journey to discover the mother she never knew.

BAFTA Award nominee

dir. Miranda Stern | United Kingdom | 2024 | 21min

Bunnyhood

Mum would never lie to me, would she?" Innocent Bobby discovers the answer to this question when she is surprised by a last minute trip to the hospital.

Cannes La Cinef Award Winner

dir. Mansi Maheshwari | United Kingdom | 2024 | 9min

A Bear Remembers

Local boy, Peter, is trying to find the source of the metallic sound that haunts the village. When he shares his footage with an old woman it sparks memories of a bear that roamed the hills during her childhood.

Canal+ Award Winner

European Film Award Winner

dir. Linden Feng, Hannah Palumbo, Zhang & Knight | United Kingdom | 2024 | 20min

Please note, screenings taking place in our new Screen 3 will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

Borrowing its title from the nebulous internet entity that has forcefully entered our daily lives in recent years, Cloud delves into the sinister undercurrents of modern society where digital anonymity fuels real-world malice.

The story centres on Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda), a factory worker in Tokyo who makes extra money reselling goods online under a pseudonym. After a successful haul, he quits his job and relocates to the countryside with his girlfriend, hiring a local young man to help with his reselling business. However, Yoshii’s seemingly idyllic life is shattered by mysterious attacks from unknown assailants, dismantling his peace as he discovers multiple enemies targeting him.

The Garden Cinema View:

Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns to select themes from his masterful Pulse (2001) with this slippery morality play on the seedy underbelly of internet reselling. Cloud revels in unpredictability and an ever-shifting tone (and even genre). A slow-burn pace in the first act, and the ratcheting tension recall something of the bleak chills of Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms. Then the mood snaps, perspectives switch, and Cloud morphs into an anarchic (sort of) action film. The overall effect might feel less joined-up when compared to Kurosawa’s best work, but events are tied together by a prevailing critique of exploitation, loneliness, and mob-justice. And there is a sense that, in his late 60s now, Kurosawa retains an uncanny knack of responding to the zeitgeist.

We’re all haunted – by lost loves, past selves, secrets and societal demands. In this dynamic programme, queer characters and communities dance with the ghosts that haunt them. Should they embrace spectral coexistence or fight for an exorcised future? This collection of short films is a call to action imbued with warmth and spectacle, from the playful tone and dazzling palette of Grandma Nai Who Played Favorites, to the tender surrealism of 302 and the cheeky rebellion of If I Were a Voice. Get ready to expose the truth, reject expectations, and defend what matters the most, with rhythm and style.

Curatorial idea by Lu Etienne and Gareth Mattey, as part of Up Next: Future Film Curators Lab 2024/25

Grandma Nai Who Played Favorites

Grandma Nai sneaks away from the peaceful afterlife after overhearing that her queer grandson is getting engaged to a woman.

Dir. Chheangkea | Cambodia, France, USA | 2025 | 19min

Thunder Bird

The reigning Mother of Myanmar’s Thunder Bird dance troupe reflects on her journey.

Dir. Yadanar Oo | Myanmar | 2025 | 16min

Farewell, Saranghae, Farewell

Hitomi's peaceful life is shaken when her girlfriend Naho's dream of becoming a K-Pop idol comes true.

Dir. Sunhye Hong | South Korea, Japan | 2024 | 26min

302

An officer cadet declares his homosexuality to the Singaporean army.

Dir. Leon Cheo | Singapore | 2024 | 16min

If I Were A Voice

Suspended from the choir, Ralph must figure out how to expose his corrupt school.

Dir. Denbert Tiamson | Philippines | 2024 | 20min

To launch our new Select Japan screening strand, we're paying tribute to the late filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda, who passed away in March, with his masterpiece, the flamboyently theatrical and subversively Brechtian Double Suicide.

Many films have drawn from classic Japanese theatrical forms, but none with such shocking cinematic effect as Masahiro Shinoda's Double Suicide. In this striking adaptation of a Bunraku puppet play (featuring the music of famed composer Toru Takemitsu), a paper merchant sacrifices family, fortune, and ultimately life for his erotic obsession with a sex worker.

Masahiro Shinoda was one of the last living links to both the Golden Age of Japanese cinema of the 1950s and the Japanese New Wave period of the 1960s. His films include Pale Flower  and Assassination (both 1964), the first adaptation of Shusaku Endo's Silence in 1971, and his glorious documentary of the 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics.    

This screening will be introduced by Select Japan curator George Crosthwait.

Entertaining Mr Sloane will be introduced by Brigitte Mayr and Michael Omasta from Synema Vienna.

Based on Joe Orton's stage play of the same title - which was labelled the dirtiest show in town - this screen adaptation tells the offbeat story of a brother and sister who take in a lodger and using blackmail, persuade him to join them in a perculiar ménage à trois.

Wolf Suschitsky considered Entertaining Mr Sloane as one of the funniest films he ever had the pleasure of working on, and rated the cast as among the best of what England had to offer.

Entranced Earth (Terra em Transe) is screening as part of the retrospective celebrating LC Barreto: 60 Years of Brazilian Film Production. The retrospective is screening at The Garden Cinema and the ICA from 25 April- 10 May, in partnership with Instituto Rouanet and the Embassy of Brazil in London.

A pivotal film from one of the key figures of Brazil’s Cinema Novo, Entranced Earth is alternately a rallying cry and a poetic account of political corruption, the systems that shape it, and the challenges of active citizenship in times of political upheaval. Made three years after the right-wing coup d’etat in Brazil, the film is set in the fictional country of El Dorado, in which a young intellectual attempts to chart a political path. First joining the extreme right, and then a party of the left, he ultimately finds dispiriting power dynamics in each. Shot by Luiz Carlos Barreto and unfolding in a mesmeric style that mixes bizarre, baroque imagery with realist formal maneuvers—something like the synthesis of Francesco Rosi, Buñuel, and Visconti—the film is a monumental work of political cinema that pushes its audience to examine its own role in civil society.

Winner of Best Animated Feature at the 2025 Academy Awards.

When a flood washes its home away, a solitary cat must seek refuge with a motley crew of animals (including a dog, a capybara, a lemur and a secretarybird), who gradually learn to get along in this endearing, Oscar-winning animation.

Gints Zilbalodis cements his position as a visionary director with this captivating, dialogue-free escapade, whose ambition and scope is breathtaking.

On Sunday mornings our Family Screenings are followed by a free activity for Children.

The screening is Pay What You Can, which means you’re free to pay as much or as little as you can afford. By paying for a ticket, you will enable us to keep offering Pay What You Can screenings to families struggling with the cost of living. Thank you

Please note, screenings taking place in our new Screen 3 will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

Four Days in September is screening as part of the retrospective celebrating LC Barreto: 60 Years of Brazilian Film Production. The retrospective is screening at The Garden Cinema and the ICA from 25 April- 10 May, in partnership with Instituto Rouanet and the Embassy of Brazil in London.

The screening will be introduced by the retrospective's curator Adriana Rouanet, Executive Director of Instituto Rouanet

Four years after the United States-backed coup d’etat in Brazil, freedom of speech was suspended and dissident intellectuals were rounded up for torture, death, and deportation. Bruno Barreto’s Oscar-nominated political thriller chronicles one of the most radical acts born of this period, in which a group of young revolutionaries abducted the United States Ambassador to Brazil, Charles Elbrick, and held him in the hilly neighborhood of Santa Teresa until the military government agreed to release 15 political prisoners.

Starring 2025 Oscar nominee and Golden Globe winner Fernanda Torres (I'm Still Here), Alan Arkin, and Pedro Cardoso as Fernando Gabeira, on whose 1979 novel/account O Que É Isso, Companheiro? the film is based, Four Days in September is an ultra-tense process movie and a complex, melancholic meditation—with a moving and haunting score by Stewart Copeland—on the everyday Brazilians who challenged and were ultimately destroyed by the dictatorship.

Nominated as Best Foreign Language Film at the 70th Academy Awards.

Restoration courtesy of L.C. Barreto Produções Cinematográficas.

Get Carter will be introduced by Brigitte Mayr and Michael Omasta from Synema Vienna, and is preceded by the short documentary, Wolfgang Suschitzky - Fotograd und Kamermann.

Legendary British star Michael Caine is Jack Carter, the London gangland enforcer who returns to his hometown of Newcastle to avenge his brother’s untimely death. Rarely has the criminal underworld been so realistically portrayed than in this 1971 masterpiece. Shot on location, Wolf Suschitzky's camera work bares unflinching witness to the bleakness of 1970s Newcastle and unremittingly depicts an atmosphere of decay and despair. Unsurprisingly, Get Carter's style influenced many gangster films to come but few come close to matching this classic.

Wolfgang Suschitzky - Fotograd und Kamermann (Joerg Burger, 2009, 22 min)

Joerg Burger, himself a photographer and cameraman, portrays Wolf Suschitzky’s eventful professional and private life. Stories, anecdotes, and memorabilia form the basis for a dialog with the versatile cameraman, whose liveliness and mischievous humour lend this short filmic portrait its special charm. A tribute to a great, all too modest man of cinema.

In India Donaldson’s insightful, piercing debut, 17-year-old Sam (Collias) embarks on a three-day backpacking trip in the Catskills with her dad, Chris (Le Gros) and his oldest friend, Matt (McCarthy). As the two men quickly settle into a gently

quarrelsome brotherly dynamic, airing long-held grievances, Sam, wise beyond her years, attempts to mediate. But when lines are crossed and Sam’s trust is betrayed, tensions reach a fever pitch, as Sam struggles with her dad’s emotional limitations and experiences the universal moment when the parental bond is tested.

The Garden Cinema View:

The spirit of Kelly Reichardt soars over this soothing yet disturbing trek through the woods. In particular, the hiking mysteries of Old Joy, as well as a Reichardtian camera which is always drawn to insects, foliage, and other quiet scenes of nature. Deborah Granik’s Leave no Trace is another (albeit more intense) touchpoint, as Good One also uses the wilderness as a canvas to explore a father-daughter relationship. It’s a lovely debut feature, and although the stakes are low, this allows small moments to ripple undisturbed.

