On Sunday, the Barbican’s Project a Black Planet season continues with Rivers, Routes, Remembering, a programme of five shorts on migration, community and survival across the Black Atlantic.
Monday, The 70s People, a Danish television commission on youth suicide and contemporary anomie, continues the Watkins season at BFI Southbank. Russ Meyer’s Supervixens is at The Nickel. Coup 53, an account of the 1953 overthrow of Mosaddegh, reconstructed from archival footage, is at The Lexi, followed by a Q&A with the film’s director, Taghi Amirani. Monica Vitti’s sole credit as director, Secret Scandal, is at BFI Southbank on 35mm. The Garden Cinema’s new queer film strand, Fruits on Film, has a special preview screening of Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex, featuring a pre-recorded Q&A with the director.
Tuesday, TFFF’s In Competition winner Orla Smith’s Tube Film has an anniversary screening over at Hackney Wick’s Eastway Baths. Game of Death, the posthumous Bruce Lee martial arts classic of yellow jumpsuit fame, is at The Nickel. Campbell X’s Stud Life, a butch-femme romance shot across east London, screens on board Theatreship. Almost Famous is at The Rio, introduced by Simona Tanase and Anastasiya Ador. Everybody to Kenmure Street plays at Peckham’s Set Social, followed by a discussion with Southwark and Lambeth Anti Raids.
Wednesday, Dahomey, Mati Diop’s account of twenty-six looted treasures returned from Paris to Benin, is at the ICA, programmed by the New School’s Genevieve Yue, accompanying the exhibition Elisa Giardina Papa: She Flickered In and Out of History. Antonioni and Vitti’s La Notte is at BFI Southbank. Linda Linda Linda is in the basement of Dalston Superstore. Times Square, Allan Moyle’s teen-runaway drama, is at The Nickel. Żuławski’s The Devil is introduced by writer Michael Brooke at The Garden Cinema.
Thursday, The Ceremony, a portrait of Japan through a single declining family, continues the Ōshima season at the ICA. Mermaid Legend is at The Nickel. Wigstock: The Movie is at The Rio, presented by Pink Palace. Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War, Adachi and Wakamatsu’s agitprop dispatch from Lebanon, screens at KCL, hosted by Anti-Colonial Film Club. Watkins’ The Media Project, a video-art essay examining the manufacturing of consent for the first Gulf War, is at BFI Southbank.
Friday, Fruits on Film and Crip Cinema Archive present By Hook or By Crook, Harry Dodge & Silas Howard’s no-budget transmasculine portrait of pre-boom San Francisco at The Garden Cinema, introduced by Emily Simmons. Cinema-ye Azad: Further Explorations, a programme of super-8 restorations of the work of Behnam Jafari, a pioneer of Iran’s pre-revolutionary free cinema movement, is at the Barbican, followed by a Q&A with archivist Hadi Alipanah. Evening Land is at BFI Southbank. As Good as It Gets, James L. Brooks’ Oscar-winning misanthrope comedy, plays at the Phoenix Cinema.
Saturday, Pan-African Cultural Encounters continues Project a Black Planet at the Barbican. Carax’s Sparks-scored puppet melodrama, Annette, is at BFI Southbank. Creepshow, Romero and King’s comic-book horror anthology, screens at The Cinema Museum, raising funds for the venue’s attempt to buy its Lambeth workhouse home. Western Approaches, the Crown Film Unit’s Technicolor drama-doc reconstruction of an Atlantic convoy sinking, starring actual merchant seamen, is at The Garden Cinema for its ongoing Composing Cinema strand. 100 Years of Japanese Cinema, Ōshima’s j’accuse against the national cinema, is at the ICA. At The Horse Hospital there’s a chance to see Threshold Houseboys Choir: Form Grows Rampant, the late Coil member Peter Christopherson’s document of a Thai festival’s wound rituals, filmed in 2003, set to his own music.
Sunday, Rivers, Routes, Remembering, a programme of five shorts on migration, community and survival across the Black Atlantic , is at the Barbican for Project a Black Planet. Watkins’ masterpiece, La Commune, is in NFT3 and sold out — though fifty or so attendees who want to change rather than interpret the world might be able to eject the concurrent screening of The Empire Strikes Back in NFT1 — a new world is possible. The Lexi’s and Cinema Mentire’s spotlight on Maite Alberdi continues with The Mole Agent, introduced by Emilia Izquierdo. Day for Night, Truffaut’s film-within-a-film about a shoot gone wrong, plays at Ciné Lumière, which is back from its summer vacances. The Third Part of the Night is at The Garden Cinema, Żuławski’s occupation-set debut, continuing Devils and Shamans: The Films of Andrzej Żuławski.
Until next time