On Saturday, the Parton-starring workplace comedy 9 to 5 plays at Lexi Cinema in tribute to the late country icon.
Monday, Cult Shoot Erupt, a programme of four underground cult productions, “vocabulated by myths, beliefs, and mortality”, curated by 2 Girls 1 Film Club, is at The Nickel. Being John Malkovich, Jonze and Kaufman’s first collaboration, plays at BFI Southbank for No Strings Attached: Puppets on Film. Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice screens at Close-Up.
Tuesday, Tongue on Cheek, an evening of erotic queer short film paired with a writing workshop, takes place at Bethnal Green’s The People’s Letters. Dear Summer Sister, Ōshima’s last independent feature, a Takemitsu-scored travelogue shot on Okinawa, is at the ICA. Chabrol’s La Femme infidèle screens at BFI Southbank. Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah take to the Barbican. The Monday Classic Matinee returns to Regent Street Cinema — yes, on a Tuesday — with a double bill of Unfaithfully Yours and Olivier’s Richard III. La Cava’s Gabriel Over the White House, a pre-Code fantasy of benign dictatorship, is at Verdurin, followed by a discussion led by Dominic Green.
Wednesday, Dog Star Man, Brakhage’s cosmological epic, screens in full on 16mm at The Cinema Museum. Queeriosities x Tranz Tropez, a programme of short films “celebrating queer, trans and non-binary filmmakers” interrogating the idea of truth, takes place at Peckham’s Staffordshire St. A Poet with a Camera: The Cinema of Sarah Maldoror, BFI Southbank‘s season devoted to the pioneering, under-seen French-Guadeloupean filmmaker, opens with Poetry in My Soul, a discussion led by season curator Annouchka de Andrade illustrated with shorts. Sambizanga, Maldoror’s 1972 anti-colonial landmark, follows. Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 is at Close-Up.
Thursday, Jellied Reels brings The Misconceived, a millennial tragicomedy of failed aspiration, composited in Unreal Engine, to The Castle Cinema. Le Beau Serge is an early offering from season Claude Chabrol: Elements of Crime at BFI Southbank, screening on 35mm. A shot-on-video Charles Pinion double bill — Red Spirit Lake and Twisted Issues — is at The Nickel. Ida, Pawlikowski’s monochrome account of a novice nun uncovering her family’s wartime fate, is at The Rio, presented by Polish film club Kino Polonia.
Friday, the Peckham & Nunhead Free Film Festival opens with Blue Velvet at Peckhamplex. Presented by Bun Bites, The Dream Songs, a hazy Korean study of teenage friendship, is at The Garden Cinema, followed by an online Q&A with director Cho Hyun-chul. Sherman’s March, Ross McElwee’s shaggy, self-reflexive documentary, newly restored, is at the ICA. King Kong vs Godzilla plays the Barbican. Escape from New York is at BFI Southbank. Under the Silver Lake plays at The Cinema Museum, the last stop in season Not By Lynch.
Saturday, Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5, the workplace-comedy classic, plays at the Lexi in tribute to the country star. At the Barbican‘s Project a Black Planet season: HAVANA: The Tricontinental Conference, a performance-lecture delivered by researcher and curator Léa Morin, attempting to reconstruct Ben Barka’s unrealised film BASTA, is followed by DAKAR: The First World Festival of Negro Arts 1966, a programme of the William Greaves documentary paired with the banned Senegalese feature Reou-Takh. The Cassandra Cat is at The Garden Cinema, opening a season on the Czechoslovak New Wave. The Blair Witch Project is in Nunhead Cemetery — first come, first served — as part of Peckham & Nunhead Free Film Festival. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid screens at BFI Southbank for its Harry Dean Stanton season. At The Cinema Museum there’s a chance to see Goodbye, Dragon Inn presented by Cinema of Tomorrow, the film club formerly known as PEPCOT.
Sunday, ALGIERS: The Pan-African Festival of Algiers 1969 is followed by LAGOS: FESTAC 77 at the Barbican, closing season Project a Black Planet. Serendipitously, The Pan-African Festival of Algiers, William Klein’s 1969 record, is at BFI Southbank for its Maldoror season. Boy (少年) screens at the ICA for a last encore screening. The Honeymoon Killers screens at The Nickel. Working Girls, Lizzie Borden’s unsensationalist portrait of a day inside a Manhattan brothel, is at the Phoenix.
Until next time