Gutsy Film Festival celebrates the bold and original work of filmmakers living with hidden disabilities and chronic illnesses. This specially curated programme features a diverse mix of short films spanning a variety of genres. The 60-minute screening will begin with a brief introduction from festival founder Amy Sargeant, sharing the inspiration behind Gutsy and introducing the films. Join us afterwards for drinks in the bar - can't wait to see you there!

Gutsy is a film festival celebrating the work of filmmakers living with hidden disabilities and chronic illnesses. It’s a supportive, inclusive space to showcase creativity, share stories, and connect with others.

In the wake of the ban on women's football in 2014, the national team in Pakistan faced an uncertain and turbulent period. Despite immense cultural barriers, these determined players had fought for their place both on and off the field. The ban disrupted their progress, pushing players to seek alternative income sources and abandon their dreams. After 8 long years, in 2020, FIFA's intervention led to the formation of a normalisation committee, marking a fresh start for the team. Her Right to Play follows the journey of these athletes to the Olympic qualifiers. Fraught with intense training, struggling with injuries and with a desire to prove themselves, the story follows the women’s grit and determination in service of the sport and the flag.

The screening will be preceded by an Introduction and followed by a Q/A session (TBC).

18-year-old Totone spends most of his time drinking beer and partying in the Jura region with his group of friends until reality catches up with him when he has to take care of his 7-year-old sister and find a way to make a living. He sets out to make the best Comté cheese in the region in an attempt to win the gold medal at the agricultural competition and 30,000 euros.

The Garden Cinema View:

Louise Courvoisier's humorous and moving debut inventively entangles the complex craft of cheesemaking in France's Comté region with the labyrinthian process of maturing adolescence. The film's greatest strength lies in its sense of place, transporting us to the area with its lush green landscapes, ancient caseiculture traditions, and intimate portrayal of working-class youth. We become thoroughly immersed in this complex craft - a process equally challenging and rewarding, subject to countless variables and uncertainties.

Holy Cow's authenticity is further enhanced by Courvoisier's decision to employ her own family in set design and soundtrack creation, alongside her cast of first-time, untrained local actors. The story revolves around the testosterone driven and hard-headed Totore (an excellent Clément Faveau), who is gradually redeemed by allowing softness to penetrate his defences. Against a backdrop of the old ways, this untamed and charismatic protagonist simultaneously frustrates us and earns our respect.

While honouring the tradition of French social realism, Courvoisier refreshes the genre by finding poetry in this rural labour, while never romanticising its hardships and characters.

The screening on 27 April will be introduced by Dr Ruby Cheung (University of Southampton).

One of the most acclaimed works by Yim Ho, a leading figure of the Hong Kong New Wave, Homecoming is a thoughtful and moving reflection of an increasingly anxious time when the future of the then-colony was being negotiated as part of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, signed in 1984. Winner of six awards at the Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film and Best Director, the film was the first Hong Kong production to be shot entirely on location in the Mainland, giving many audiences their first glimpse of a China which had been closed to the outside world.

The film follows Shan Shan, a young businesswoman who returns to her small village in Guangdong in southern China after becoming exhausted by the pressure and materialistic life in Hong Kong. There she reunites with her childhood friend Ah Zhen, whose life is the opposite of hers, happily married and the headmistress of the local school, though the bond they shared in the past has changed due to the cultural gap that has arisen between them over the years. Exploring the real and imagined differences between the capitalist rat-race of modern Hong Kong and the peaceful and romantic nostalgia of Shan Shan’s Chinese roots, Yim Ho seeks to also find commonality and connection, looking to a shared past as well as an uncertain future.

This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. Supported by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office London. In Mandarin, Teochew and Cantonese with English subtitles.

Join us at the peak of springtime for a sticky & sweet event on Sunday 4 May, which is part of our Planting Seeds strand, and organised in partnership with The Wild Bee Co.

We'll start the afternoon with a honey tasting in the new Atrium Bar, where Moni Dajee (The Wild Bee Co) and Sameer Ghai (The London Bee Co) will take us on a journey through the changing seasons and vibrant flavours of the city, brought to life by their honey bee colonies across London and beyond. You'll also have the unique opportunity to savour honey crafted by the inspiring Women Beekeeping Initiative projects they support in East Africa - celebrating sustainability, community and the art of beekeeping across continents.

After the tasting, there will be a chance to purchase products from their pop-up shop, and you'll also receive a complimentary cocktail - made with their honey - to sip on during the screening of the visually spectacular documentary Honeyland.

Event timings:

14:00-15:30  Guided honey tasting

15:30-16:00  Pop-up shopping & honey cocktails

16:00-17:30  Screening of Honeyland

Tickets are £22 each, and include access to the tasting, a complimentary (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) honey cocktail, and an unallocated seat for the screening. They are restricted to 2 per member, meaning you can bring a friend, even if they're not a member.

The Wild Bee Co. have also generously provided us with a special discount code for their online shop - if you use the code GCVIP15 you'll receive 15% off items on their website (excluding workshops).

About the film:

In a deserted Macedonian village, Hatidze, a 50-something woman, trudges up a hillside to check her bee colonies nestled in the rocks. Serenading them with a secret chant, she gently manoeuvers the honeycomb without netting or gloves. Back at her homestead, Hatidze tends to her handmade hives and her bedridden mother, occasionally heading to the capital to market her wares. One day, an itinerant family installs itself next door, and Hatidze’s peaceful kingdom gives way to roaring engines, seven shrieking children, and 150 cows.

Some words from The Wild Bee Co.'s director, Moni Dajee:

The Wild Bee Co. is a female founded, owned and led company based in Surrey, which supports people, planet, and pollinators. Our bees are lovingly cared for in apiaries located in wild flower gardens, parks and rooftops located around London and Surrey. We dedicate a lot of time and energy to the welfare of our pollinator friends so we can harvest our honey in a sustainable and responsible way. By respectfully sharing the magic of the hive and planet, we can help reverse declining Honey Bee populations and help conserve the UK’s threatened pollinators.

Like Honeyland, we celebrate the strength and perseverance of women in the face of adversity. As a female of colour and guardian of bees, I’m passionate about supporting women beekeepers who face unique challenges. Beekeeping has traditionally been an all male-domain in African communities but we're here to change that! Having spent time in East Africa, I’ve seen first hand how self-sufficient initiatives in beekeeping can be transformative for women and their communities. A portion of all our sales go directly to empowering women beekeepers in East Africa. We're giving them the tools to create their own buzz - from equipment and bee suits to training and education.

These incredible women get the chance to gain economic independence, generate a self-sufficient income and become self-sustainable entrepreneurs through the skilful craft of beekeeping. This not only boosts status in the community, but also allows them to focus on what matters most - providing for their families with food, security, medicine and education, all while making a positive impact on the environment. You can learn more about this here.

In a deserted Macedonian village, Hatidze, a 50-something woman, trudges up a hillside to check her bee colonies nestled in the rocks. Serenading them with a secret chant, she gently manoeuvers the honeycomb without netting or gloves. Back at her homestead, Hatidze tends to her handmade hives and her bedridden mother, occasionally heading to the capital to market her wares. One day, an itinerant family installs itself next door, and Hatidze’s peaceful kingdom gives way to roaring engines, seven shrieking children, and 150 cows.

Honeyland is part cautionary tale, part intimate and compelling journey into nomadic beekeeping, told with breathtaking cinematography.

The film was nominated for Best Documentary at the 2020 Academy Awards and Independent Spirit Awards, and won the Special Jury Award for Impact for Change at the Sundance Film Festival.

The film is screening as part of our Planting Seeds season, which explores issues around nature and environmental activism. The screening on 4 May is part of a members' event that will include honey tasting.

Join us for a screening of Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train to celebrate the release of Jules O’Dwyer’s Hotels, the second instalment in Cutaways, a series of pocket-sized books co-edited by Erika Balsom and Genevieve Yue. Each Cutaways volume offers a journey through the history of cinema guided by a single motif or formal device. In Hotels, O’Dwyer unfolds how spaces of temporary dwelling are more than a mere backdrop to a film’s action: they actively scaffold the formal, aesthetic, and narrative possibilities of cinema. Among the eclectic array of films discussed is Jarmusch’s moody triptych Mystery Train, in which a hotel in downtown Memphis provides a common space and time for otherwise disconnected, wayward characters and gives rise to a reflection on race, labour, and belonging in America.

About the film:

Aloof teenage Japanese tourists, a frazzled Italian widow, and a disgruntled British immigrant all converge in the city of dreams - which, in Mystery Train, from Jim Jarmusch, is Memphis. Made with its director’s customary precision and wit, this triptych of stories pays playful tribute to the home of Stax Records, Sun Studio, Graceland, Carl Perkins, and, of course, the King, who presides over the film like a spirit. Mystery Train is one of Jarmusch’s very best movies, a boozy and beautiful pilgrimage to an iconic American ghost town and a paean to the music it gave the world.

Followed by a q&a with author Jules O'Dwyer (University of Cambridge) chaired by Erika Balsom (KCL). Hotels will be available to purchase before and after the screening.

Invisibility has often been a key survival technique for queer individuals, allowing them to blend seamlessly into a straight world by day, and build underground communities by night. But in an age when queer representation is increasingly spotlighted in the media, is all this visibility good visibility? From times when we need to make our voices heard, to moments when we choose to escape into metaphors and opacity, these short films examine the multifaceted and contradictory notion of queer visibility.

Curatorial idea by Emily Jisoo Bowles.

Listen to Your Love for Me

A Chinese immigrant in Paris clashes with his French boyfriend over immigration politics.

Dir. Kai Xu | China, France | 2025 | 23min

Three

A mother attempts to hide her daughter’s secrets from her new friends.

Dir. Amie Song | USA | 2024 | 15min

The Parisian in Bali Village

A Chinese girl’s obsession with Paris drives her parents crazy.

Dir. Bingxing Cen | China | 2023 | 15min

The Performance

A chorister at a church must make a difficult choice.

Dir. Claire Zhou | Netherlands | 2023 | 20min

Chaehwa

A mysterious child who needs sunlight to survive shows up at a school.

