On Thursday, Forensic Architecture’s The Last Responders, a remapping of the 2025 massacre of fifteen Palestinian aid workers in Gaza, is paired with De Palma’s Blow Out at the Barbican as part of the exhibition Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Repercussions.
Monday, Trans Video Buffet, an all-you-can-watch “anti-curational” film night, returns for a tenth iteration down at Greenwich’s QUEERCICLE. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs present Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter at the Rio, accompanied by their short Hidden in Pieces, a visual companion to their new live record — Karen O will not be in attendance — unless? Lynch’s The Straight Story, an eccentric, tender, elegiac portrait of Big Sky America, is at the BFI Southbank, continuing A Road Less Travelled: Harry Dean Stanton. Banmei Takahashi’s Door is in the early evening slot at The Nickel. Yul Brynner and Ingrid Bergman star in Anastasia, the Regent Street Cinema‘s Monday Classic Matinee.
Tuesday, Cult Chaos: Screens, a late-night combination lit, art salon and film installation happening, takes place under the green lights of Dalston’s Ellie’s, hosted by Bloody Mary Film Club’s Mary Morgan. Living It Up, the Martin and Lewis remake of Nothing Sacred, screens at the Cinema Museum, introduced by I’ll Say She Is curator Charlotte Ross. F. Gary Gray’s Set It Off comes onboard the Isle of Dogs Theatreship, presented by Sapphic Cinema. Rebellion, a shorts programme of works examining the legacy of poet and statesman Aimé Césaire, is the latest offering from A Poet with a Camera: The Cinema of Sarah Maldoror, followed by a panel discussion hosted by programmer Jonathan Ali. The ICA hosts Shasha Movies for a special Hussein Shariffe retrospective, featuring The Dislocation of Amber and Tigers Are Better Looking. Godzilla 2000: Millennium is at the Barbican for season All Kaiju Attack: All Stars!
Wednesday, Car Wash plays at the Rio, Michael Schultz’s crowd-pleasing day-in-the-minimum-wage-life comedy starring Richard Pryor, Bill Duke and George Carlin, with the screening presented and introduced by Zain Gibson and Claire Harrison. Kuxa Kanema: The Birth of Cinema & Apostles of Cinema, a double bill of films from the Swahili Coast, continues Brixton Community Cinema’s farewell tour at MayDay Rooms— founder Abiba Coulibaly will be in conversation with the June Givanni Pan-African Cinema Archive team following the programme. Lulú, a punk-inflected 2014 drama of two young lovers drifting through Buenos Aires on the margins of the law, is at The Castle Cinema, courtesy of Cinema Mentiré and Jellied Reels. Beyond Human Time continues at Close-Up with Last Things, Deborah Stratman’s geohistorical inquiry into evolution and extinction told from the perspective of rocks and minerals, preceded by short Resistance. Troma Entertainment’s Class of Nuke ‘Em High is at Genesis for a new season of Token Homo’s Bar Trash. Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning plays at the BFI Southbank, introduced by Tahliah Simumba.
Thursday, Mohamed A. Gawad’s The Last Responders, a remapping of the 2025 massacre of fifteen Palestinian aid workers in Gaza, made with Forensic Architecture and Earshot, is paired with De Palma’s Blow Out in a double bill proposing listening as a less corruptible hermeneutic, continuing Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Repercussions at the Barbican. The BFI Southbank‘s Experimenta strand returns with Siticulosa, Maeve Brennan’s documentary on the illicit trade in looted antiquities, screened alongside Hard Road to Klondike, followed by Brennan in conversation with critic Isobel Harbison. Pink Palace and Contemporary 75 present The Times of Harvey Milk at the Rio, followed by a Q&A with director Rob Epstein. Over in Hackney Wick, Eastway Baths hosts Curiosity Cabinet, a shorts programme of “unique & unusual” experimental film from 16 countries, spanning 5 continents, presented by MicroActs. Greenaway’s genuinely strange A Zed & Two Noughts is at the Cinema Museum courtesy of 2 Girls 1 Film Club.
Friday, Hong Kong Film Festival opens at the Barbican with Palimpsest, Mary Stephen’s archival detective story digging into the hidden colonial history behind her own surname. Category H returns to the Rio for a late-night double bill: Cronenberg’s body-horror grotesquerie The Fly paired with Şeytan, a scene-for-scene copy of The Exorcist — twin studies in transformation and remaking. The Long Road to the Director’s Chair caps Living Archive, a study day on feminist moving image culture at Birkbeck Cinema. Late Tapes is back at the ICA with WET & MESSY, an all-VHS grab bag of fun and filth exploring fetishistic desire, with a particular focus this time on the imprecise, slippery art of sploshing, curated in collaboration with the Bishopsgate Institute’s UK Fetish Archive. Don’t spoil the new carpet.
Saturday, back at the ICA: a Michael Snow and Joyce Wieland weekender opens with Back and Forth and To Lavoisier, Who Died in the Reign of Terror, then La Raison avant la passion and A&B in Ontario, all on 16mm. The HKFF’s showcase of editor and director Mary Stephen continues with The Aviator’s Wife, on which she served as assistant editor, before giving Shades of Silk its UK premiere — her 1978 debut, in conversation with Duras’s India Song; it’s preceded by shorts and followed by a Q&A with Stephen. Elsewhere: Close-Up’s Against All Odds strand, spotlighting global cinema scenes, turns its eye to Basement Films, Albuquerque’s volunteer-run microcinema. London Fields’ Finch Community Cinema returns from its summer break, rolling out the keys for a live-scored screening of Kirsanoff’s Ménilmontant, paired with his short Brumes d’automne, both courtesy of Silent Picture Show.
Sunday, at the ICA: Five Films from Michael Snow and Joyce Wieland closes with Rameau’s Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen, a 270-minute structuralist marathon on 16mm for the bagmen who like their mid-century modernism long and with fart jokes. Rohmer’s A Summer’s Tale follows on 35mm. Věra Chytilová’s anarchic tumblr-staple, Daisies, screens at Deptford Cinema, presented by Louder Than Her. Lee Frost’s Pick-Up is at The Nickel.
Until Next Time