Dir. Hong Seung-gi | South Korea | 2024 | 21min

Our screening on Tuesday 5 August will be introduced by Lucy Bolton (QMUL).

A critical and commerical flop upon release in 2003, Jane Campion's giallo-infleced, erotic thriller is now considered a masterpiece of female desire and subjectivity.

Frannie (Meg Ryan) is a lonely but determined woman living alone in Manhattan, who becomes involved in a murder investigation following the gruesome slaying of a young woman in her neighbourhood. It soon appears that she may know more about the murderer than she thinks, after witnessing what could have been the prelude to the crime. Drawn to the homicide detective (Mark Ruffalo) investigating the case, she discovers the dark side of passion when she embarks on a risky and turbulent affair with him. But as the death toll rises, each victim getting closer to Frannie, she begins to wonder if her new lover is hiding a deadly secret.

Two of Hong Kong cinema’s most iconic leading men, Tony Leung and Andy Lau, face off in the breathtaking thriller that revitalised the city's twenty-first-century film industry, launched a blockbuster franchise, and inspired Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. The setup is diabolical in its simplicity: two undercover moles -a police officer (Leung) assigned to infiltrate a ruthless triad by posing as a gangster, and a gangster (Lau) who becomes a police officer in order to serve as a spy for the underworld - find themselves locked in a deadly game of cat and mouse, each racing against time to unmask the other. As the shifting loyalties, murky moral compromises, and deadly betrayals mount, Infernal Affairs raises haunting questions about what it means to live a double life, lost in a labyrinth of conflicting identities and allegiances.

Growing up can be a bumpy road, and it's no exception for Riley, who is uprooted from her Midwest life when her father starts a new job in San Francisco. Like all of us, Riley is guided by her Emotions:  Joy (Amy Poehler); Fear (Bill Hader); Anger (Lewis Black); Disgust (Mindy Kaling); and Sadness (Phyllis Smith). The Emotions live in Headquarters, the control center inside Riley’s mind, where they help advise her through everyday. This hilarious, exciting adventure story shows Pixar on top form. As well as being hugely entertaining, the film comes with a poignant message, helping us to understand our own emotions and face up to some of the challenges involved in growing up.

Some flashing lights sequences or patterns may affect photosensitive viewers.

On Sunday mornings our Family Screenings are followed by a free activity for Children.

The screening is Pay What You Can, which means you’re free to pay as much or as little as you can afford. By paying for a ticket, you will enable us to keep offering Pay What You Can screenings to families struggling with the cost of living. Thank you

Please note, screenings taking place in our new Screen 3 will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

The provocative Italian filmmaker Elio Petri’s most internationally acclaimed work is this remarkable, visceral, Oscar-winning thriller. Petri maintains a tricky balance between absurdity and realism in telling the Kafkaesque tale of a Roman police inspector (a commanding Gian Maria Volontè) investigating a heinous crime - which he himself committed. Both a compelling character study and a disturbing commentary on the draconian government crackdowns in Italy in the late 1960s and early 70s, Petri’s kinetic portrait of surreal bureaucracy is a perversely pleasurable rendering of controlled chaos.

Kids Fight narrates the story of Bilal and his friends who are struggling to survive drug addiction and poverty on the streets in Charrar Pind, one of the most dangerous slums of Pakistan. Here, Shaheen Gym, a charity MMA gym, opens, offering the children a way out of drug addiction and poverty. The documentary follows the children through 8 years of their childhood, and shows what is at stake at the brinks of survival, where MMA can be the very fight for the children’s lives.

The screening will be preceded by an Introduction and followed by a Q&A.

This heartwarming Indian drama is about the struggles of a loving gay couple, Kartik and Aman, who live in Mumbai. Their relationship comes under strain when one of them has a fling, resulting in a domestic crisis. Meanwhile, Kartik's parents also face a personal dilemma after they have an argument. Will these two couples ever be able resolve their differences - and can their relationships stand the test of time? A follow-up film to the acclaimed Evening Shadows, Kuch Sapney Apne sensitively explores what happens when relationships are challenged by uncomfortable truths. Boasting fantastic songs by acclaimed Indian composers and singers, this insightful drama explores love’s complicated realities.

Sridhar Rangayan is an Indian producer, director, and writer. For over two decades, he has consistently strived to give a voice to social issues in India through his films, writings, and public speaking. The Pink Mirror, Yours Emotionally, 68 Pages, Purple Skies, Breaking Free, Evening Shadows and Raja Bro are at the forefront of India’s emergent queer cinema movement.

Mathieu Kassovitz’s sensational second feature as a director changed the cultural landscape of French cinema when it landed at the Cannes Film Festival in 1995, winning the Best Director prize. It went on to become one of the defining films of its generation and a stone cold classic of 1990s cinema. Back in selected cinemas to celebrate its 30th anniversary

One of the great works of 1930s poetic realist cinema, Le jour se lève was Marcel Carné’s fourth collaboration with screenwriter and poet Jacques Prévert. In this compelling story of obsessive sexuality and murder, the working-class François (Jean Gabin) resorts to killing in order to free the woman he loves from the controlling influence of another man.

In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armour of fedora and trench coat can protect him. An elegantly stylised masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean‑Pierre Melville, Le samouraï is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture - with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology.

In celebration of the release of Paolo Sorrentino's (The Great Beauty, The Hand of God) latest film, Parthenope, join us on Saturday 3 May for a celebration of all things Napoli. Singer-songwriter Valerio Piccolo will perform a live music set in the Atrium Bar prior to the screening, accompanied by Salernitano pianist Matteo Saggese, who has collaborated with artists such as Zucchero, Pino Daniele and Giorgia. The performance will include Valerio's original song 'E si' arrivata pure tu', which is sung in the Neapolitan language and features on Parthenope's soundtrack, as well as other numbers from his new album, SENSO, which will be available to purchase on vinyl.

To ensure you don't go hungry (or thirsty) during the performance, our friends & neighbours from Vasiniko will kindly provide some delicious and authentic babà al rum, alongside some limoncello to transport you to southern Italy. Vasiniko are proud providers of the true Neapolitan experience in London, and their Covent Garden location is just a quick 10-minute walk from the cinema - an ideal spot to have some lunch or dinner before or after your next screening!

Event timings:

19:30  Doors open

19:45  Live music performance by Valerio Piccolo in the Atrium Bar

20:30  Screen doors open

20:40  Parthenope screening

23:00  Estimated finish

Tickets for this event are £17.50 for members, and £19.50 for non-members, and include access to the music performance, a babà al rum and a limoncello, and an unallocated seat for the screening. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide any alternative food or beverage for the baba al rum or the limoncello, meaning there will be no non-alcoholic substitutes available.

Please note that seating for the screening will be unallocated, and that the Atrium Bar, as well as the new Screen 3, will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

About the film:

Parthenope, born in the sea of Naples in 1950, searches for happiness over the long summers of her youth, falling in love with her home city and its many memorable characters. From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino comes a monumental and deeply romantic story of a lifetime.

About Valerio Piccolo:

Valerio Piccolo is a movie and book translator, writer, songwriter and singer from Rome. Since 2006 he has constantly performed in New York songwriters clubs, while in Italy he has regularly shared the stage with Suzanne Vega, for reading-concert performances of her poetry book, as well as performing as her opening act. He has released a number of albums, the latest of which is SENSO, an intimate exploration of the search of self and the everyday life. This album also features 'E si' arrivata pure tu', the original song from Paolo Sorrentino’s new film, Parthenope.

Website | Instagram

About Vasiniko:

The word 'vasinicola' means 'basil' in the Neapolitan dialect. It is an ancient term which derives from the Greek word 'vazilikon', which refers to another ancient terminology: 'vasilias', which means 'king'. Basil is a very important ingredient and a well known healthy herb with an amazing perfume, that represents the real Mediterranean cuisine. We have chosen the word 'Vasinikò' to aim of freshness, of summer, and intense aroma, like all our pizzas of our new London restaurant. We are committed to serving one of the best original Neapolitan pizzas in London!

Website | Instagram

In Toronto's multicultural heart, Canadian Latvian immigrants unite across generations in the “Daugaviņa” dance group to preserve their ancestral traditions through folk dance and journey to Latvia to participate in one of the biggest folk dance festivals in the world.

London Baltic Film Festival presents this special screening of More Than a Dance (Vairāk kā deja) on Latvia's Restoration of Independence Day, a significant Latvian National holiday commemorating the day in 1990 when Latvia declared independence from the USSR after being annexed and occupied by the Soviet regime for five decades.

Bi Gan followed the mesmerising Kaili Blues with this noir-tinged stunner about a lost soul (Jue Huang) on a quest to find a missing woman from his past (Wei Tang, Lust, Caution). Following leads across Guizhou province, he crosses paths with a series of colorful characters, among them a prickly hairdresser played by Taiwanese superstar Sylvia Chang. When the search leads him to a dingy movie theater, the film launches into an hour-long, gravity-defying long-take which plunges its protagonist - and us - into a labyrinthine cityscape. China's biggest arthouse hit of all time, the film took in more than £30 million in its opening weekend at the domestic box office.

Screening in the 2D version.

In the summer of 2001, in a small town in the Philippines, 16-year-old Andoy searches for his long-lost father: in VHS tapes. Together with his best friend Pido, a fellow film buff, he browses the local video store and attends communal TV viewing sessions; by watching movies together, the pair cement their friendship and gain moments of respite from the harsh realities of life. But for Andoy, video also serves to fuel his sexual awakening and emerging queer desire. When he befriends charismatic hairdresser Ariel and mysterious newcomer Isidro, Andoy begins to ask himself who he wants to be. Ryan Machado’s first feature is a dreamlike coming-of-age tale that uses magic realism to depict the teenager’s journey of self-discovery. It tenderly evokes the Philippines’ bygone VHS culture which is - like Andoy’s childhood - on the brink of disappearing forever.

Tagalog, Onhan with English Subtitles

The screening on 19 April will be followed by an in-person Q&A with the director Ann Hui, moderated by Tony Rayns.

Following her 'Vietnamese Trilogy', one of the cornerstones of the Hong Kong New Wave, Ann Hui took her career in a different direction, and began adapting literary works. The first of these was Love in a Fallen City, based on the novella by Eileen Chang, whose writing Hui had long admired and wished to bring to the screen, followed by Eighteen Springs (1997) and Love After Love (2017).  

Beginning in Shanghai during the 1940s with the Japanese invasion looming, the film stars Cora Miao as a divorcee who falls for businessman Chow Yun-Fat and follows him to Hong Kong, where they repeatedly separate and get back together against the tense backdrop of the Pacific War. A grounded and movingly humanistic exploration of relationships and the desolation of war, the film saw Hui widening her scope and developing her creative approach and voice as director, while attempting to remain as faithful as possible to Chang’s text.

This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. Supported by the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office London. Courtesy of Celestial Pictures Limited. In Cantonese with English subtitles.

Our screening of Sunday 3 August will be introduced by film journalist Darren Richman.

Inspired by true events, this rain-drenched sophomore feature from the Oscar-winning filmmaker Bong Joon ho blends true-crime with social satire and comedy in typically masterful fashion.

In 1986 Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, after two women are found raped and murdered, Seoul detective Seo Tae-yoon (Kim Sang-kyung) is brought in to help local detective Park Doo-man (Song Kang-ho) with the investigation. As more bodies are found, the pair realise they have a serial killer on their hands.

Our screening on Wednesday 17 July will be introduced by John Wischmeyer (City Lit).

The brilliant breakthrough film by writer-director Neil Jordan journeys into the dark heart of the London underworld to weave a gripping, noir-infused love story. Bob Hoskins received a multitude of honors - including an Oscar nomination - for his touchingly vulnerable, not-so-tough-guy portrayal of George, recently released from prison and hired by a sinister mob boss (Michael Caine) to chauffeur call girl Simone (Cathy Tyson, in a celebrated performance) between high-paying clients. George’s fascination with the elegant, enigmatic Simone leads him on a dangerous quest through the city’s underbelly, where love is a weakness to be exploited and betrayed. Jordan’s colorful dialogue and eye for evocatively surreal details lend a dreamlike sheen to Mona Lisa, an unconventionally romantic tale of damaged people searching for tenderness in an unforgiving world.

To celebrate 80 years since the publication of the first Moomin book we present Moomins on the Riviera.

Based of Tove Jansson's beloved Moomin characters, this delightful tales follows our Finnish favourites as they set off on holiday in France. In search of adventure, the Moomins, Snorkmaiden and Little My set sail for the Riviera. But the delights of the Riviera soon threaten our beloved group’s unity as they struggle to resist temptation.

Over at the Southbank Centre you can also visit the iconic moomin house. 

On Sunday mornings our Family Screenings are followed by a free activity for Children.

The screening is Pay What You Can, which means you’re free to pay as much or as little as you can afford. By paying for a ticket, you will enable us to keep offering Pay What You Can screenings to families struggling with the cost of living. Thank you

Please note, screenings taking place in our new Screen 3 will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

Socially awkward Muriel Heslop (Toni Collette) wants nothing more than to get married. Unfortunately, thanks to her oppressive politician father (Bill Hunter), Muriel has never even been on a date. Ostracised by her more socially adept friends, Muriel runs into fellow outcast Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths), and the two move from their nowhere town of Porpoise Spit to the big city of Sydney, where Muriel begins the arduous task of redesigning her life to match her fantasies.

The screening on 29 April will be introduced by Tom Cunliffe (UCL). Radiance Films, who released the film on Blu-ray, will have a pop-up stall at the screening. This is the first time the 2K restoration will be shown in a cinema in the UK.

Hong Kong New Wave pioneer Patrick Tam’s final film in the movement, and his last until After This Our Exile in 2006, My Heart is that Eternal Rose is a dark and dreamy ode to doomed love. Tam’s romantic take on the emerging heroic bloodshed genre throws impassioned melodrama into the mix, as well as plenty of action, making for an intoxicating cinematic experience.

Set against an expressionistic backdrop of nightclubs, stunningly shot by the legendary Christopher Doyle, the film stars Tony Leung, Kenny Bee, and Joey Wong as three friends caught up in the criminal underworld, whose love triangle leads to heartbreaking consequences and bloody shootouts in classic neo-noir style. Through their tragic tale, Tam explores the changing identity of a Hong Kong with one eye on an idealised past and the other on an uncertain political future, set to a glorious synth score and the music from the immortal Anita Mui.

This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. In Cantonese with English subtitles.

The screening on 1 April is in tribute of Leslie Cheung and will be introduced by Victor Fan (KCL). Radiance Films, who released the film on Blu-ray, will have a pop-up stall at the screening.

The screening on 13 April will be introduced by Tony Rayns, featuring Radiance Films Blu-ray pop-up stall as well.

Hailed as one of the very best films of the Hong Kong New Wave, Patrick Tam’s 1982 classic Nomad returns to the screen in a stunning new restoration, re-edited by Tam himself after having been heavily censored on its original release.

Starring the immortal Leslie Cheung in a breakthrough role, the film follows a group of youths in Hong Kong as they try to find their place in the world, flitting between their apartments and the beach, getting caught up in romance, politics, and gangs. At once colourful and cynical, the film is a mix of rebellion, burgeoning sexuality and culture clash, coming at a time when Hong Kong was still under British Colonial rule, though was looking both to China and Japan for its identity.

This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. Supported by the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office London. 4K restoration, in Cantonese with English subtitles.

On August 30, 1972, in New York City, John Lennon played his only full-length show after leaving The Beatles, the One to One Benefit Concert, a rollicking, dazzling performance from him and Yoko Ono. Director Kevin Macdonald’s riveting documentary One to One: John & Yoko takes that epic musical event and uses it as the starting point to recreate eighteen defining months in the lives of John and Yoko.

By 1971 the couple was newly arrived in the United States - living in a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village and watching a huge amount of American television. The film uses a riotous mélange of American TV to conjure the era through what the two would have been seeing on the tube: the Vietnam War, The Price is Right, Nixon, Coca-Cola ads, Cronkite, The Waltons. As they experience a year of love and transformation in the US, John and Yoko begin to change their approach to protest - ultimately leading to the One to One concert.

The Garden Cinema View:

It been only a couple of months since the star-studded A Complete Unknown galvanised Bob Dylan as an enigma, floating above politics and counterculture in pre-Summer of Love NYC. Now in this documentary-concert-film-hybrid, Kevin MacDonald finds another musical icon embedded into the Greenwich Village scene, but one trying to shed his mythical image, to step away from being ‘your monument’ (as Yoko Ono calls him), and involve himself in grassroots protest movements.

This is a generous portrait of Lennon, told through archival material and some very powerful concert footage. To a degree, Ono feels like a supporting character here, but McDonald does transmit her talents as unique artist and committed activist, rather than the Beatles-disrupter that she is sometimes (at least in the 70s) dismissed as.

The TV show/adverts montage device that MacDonald deploys drags after a while, but the rest of the documentary provides an amazing snapshot of this period in history, and some spine-tingling musical performances.    

This magical retelling of the Orpheus myth turns the lyre-playing singer of Greek legend into a famous left-bank poet in post-war Paris. Fallen out of favour and lost for poetic inspiration, Orphée becomes obsessed with a mysterious black-clad princess who first claims the life of a rival poet, and then Eurydice, his wife.

With its unforgettable imagery - the dissolving mirror through which characters pass into the next world, the leather-clad, death-dealing motorcyclists, and Cocteau’s magical special effects, Orphée is a work of haunting beauty that follows the poetic logic of a dream.

Our screening on Monday 2 June will be introduced by John Wischmeyer (City Lit).

Arguably the definitive film noir, and featuring Robert Mitchum at his best. He plays an ex-private eye trying to escape his past until former girlfriend Kathie (Jane Greer) and gangster Whit (Kirk Douglas) drag him into a world of double-crossing, revenge and murder. First-rate performances, hypnotic cinematography, and an intricate script make this a classic.

Our screening on 11 June will be introduced by freelance curator Yuriko Hamaguchi.

In this cool, seductive jewel of the Japanese New Wave, a yakuza, fresh out of prison, becomes entangled with a beautiful and enigmatic gambling addict; what at first seems a redemptive relationship ends up leading him further down the criminal path. Bewitchingly shot and edited, and laced with a fever-dream-like score by Toru Takemitsu, this gangster romance was a breakthrough for the idiosyncratic Masahiro Shinoda. The pitch-black Pale Flower is an unforgettable excursion into the underworld.

Alessandro is an Italian writer-filmmaker making a film on the Narmada Parikrama—an age-old pilgrimage along the holy river Narmada. During the cinematic journey, Alessandro meets a village boy, Lala, who has fled home to secure dignity and land for his displaced peasant family. Lala is almost at the same age as his son Francesco, who lost his mother in the recent past. The narrative unfolds the story of two boys—one without his mother, the other without his motherland. Alessandro’s narrative takes a new turn as the river Narmada flows by.

The screening will be preceded by an Introduction and followed by a Q/A session (TBC).

Parthenope, born in the sea of Naples in 1950, searches for happiness over the long summers of her youth, falling in love with her home city and its many memorable characters. From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty, The Hand of God) comes a monumental and deeply romantic story of a lifetime.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with writer-director Nadia Conners (US), producer Rosie Fellner (UK), with actress Lois Smith, joining on Zoom.

The Uninvited is a story about the passing of time, love, regret and aging starring Elizabeth Reaser, Walton Goggins, Pedro Pascal, Lois Smith, Eva De Dominici and Rufus Sewell.

This comedic drama centers on Rose, a former actress now living as a stay-at-home mom, who as she prepares the house to host a party for her husband’s job an elderly woman named Helen arrives, claiming she has returned home. This unexpected encounter, along with the presence of other complicated characters from her past and present, creates a night of chaos and forces Rose to confront her insecurities and reflect on her journey as a woman. The film humorously critiques Hollywood's beauty standards while celebrating the complexities of womanhood and explores the themes of motherhood, and self-discovery in Los Angeles.

Reclaim The Frame is a charity that champions marginalised perspectives in cinema, connecting with audiences and communities through special screenings and events across the UK.

Reclaim The Frame events create a space to discuss what's under the surface of each story. Sign up for their newsletter to stay up to date on all their programming.

“First we'll have an orgy and then we'll go see Tony Bennett.”

Naked meditation, primal screaming, gestalt therapy and swinging… film curator Ranjit S. Ruprai and film critic Phuong Le introduce Paul Mazursky’s classic take on privileged West-coast Americans dabbling with new age lifestyles in the era of free love. An amazing Quincy Jones soundtrack, featuring Burt Bacharach, will get you in the mood for 1969 and the dialogue by Mazursky/Tucker is an utter delight. Join us for this special screening and feel free to wear your hippy beads!

RANJIT REWINDS

This screening coincides with the first series of the podcast Ranjit Rewinds that focuses on the actor, writer and filmmaker Robert Culp. This is the film that made Robert Culp hot property in Hollywood after a career in theatre and television, but he was not able to capitalise on it and remained a star of the smaller screen. Ranjit & Phuong will discuss Culp’s wonderful performance and even more wonderful outfits before the film.

SUPAKINO:

Ranjit S. Ruprai is an independent programmer and supporter of indie cinemas, film festivals and film clubs in London. Since founding SUPAKINO, he has been presenting friendly film screenings around fun and unusual themes including Turbans Seen On Screen, Bombay Mix double-bills and Midnight Excess late-night shows. Ranjit also speaks at film conferences, guest lectures at the National Film & Television School, and was Chair of the historic Rio Cinema, Dalston. Learn more at: supakino.com

A government scheme sees newly widowed Santosh inherit her husband’s job as a police constable in the rural badlands of Northern India. When a lowcaste girl is murdered, Santosh is pulled into the investigation by charismatic feminist inspector Sharma.

The screening on Friday 21 March will be introduced by Aashna Thakkar from Reclaim The Frame

The Garden Cinema View:

A UK made, Indian set police procedural, that slowly tightens into a troublingly dark film noir. Perhaps the best depiction of small town law enforcement corruption and ineptitude since Bong Joon ho’s great Memories of Murder, Santosh contains its own powerful statements of Indian misogyny and caste prejudice. Gripping and bleak, this is a mature film that never over explains, and is confident to tell an often elliptical narrative.  

This special screening of The Colour of Pomegranates ushers in the second season of LOST ART (formerly LONDNR) magazine's pop-up film club, Secret Ceremony.

This edition is all about Tarot, bringing you aesthetic and esoteric cinema experiences curated with the deck's most feared and revered cards in mind. The Colour of Pomegranates channels the power of the first card: The Magician, actualiser of desire.

Soyat-Nova, 18th century Armenian poet and troubadour is the subject of Segei Parajanov's notorious biopic. Absent of cohesive dialogue, Soyat-Nova's life is retold as a visual poem: an experience, not just another 'watch'. Re-cut and released in 1969, a year after its debut screening,  because the Soviet-run company which commissioned the film deemed it 'inaccessible', Secret Ceremony presents The Colour of Pomegranates in its original 1968 cut, in all its complex beauty.

Think of this viewing as a visual feast that offers a glimpse into the lost mythical traditions of Persia and Armenia.

Following this one-of-a-kind screening, we will be joined by writer, curator and fashion historian Amber Butchard, fresh from the resounding success of her latest exhibition at the Design Museum. This unmissable talk will provide context to the intricately woven story of fabrics and costume in this film.

20:20: Film Starts

21.50: Film Finishes

22.00: Talk with fashion historian, Amber Butchard

22:30: End!

Dress code: think chic in neutral tones, earthy colours, browns and golds (if this doesn't appeal to you, just black or white will do!)

To stay up to date with future screenings and equally unmissable events, sign up to our newsletter here.

Secret Ceremony is a pop-up film club, created by LOST ART (formerly LONDNR) magazine, a print and digital culture publication. Secret Ceremony shows supernatural masterpieces, mind-bending surrealism, cult classics, witchy fantasies, and sumptuous forgotten gems. Hosted in visually stunning spaces, every event has its own distinctive flavour, whether it comes from exclusive talks, custom cocktails, or complimentary aura readings.

Site & Sound is an event series that explores the relationship between architecture and film. Each session will feature curated clips and short films around a chosen theme, inviting discussion around particular elements of representation and the different techniques employed by filmmakers. Themes will examine a multitude of perspectives on architecture, ranging from varying building types to their individual component parts and how these are interpreted by the viewer as they see the world through the lens of the built environment.

The fourth iteration of the series will delve into the art of World Building, exploring the ways that writers, directors and set designers craft imagined landscapes that extend far beyond mere backdrops. They shape narrative and deepen our understanding of the worlds they inhabit. From towering dystopias to intimate domestic spaces, architecture in film becomes a storytelling tool in of itself - evoking emotion and placing characters within environments that both define and challenge them. Drawing motifs from the ‘real’ world, filmmakers reimagine familiar structures to construct new realms, offering us insight not just into their own stories but also our relationship with the spaces we move through every day.

Speakers include: 

Nada Maktari, designer and architect

Will Wiles, author and critic

Adam Richards, architect

Site&Sound is very grateful for the graphic support from TM (TsevdosMcNeil) who have provided the branding and identity.

The touching story of Stelios Kazantzidis, a child of a refugee family from Pontus, who managed to survive and grew up, thanks to his enormous talent, and against all social and personal difficulties. Music, love, family, friends, fishing, creativity, night bouncers, fanatics, and great conflicts, create this mosaic of his life.

Director's notes:

In this film, I aim to delve into the soul of a man who, through his songs, touched millions of others. His powerful and magical voice opened doors for him and those around him. However, family, love, disputes, and his immense popularity left little room for his own happiness. The film reveals the creation of some landmark songs for Greeks, songs still sung and danced to at gatherings. It also portrays a nation transitioning from poverty to a new, unbridled era, offering a glimpse into the roots of our modern-day evolution. Cinematically, the film is character-driven, focusing on their authenticity. As time progresses, changing decor and attire subtly depict a society filling with new materials and colors. We’ll revisit the settings of classic black and-white films and use modern cinematic techniques to portray the backstage stories of Greece's first music stars. The challenge is to reignite admiration for Stelios Kazantzidis as the hero of this cinematic journey.

- Yorgos Tsemberopoulos

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side. Starring Toshiro Mifune as the rookie cop and Takashi Shimura as the seasoned detective who keeps him on the right side of the law, Stray Dog goes beyond crime thriller, probing the squalid world of postwar Japan and the nature of the criminal mind

Realizing he is not long for this world, an aging 18th century poet (Jean Marais) travels through time in search of divine wisdom. In a mysterious, possibly post-apocalyptic wasteland, he has a series of enigmatic and surreal encounters with symbolic phantoms (Roger Blin, Brigitte Bardot, Marie Déa) with whom he muses about the nature of art and his own career. Ultimately, the poet strives to achieve his own rebirth as an immortal celestial being.

Paul Verhoeven's last film produced in the Netherlands before he created his Hollywood classics Robocop and Total Recall, invites us into the twisted psyche of Gerard Reve, a troubled writer whose life becomes entangled with mysterious women, murder, and the supernatural. As Reve spirals into a world of erotic desire and deceit, he must navigate the blurred lines between reality and fantasy to uncover the truth. Indulge your senses, challenge your perceptions, and join us for The 4th Man.

Wim Wenders pays loving homage to rough-and-tumble Hollywood film noir with The American Friend, a loose adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel Ripley’s Game. Dennis Hopper oozes quirky menace as an amoral American art dealer who entangles a terminally ill German everyman, played by Bruno Ganz, in a seedy criminal underworld as revenge for a personal slight - but when the two become embroiled in an ever-deepening murder plot, they form an unlikely bond. Filmed on location in Hamburg and Paris, with some scenes shot in grimy, late-seventies New York City, Wenders’s international breakout is a stripped-down crime story that mixes West German and American film flavors, and it features cameos by filmmakers Jean Eustache, Samuel Fuller, and Nicholas Ray.

On Friday 2 May, we’re teaming up with 5th Column Films to celebrate May Day. There will be Morris dancing aplenty from the Belles of London City, and a screening of The Ballad of Shirley Collins, which will be followed by a Q&A with directors Rob Curry and Tim Plester. The festivities will continue in the Atrium Bar, with live folk music from Oliver Hamilton of Shovel Dance Collective. 

Widely regarded as the 20th century’s most important singer of English traditional song, Shirley Collins is someone who was born to invoke the old songs. Alongside her sister Dolly, she stood at the epicentre of the folk music revival during the 1960s and 70s. But in 1980 she developed a disorder of the vocal chords known as dysphonia, which robbed her of her unique singing voice and forced her into early retirement.

The Ballad of Shirley Collins tells the story of a woman who helped shape the folk music scene, and whose return to music after years of silence is nothing short of inspiring. Deliberately eschewing a straightforward biopic approach, Rob Curry and Tim Plester’s follow-up to their award-winning documentary Way of the Morris, is a lyrical response to the life-and-times of this totemic musical figure. Granted intimate access to recording sessions for Shirley’s first album of new recordings in almost four decades, the film is a timely delve into the arterial blood, loam and tears of our haunted island nation.

May Day celebration schedule:

18:00  Doors open

18:15  Morris dancing from The Belles of London City

18:45  Screening of The Ballad of Shirley Collins + Q&A

20:45  Live music from Oliver Hamilton of Shovel Dance Collective

Tickets are available for £15.50 for members, and £17.50 for non-members. Booking for this event is only open to members during the 48-hour presale, while general sales will open on Thursday 10 April at 18:00.

Please note that seating for the screening and Q&A will be unallocated, and this event will be taking place in our new Screen 3 and Atrium Bar, which does not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

Alfredo Gasper, a dissatisfied Buenos Aires newspaperman (Carlos Cores), partners with Paar Liudas, a clever Hungarian refugee (Vassili Lambrinos) who needs money to bring his family to Argentina. Together they create a bogus correspondence school, exploiting the hopes of would-be journalists. As their scheme succeeds beyond their wildest dreams, a mystery woman from Liudas’ past sparks Gasper’s suspicion: his charming colleague may be playing him for a sucker. Soon Gasper finds himself plotting the perfect crime - but fate has many twists in store.

This adaptation of journalist Adolfo Jasca’s award-winning novel was acclaimed upon its release, earning top prizes in 1957 from the Argentine Film Critics Association for Best Picture, with Fernando Ayala named Best Director. American Cinematographer magazine listed Los tallos amargos #49 on its roster of the 100 Best Photographed Films of All-Time.

'Poets ... shed not only the red blood of their hearts but the white blood of their souls,' proclaimed Jean Cocteau of his groundbreaking first film - an exploration of the plight of the artist, the power of metaphor, and the relationship between art and dreams. One of cinema’s great experiments, this first installment of the Orphic Trilogy stretches the medium to its limits in an effort to capture the poet’s obsession with the struggle between the forces of life and death.

The screening on 11 April will be introduced by Tom Cunliffe (UCL). Digitally restored and presented in 2K, shown in the UK for the first time. 

Tsui Hark made an immediate impact and established himself as a cinematic visionary with his directorial debut The Butterfly Murders, a pioneering and ‘futuristic’ Hong Kong New Wave take on the traditional wuxia. Combining swordplay, mystery, science fiction, and more, Hark’s first film is breathlessly creative, packed full of stunningly fluid camerawork, gorgeously surreal sets, and hyper-stylised visuals.

Tied together by a dark sense of ironic humour, the film is narrated by Lau Siu-ming’s scholar Fong, who weaves the tale of his investigation into a series of murders seemingly committed by killer butterflies. Enlisting the help of a woman called Green Shadow and a martial arts clan leader, Fong is led to a deserted castle where a conspiracy unfolds, and where a mysterious figure clad in black armour seems to be on a killing spree. Groundbreaking in every sense of the word, the film sees Hark gleefully deconstructing the wuxia form, throwing in a dizzying array of cinematic nods to Hitchcock, spaghetti westerns, Italian giallo cinema, and Japanese crime thrillers along the way.

This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. Supported by the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office London. In Cantonese with English subtitles.

The Creative Space is a powerful 16-minute documentary that celebrates the strong community spirit at Creative Space Beirut School of Design, a non-profit fashion school offering free, structured design education to marginalised youth across Lebanon. Co-directed by Pia Brynteson, who is Content Editor at Dua Lipa’s platform Service95, and filmmaker and DOP Ramzi Hibri, the film offers an intimate look into the lives of students, alumni, tutors and founders as they navigate their creative journeys against the backdrop of a country in crisis.

Set in the wake of the 2020 Port of Beirut explosion, The Creative Space captures the ambition of a new generation of designers living in a country facing immense political, social and economic challenges. Through personal interviews and behind-the-scenes glimpses of life at the school, the film sheds light on the power of education, the urgency of creative freedom, and the fight to keep a vital initiative alive when government support for the arts remains non-existent.

The screening will take place in Screen 4, the dedicated screening space in the cinema’s Atrium Bar, and will be followed by a panel discussion with some of the young designers who feature, the school’s founders and the directors (more panelists to be announced). This event is presented as part of this year’s Shubbak Festival, which kicks off its 2025 edition with The People's Catwalk on 23rd May.

Event timings:

Arrivals + Welcome Drink: 16:30

Intro & Film: 17:00

Discussion: 17:30-18:30

Optional drinks & networking: 18:30- 19:30

The tickets are £5 and include a free soft drink, house beer or wine. Seating for this event is unallocated.

Design by Mohamed Gaber

Our screening on Thursday 26 june will be introduced by Jinhee Choi (KCL).

An eerie, foreboding hospital is the setting for this tense psychological thriller from one of the most acclaimed genre filmmakers of the South Korea Golden Age. An ambitious doctor, set to wed the hospital owner’s daughter, has designs on being chief surgeon. However, when his affair with one of the nurses puts those plans in jeopardy, he takes diabolical steps to ensure his plans aren’t thwarted. Kim Jin-gyu turns in an uncharacteristically menacing performance, while Moon Jeong-sook shines as the nurse who will not be silenced.

The Extraordinary Miss Flower brings to life the remarkable story of Geraldine Flower and the discovery of a suitcase full of passionate, heartfelt letters of love sent to her in the 60s and 70s that inspired acclaimed Icelandic singer/songwriter Emilíana Torrini to return to the studio and record an entire album of new songs.

Part film, part theatre, part fever dream, The Extraordinary Miss Flower takes the form of a series of specially designed performances of these songs by Emilíana and her band, combined with dramatic scenes and readings from the letters by well known actors and musicians (including Caroline Catz, Nick Cave, Alice Lowe and Richard Ayoade). The film captures the romance of a bygone era and Miss Flower’s extraordinary life - a life full of secrets and enduring friendships, of travel, adventure and love.

The Hour and Turn of Augusto Matraga (A Hora e Vez de Augusto Matraga) is screening as part of the retrospective celebrating LC Barreto: 60 Years of Brazilian Film Production. The retrospective is screening at The Garden Cinema and the ICA from 25 April- 10 May, in partnership with Instituto Rouanet and the Embassy of Brazil in London.

An adaptation of João Guimarães Rosa’s Sagarana—a haunting short story collection about people of the sertão in the southeastern Brazil state of Minas Gerais—Roberto Santos’s Cinema Novo western follows the mythical “hero’s journey” of Augusto Matraga (Leonardo Villar), a violent farmer who is betrayed by his wife and left for dead. After he is rescued by a pair of farmers, Matraga devotes his life to contrition until the opportunity for revenge arrives. Featuring a superb score by Geraldo Vandré, The Hour and Turn of Augusto Matraga is a lyrical revenge film that foregrounds faith and spiritualism.

Restoration courtesy of L.C. Barreto Produções Cinematográficas.

Like childhood, animation is full of wonder and simple pleasures. This carefully chosen programme for our littlest and most special audience contains 10 of the best, most recent wonderful short animated films, full of joy, from all around the world. There’ll be talking animals, seriously fun adventures and wondrous tales to spark those little imaginations.

For more information about the London International Animation Festival and our programmes please look at the website at www.liaf.org.uk

My Name is Fear

The fear that lives in your head wants to give an interview. Maybe you and Fear can become friends, or maybe there is a reason to be scared of Fear.

Germany 2021 Dir: Eliza Płocieniak-Alvarez 5 min

Swing

In a world of toys a wooden robot feels lonely. When another robot appears their relationship starts to blossom.

Spain 2022 Dir: Ignasi Tarruella 5 min

Bellysaurus

A tiny dinosaur dreams that she is a big scary dinosaur. When danger strikes, she learns it’s what’s on the inside that counts—literally.

Australia 2021 Dir: Philip Watts 8 min

Fox for Edgar

Edgar is not getting a lot of attention and affection from his parents, as they prefer spending time with their smartphones and laptops than with their son.

Germany 2021 Dir: Pauline Kortmann 8 min

Meta

Interconnection, form, function, flow: all these big ideas about change and growth sprout in playful ways when creatures shape shift and dance to the rhythm of discovery.

Germany 2022 Dir: Antje Heyn 4 min

The Adventures of Goar

An undersea explorer called Goar dives into the bottom of the sea to save her robot friend.

China 2021 Dir: Sergio Lu 6 min

Heartwood

Midge is hiking in the woods with her boring father. When she decides to leave the monotony of the hiking trail to set off on her own adventure, she makes a magical discovery.

UK 2021 Dir: Clara Schildhauer, Reyes Fernández 4 min

How Shammies Travelled

Hankie proposes to travel around the house with eyes closed. Space under the table suddenly turns into a dragon’s cave and the stairs into snowy cliffs.

Latvia 2021 Dir: Edmunds Jansons 6 min

Lost Brain

Every time Louise the crocodile sneezes, she loses part of her brain, until she cannot perform simple tasks and becomes trapped inside her own apartment.

Switzerland 2022 Dir: Isabelle Favez 6 min

The Smortlybacks Come Back!

In a barren world TamLin of the Little People travels with his herd of splendid smortlybacks in search of greener pastures.

Switzerland 2022 Dir: Ted Sieger 8 min

On Sunday mornings our Family Screenings are followed by a free activity for Children.

The screening is Pay What You Can, which means you’re free to pay as much or as little as you can afford. By paying for a ticket, you will enable us to keep offering Pay What You Can screenings to families struggling with the cost of living. Thank you

Please note, screenings taking place in our new Screen 3 will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

The OffBeat Folk Film Festival Presents: Folk Traditions: Old & New

A collection of films which explore Britain’s strangest folk traditions and the heritage culture surrounding them. The weird and wonderful world that we live in - tar barrels, Obby Osses and all.

King For a Day (Barbara Santi, UK, 2023)

Awake! (Sophie Austin, UK, 2023)

Ottery (Tom Chick, UK, 2015)

Holmie Day (Brian McClave, UK, 2024)

The OffBeat Folk Film Festival is a new celebration of British folk and working-class culture through film. Building on the success of OffBeat Folk Film Club, the festival showcases boundary-pushing documentaries, narrative films, experimental works, and music videos that explore Britain’s living heritage, traditions, and underground cultures.

Taking place from 12 to 18 May across London venues—including the Mildmay Club in Newington Green and Walthamstow Trades Hall—the festival brings together archive content and contemporary storytelling, contributing to a dynamic record of British life. Alongside film screenings, audiences can expect talks, performances, and Q&As with filmmakers.

The OffBeat Folk Film Festival Presents: Narrative Shorts and Beyond

Narrative shorts that celebrate the unique character of the British Isles and the people that live on them told through weird and wonderful stories.

Sea Coal (Graham Vasey, UK, 2024)

The Corpse Road (Joseph Daly, UK, 2024)

The Grove: Reveries of a Village Ghost (Simon Nunn, UK, 2024)

The Birdwatcher (Ryan Mackfall, UK, 2024)

Out of The Peat (Tabitha Carless-Frost & Theo Rollason, UK, 2024)

Gossip (Hannah Renton, UK, 2024)

Peter (Emily May, UK, 2024)

The OffBeat Folk Film Festival is a new celebration of British folk and working-class culture through film. Building on the success of OffBeat Folk Film Club, the festival showcases boundary-pushing documentaries, narrative films, experimental works, and music videos that explore Britain’s living heritage, traditions, and underground cultures.

Taking place from 12 to 18 May across London venues—including the Mildmay Club in Newington Green and Walthamstow Trades Hall—the festival brings together archive content and contemporary storytelling, contributing to a dynamic record of British life. Alongside film screenings, audiences can expect talks, performances, and Q&As with filmmakers.

The OffBeat Folk Film Festival Presents: Short and Sweet Folk Tales

An eclectic curation of shorts showing off Britain’s strangest and most wonderful folky stories. Britain can be a very weird place and the filmmakers of these experimental shorts know that all too well.

This screening will take place in Screen 4 in the Atrium Bar. The seating is unreserved.

The OffBeat Folk Film Festival is a new celebration of British folk and working-class culture through film. Building on the success of OffBeat Folk Film Club, the festival showcases boundary-pushing documentaries, narrative films, experimental works, and music videos that explore Britain’s living heritage, traditions, and underground cultures.

Taking place from 12 to 18 May across London venues—including the Mildmay Club in Newington Green and Walthamstow Trades Hall—the festival brings together archive content and contemporary storytelling, contributing to a dynamic record of British life. Alongside film screenings, audiences can expect talks, performances, and Q&As with filmmakers.

The OffBeat Folk Film Festival Presents: Tied To The Land

A collection of short documentaries that look at the connection and complicated relationship between people and place in the British Isles. The people who live and work on it.

Living With The Cuckoo People (Nick Fallowfield-Cooper, UK, 2024)

In The Veins (UK, 2024)

Wild Folk (Laura Clark, UK, 2024)

Without Bounds to Beat (UK, 2024)

This screening will take place in Screen 4 in the Atrium Bar. The seating is unreserved.

The OffBeat Folk Film Festival is a new celebration of British folk and working-class culture through film. Building on the success of OffBeat Folk Film Club, the festival showcases boundary-pushing documentaries, narrative films, experimental works, and music videos that explore Britain’s living heritage, traditions, and underground cultures.

Taking place from 12 to 18 May across London venues—including the Mildmay Club in Newington Green and Walthamstow Trades Hall—the festival brings together archive content and contemporary storytelling, contributing to a dynamic record of British life. Alongside film screenings, audiences can expect talks, performances, and Q&As with filmmakers.

Doc'n Roll presents the UK premiere of The Science of Ghosts. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Adrian Crowley.

Director Niall McCann’s observational drama centres on a well-known Irish musician, Adrian Crowley. While being interviewed by a film crew for his latest album, an interruption causes Adrian and the filmmaker to ponder - what would a film about his life be like? Could it ever really reflect who he is? Imagination takes him - and the audience - on a journey as he becomes a ghost visiting his own life, past and future. What emerges is a humorous and original take on the power of storytelling.

Francis Hodgson Burnett's classic novel is beautifully brought to life by director Agnieszka Holland, cinematographer Roger Deakins and excuitve producer Francis Ford Coppola. Mary Lennox is an orphan sent to live with her uncle at his Yorkshire mansion that is full of secrets. She is looked after by the housekeeper (Maggie Smith) and soon discovers a cousin she never knew she had and a neglected garden she is determined to bring back to life.

On Sunday mornings our Family Screenings are followed by a free activity for Children.

The screening is Pay What You Can, which means you’re free to pay as much or as little as you can afford. By paying for a ticket, you will enable us to keep offering Pay What You Can screenings to families struggling with the cost of living. Thank you

Please note, screenings taking place in our new Screen 3 will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

The Small World of Sammy Lee will be introduced by Brigitte Mayr and Michael Omasta from Synema Vienna.

Sammy Lee, compère of a shabby Soho gentlemen's club, and inveterate poker player, needs to raise dosh within five hours to pay off his gambling depth.

Wolf Suschitzky's camera closely follows Sammy's attempt to save his neck from the wrath of his bookie, through Soho, to the East End, and back. The film is not only a great black comedy but document of a London long gone.

The screening on 18 April will be preceded by a reception at the cinema's Atrium Bar and followed by an in-person Q&A with the director Ann Hui, moderated by Chris Berry (KCL).

Timings:

15:45 - 17:00  Reception with complimentary drinks

17:00 - 18:35  Screening of The Story of Woo Viet

18:35 - 19:20  Q&A with Ann Hui, moderated by Chris Berry (KCL)

Ann Hui began her career shining a light on the plight of the illegal Vietnamese immigrants who had been flocking to Hong Kong since the mid-1970s with the 1978 TV drama Below the Lion Rock: The Boy From Vietnam, which she followed with her third feature The Story of Woo Viet in 1981, before completing her ‘Vietnam Trilogy’ in 1982 with Boat People. Deeply humanistic and compassionate, while never shying away from the harshness of reality, the first two entries in the trilogy both follow the stories of the immigrants themselves, and the increasing controversy around the issue in Hong Kong.

This theme was applied in The Story of Woo Viet, with Chow Yun-Fat’s Vietnamese immigrant forced to become a Triad assassin to protect the woman he loves, which combines action, romance and character drama, and through its tale of refugees also meditates on the experiences of the Hong Kong diaspora overseas.

This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. Supported by the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office London. In Cantonese with English subtitles.

Introduction by Isabella Coraça and live music by leading silent film accompanist Stephen Horne.

An adaptation of the Madame Butterfly story, The Toll of the Sea presents a tale of cross-racial love and loss set amidst the opulent gardens of an exoticised China. The film follows Lotus Flower (played by Anna May Wong in her first leading role), a young Chinese woman who falls in love with an American traveler. Costume and colour are used to highlight a view of East as a land of pleasure and sensuality. Lotus Flower’s vibrant silk dresses in red and green, enhanced by the ‘natural’ process of two-colour Technicolor, connect her Chinese identity and feminine beauty to the natural surroundings. In a failed attempt to assimilate, Lotus Flower shifts to muted Western fashion. Ultimately, though, clothing is unable to change who she is, and she resigns herself to her tragic fate in an exuberantly embroidered silk robe.

Content warning: includes exoticising images that may be culturally insensitive or offensive.

In the 50 years since its original release, The Wicker Man has achieved true cult status as one of the most revered horror films in cinema history, despite a difficult production and heavily cut original theatrical release. The search for the fabled missing scenes has only added to the myth surrounding a film that still inspires filmmakers to this day. The Wicker Man was directed by Robin Hardy and has a cast featuring Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland, and Diane Cilento. The film tells the chilling story of a puritan Police Sergeant who arrives on a remote Scottish Island in search of a missing girl only to find the Pagan locals claiming she never existed. The Wicker Man is also much celebrated for its soundtrack, composed by Paul Giovanni and overseen by Gary Carpenter, featuring haunting reworkings of traditional British folk songs.

In a world plagued by genocides, the climate crisis, and the erasure of cultures, this short film programme explores how queer communities continue to imagine possible futures ripe with solidarity and abundance. From queer shamanism to radical care between HIV-positive bodies, ritual and performance become tools to remake the universe. Because to be queer is to refuse to comply with the world as it is, thereby hoping, dreaming, and forging worlds that are not yet born.

This screening is followed by a poetry reading by Sarah Lasoye

Curatorial idea by Arshootti and Xinyi Wang as part of Up Next: Future Film Curators Lab 2024/25

Filament Fortune

HIV-positive bodies stage a reverse-arranging of flowers.

Dir. Beau Gomez | multiple origins | 2024 | 10min

JuJu vs The Possibilities of Life, Love and Death

A chance encounter leads to a trans woman speculating on future possibilities.

Dir. Htet Aung Lwyn | Myanmar | 2024 | 15min

High Tide or Low Tide?

A closeted high schooler takes part in a poetry contest.

Dir. Gio Franco Amarillo Alpuente | Philippines | 2024 | 20min

Hide and Seek

Queer utopias are brought to life through 3D animation.

Dir. Junjie Xu | UK | 2024 | 6min

Baradiya

An indigenous trans woman grapples with becoming a Babaylan, a Filipino queer shaman.

Dir. Gab Mejia, Miko Reyes, David Loughran, Antonio Lantong Dagoc Jr. | Philippines | 2024 | 30min

Discussing the film afterwards - with host Gareth Evans - will be Preisner himself, on-screen live from Greece, with interpretation in person by the composer's own interpreter of choice, Barbara Howard.

While it is clearly evident that a fine soundtrack can redeem a terrible film from complete oblivion and lift a mediocre one to a higher rung, certain scores operate altogether differently. A great composer for the cinema not only produces music of the highest calibre; their work becomes indivisible from our experience and understanding of the film. Their music and songs inform, affect and even direct the course of the narrative and the lives of the characters. Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner is one such artist. Celebrating his 70th birthday this 20th May, Preisner has scored numerous films - by directors including Agniezka Holland, Louis Malle and Thomas Vinterberg - for more than 40 years. But it is his enduring creative relationship with the late, great Krzysztof Kieślowski that has marked him out as one of the medium's greatest. From No End to the Three Colours Trilogy, Preisner's music has crafted an unforgettable atmosphere of startling beauty, profound melancholy and compelling ambiguity. In 1991's The Double Life of Véronique, the role of Preisner's music goes further, playing a key part in the film's storyline and the protagonist's psychology.

A haunting tale of love, loss and intangible association across time and place, it weaves the stories of two young women - doubles perhaps - whose lives interweave in ways that cannot be easily defined. Hal Hinson, writing for The Washington Post, observed that "the film takes us completely into its world, and in doing so, it leaves us with the impression that our own world, once we return to it, is far richer and (more) portentous than we had imagined." That said, The less one knows in advance about this stunning work of art - immaculately filmed by Sławomir Idziak - the better, suffice to say that it launched the career of its luminous leading actor Irène Jacob, who won the Best Actress Award at Cannes in 1991 for her performance.

With thanks to Eliza Dziedzic.

In celebration of the Year of the Snake, this programme coils itself around the serpent as a symbol of transformation and duality. Across five short films, propriety and convention are shed like scales as characters emerge into strange new expressions of queerness. From melancholic relationship drama to monochrome queer myth, Japanese drag queens to Chinese folktales, vulnerable new skins ripple, shift, and struggle into wondrous new shapes. These stories celebrate the unending process of becoming, thereby honouring the slippery and sacred queer experience.

This screening is preceded by a drag performance by Vee Dagger

Curatorial idea by Alisa Ikenaga and Vee Dagger, as part of Up Next: Future Film Curators Lab 2024/25

Kokuhaku

An actor returns to the past to re-live his most intimate memories.

Dir. Adrià Guxens | Spain | 2024 | 10min

The Deity Yet to Be Seen

A serpent shifts between various genders and identities.

Dir. Junn Zhou | Netherlands | 2024 | 14min

J is for Just an Afternoon Thunderstorm

A casual couple’s outing, a mysterious encounter, and an afternoon thunderstorm.

Dir. Yung Hsiang Chuang | Taiwan | 2023 | 22min

Shé Snake

The top violinist of an elite London orchestra faces her demons.

Dir. Renee Zhan | UK | 2025 | 15min

The Gossips of Cicadidae

A boy falls in love with a mythological humanoid creature.

Dir. Vahn Leinard C. Pascual | Philippines | 2022 | 18min

In this irresistible blend of ethnography and poetry, artist Ulrike Ottinger meditates on the lives of those who live in Japan’s Echigo region where the snow often lies several feet deep well into May. If in the popular imagination the natural and the human are frequently thought of as binaries, here the locals have developed their own customs, deftly adjusting to their austere living conditions. With the seasons comes a slowing down of time; women spend their days weaving reems of chirimen – a plain-woven silk crêpe – which is laid out under the evening light to flatten. Through the escapades of two Kabuki performers following in the footsteps of Bokushi Suzuki, who in the mid-19th century wrote Snow Country Tales, the film marinates in the richness of a phantasmagoric, magical world.

Winner of the 2022 Sundance Grand Jury Prize, Utama frames climate change as a process of quiet devastation. Set in the arid Bolivian Altiplano, the film portrays an elderly Quechua couple, Virginio and Sisa (played by non-professional actors José Calcina and Luisa Quispe), who embody an ancestral bond to their land. We follow them through a relentless drought, which jeopardises their traditional way of life: raising llamas, presumably for wool production. While Utama scarcely depicts the processing of fibre, it emphasises the materiality of land and of traditional clothing face to face with environmental collapse and the erosion of cultural heritage. With stunning cinematography framing cracked earth and vast skies as both characters and potent metaphors for ecological fragility, Utama positions environmental harm not as a dramatic event but as a prolonged loss – of water, sustenance, and the tactile heritage embodied by indigenous crafts.

A treasure of Mexico’s cinematic golden age, this deliriously plotted blend of gritty crime film, heart-tugging maternal melodrama, and mambo musical is a dazzling showcase for iconic star Ninón Sevilla. She brings fierce charisma and fiery strength to her role as a rumbera - a female nightclub dancer - who gives up everything to raise an abandoned boy, whom she must protect from his ruthless gangster father. Directed at a dizzying pace by filmmaking titan Emilio Fernández, and shot in stylish chiaroscuro by renowned cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa amid smoky dance halls and atmospherically seedy underworld haunts, Victims of Sin is a ferociously entertaining female-powered noir pulsing with the intoxicating rhythms of some of Latin America’s most legendary musical stars.

Step into the eerie, atmospheric world of Vampyr with Video Bazaar at the Garden Cinema on the 26th of April. This extra special screening of Carl Theodor Dreyer's silent horror will feature a live score from London experimental musician, Ekstasis.

Vampyr is a 1932 horror film directed by Carl Dreyer, who is renowned for his masterful visual storytelling and the evocation of deep and dreamlike tension. Unlike traditional vampire films of its time, Dreyer’s approach to the genre was groundbreaking, blending elements of expressionism, surrealism, and psychological horror into a truly unique film.

The film follows a young man named Allan Gray, who arrives at a remote village and becomes embroiled in a strange series of events involving the supernatural. After encountering a mysterious woman, Gray soon discovers that the village is under the grip of a vampire, whose evil presence seems to possess the inhabitants, causing a spiraling descent into madness and death.

Set against a backdrop of shadows, strange visions, and an oppressive sense of dread, Vampyr explores the shifting reality between the living and the deceased. Its flirtation with the avant garde has christened it a cornerstone of horror cinema, influencing countless filmmakers and continuing to captivate audiences today.

Accompanying the film will be an original composition performed live by London based experimental musician, Ekstasis, whose work is an atmospheric journey through dark ambient soundscapes and industrial noise, the perfect complement to the unsettling atmosphere that Dreyer creates in his nightmarish journey through the unearthly world of Vampyr.

This screening is presented by the cult film collective, Video Bazaar, who are proud to show this rarely screened film, and are dedicated to bringing the weird and the obscure to London audiences at The Garden Cinema.

Written and directed by Iraq War veteran Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland (Civil War, 28 Days Later), Warfare embeds audiences with a platoon of American Navy SEALs on a surveillance mission gone wrong in insurgent territory. A visceral, boots-on-the-ground story of modern warfare and brotherhood, told like never before: in real time and based on the memory of the people who lived it.

The Garden Cinema View:

‘Everything is based on memory’, reads the opening title card of Warfare. This is then a sensory and emotional memory play where, divorced of wider context, we spend a night and a day with a platoon of Navy SEALs in Iraq. Amongst the breathless and overwhelming maelstrom of battle are extended moments of silence and waiting, both tense and tedious. The minutiae of combat logistics undercuts the ‘thrills’ of the fight, as the soldiers’ continual reiteration of equipment locations, radio comms, and the grim first aid treatment of the wounded leaves little time for heroism or disintegration.

What are the stakes of this simulation of intensity? The lack of context allows this short episode to represent larger questions behind modern warfare. These troops swiftly infiltrate, uneasily occupy, and painfully extract from the location, leaving behind nothing of value. Highly efficient in their ultimate inefficiency, there is ultimately a moral encounter for the audience watching these very young looking characters grind through the military machine.

Elizabeth Sankey is a filmmaker and musician from London. In 2019 she directed and wrote her first feature documentary, ROMANTIC COMEDY, a personal exploration of the genre. The film was shown at many prestigious festivals including IFFR, SXSW, Sheffield DocFest, CPH:DOX and AFI Docs, before being acquired for distribution by MUBI in the UK and 1091 in the US among other international sales.

In 2022 she wrote and directed a feminist TV piece about women's bodies titled BOOBS for the broadcaster Channel 4.

In 2024 she wrote, directed and edited WITCHES, a documentary produced by MUBI that used her own story of being admitted to a psychiatric ward after the birth of her son to explore the connections between perinatal mental health illness and the history and portrayal of witches in western society. The film premiered at Tribeca where it won Special Jury Mention for the Viewpoints award. At the 2024 BIFA Awards it won Best Documentary.

She has written several documentary shorts for BBC iPlayer’s Inside Cinema strand. With her band Summer Camp she has released four  albums on Moshi Moshi Records, and created the soundtrack to Charlie Shackleton’s feature debut BEYOND CLUELESS. She has also written for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Observer, NME, Vice, and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern.

WITCHES will be followed by a Q&A with Elizabeth Sankey. Please also join us in the cinema bar for networking prior to the screening.

Karun, a security man from southern India, is posted to Gurez, a remote village in Kashmir. There, he begins a relationship with Faheem, a young Kashmiri man. But it’s a romance that seems doomed from the start. Exploring themes of love, friendship and the impact of geopolitical conflicts on personal lives, this is a touching and sensitive drama.

The screening will be preceded by an Introduction and followed by a Q/A session.

In this trailblazing combination of animation and live-action, down-on-his-luck private eye Eddie Valiant gets hired to investigate a pattycake scandal involving Jessica Rabbit, the sultry wife of Toontown superstar, Roger Rabbit.Virtually every major cartoon character shows up in this wonderful Oscar-winning classic.

Recommended for ages 9+

On Sunday mornings our Family Screenings are followed by a free activity for Children.

The screening is Pay What You Can, which means you’re free to pay as much or as little as you can afford. By paying for a ticket, you will enable us to keep offering Pay What You Can screenings to families struggling with the cost of living. Thank you

Please note, screenings taking place in our new Screen 3 will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

This programme of short films will be introduced by Brigitte Mayr and Michael Omasta from Synema Vienna.

Wolf Suschitzky was always fond of the short form: its playfulness, and the creative freedom that comes with it. While this selection aims to illustrate the versatility of Wolf's work, it also pays tribute to Jack Chambers, father of The Garden Cinema's owner Michael Chambers, who was instrumental in securing a work-permission for Wolf and consequently saved him from incarceration on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien during the early years of WW2.

Films screening:

Cotton Come Back (Donald Alexander, 1946, 26 mins)

Chasing The Blues (Jack Chambers, 1946, 6mins)

The Bespoke Overcoat (Jack Clayton, 1955, 36 mins)

Snow (Geoffrey Jones, 1963, 8 mins)

Les Bicyclettes de Belsize (Douglas Hickox, 1968, 29 mins)

All films photographed by Wolfgang Suschitzky.

In this long-form visual essay, the freshness and innocence of youth ebb and flow to the beat of the capitalist system. Spring is the first part of Wang Bing’s immersive Youth trilogy, and it documents relationships as they fold and unfold amongst a group of young Chinese textile workers. Filming over five years in Zhili, a town located 150 kilometres from Shanghai, Wang’s empathetic camera focuses on the labourers toiling under tungsten lighting, producing brightly coloured children's clothes in factories lining the paradoxically named ‘Happiness Road’. The stamina of Spring – and all involved in it – allows for humanity to flourish in otherwise merciless industrial conditions, giving the film its unique lyricism. As J. Hoberman notes, for Wang, there is a correspondence between spring as a natural season and the idea of youth as a ‘life-season … a state of being’: in Mandarin, the words ‘youth’ and ‘spring’ are nearly synonymous. Here, geographical dispersion, financial insecurity, and family tensions run alongside the rampant seasonal demands of clothing production.