Lay of the Land is a dark and emotionally chilling take on male sexuality and prejudice. It is played out through a charged encounter in an intimate smoky gay bar between John, a drag queen who happens to be straight, and Skif, who admits to being involved in 'gay-bashing'.
During the time of apartheid Nelson Mandela drove around South Africa in a limousine disguised as a chauffeur while organizing the armed struggle against the apartheid regime. But who was the distinguished looking white man sitting in the back seat? Meet Cecil Williams, an acclaimed gay white theatre director and communist.
Official Selection Berlinale 2019 - Panorama 40
Get Real is the story of Steven Carter, an ordinary teenager from Basingstoke, Middle England, and his friends. Like most teenagers, they're desperate to fall in love: Steven's neighbour Linda with her driving instructor, his school friend Mark with Wendy, Wendy with Head Boy and all round dreamboat John, John's mate Kevin with Wendy's friend Jessica. But like most teenagers, they are pretty hopeless at it. Steven is in love too, but he knows it is impossible. It's just a dream. It'll never be real. Except it is. But there's a catch: Steven's lover won't acknowledge him in public.
Get Real is the comic tale of what happens when the dream becomes an unexpected reality, and forces Steven to choose between being himself and being in love.
It is 1971 and Francis Bacon is in Paris on the occasion of the triumphant retrospective at the Grand Palais that is to confirm his status as one of the twentieth century's most important artists. At the same time that he is being acclaimed by officials and the press, George Dyer, his model and lover of seven years is in a nearby hotel room swallowing the last of the lethal cocktail of drugs and alcohol that will prove to be his final act in this world. As Dyer disappears into blackness he falls back in time to the moment in 1964 when, in attempting to burgle Bacon's studio, he first encountered the painter who was to absorb him into his life and work.
This tragic love story is set among the bohemian demi-monde of London's Soho where Francis Bacon was a charismatic figure at the centre of a coterie of characters who frequented the infamous Colony Rooms. These include Muriel Belcher, who ran the club, Isabel Rawsthorne, Henrietta Moraes, photographer John Deakin and writer Daniel Farson. Love Is The Devil traces the development of Francis Bacon and George Dyer's ill-fated relationship and, in a series of extraordinary visual sequences, constructs a portrait of an artist that dramatically reveals the needs and desires that motivated his art.
A vivid and enthralling account of one man's journey to love, sex and independence. Recounted with wry humour and poignancy, the story follows Brit, a young boy with brittle bones which restrict his growth, among his colourful Parsee family in Bombay. Eccentric anglophile Sera is undaunted by her son's condition, whereas Sam, his dashing father, struggles to come to terms with imperfection. Along with his unconventional sister Dolly, a true ally, Brit is at the centre of a host of vibrant characters. Based on his acclaimed autobiographical novel, Firdaus Kanga makes his acting debut as Brit.
Frantz Fanon was a revolutionary, writer and psychiatrist, whose classic publications 'The Wretched of the Earth' (1961) and 'Black Skin White Mask' (1952) became founding texts of the decolonization movement. This film examines Fanon's theories of identity and race, and traces his involvement in the independence struggle in Algeria.
Digitally remastered in 2K through the BFI Unlocking Film Heritage programme.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Experimenta Strand - 2K Restoration World premiere
Memory mixes with desire as a museum attendant is caught up in sado-masochistic fantasies inspired by a 19th Century painting of slaves in chains called 'Scene on the Coast of Africa'. The man remembers his past as a singer and delivers Dido's lament from Purcell's opera.
Official Selection Berlinale 2019 - Panorama 40
Based on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Derek Jarman's nearly wordless visual narrative intercuts two main stories and a couple of minor ones. A woman, perhaps the Madonna, brings forth her baby to a crowd of intrusive paparazzi; she tries to flee them. Two men who are lovers marry and are arrested by the powers that be. The men are mocked and pilloried, tarred, feathered, and beaten. Loose in this contemporary world of electrical-power transmission lines is also Jesus. The elements, particularly fire and water, content with political power, which is intolerant and murderous. THE GARDEN was originally screened in the Forum programme of the Berlinale in 1991, garnering an OCIC Award - Honourable Mention.
Official Selection Berlinale 2019 - Forum Archival Constellations
A mythic recreation of the private world of the black artists and writers such as Langston Hughes who formed the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. The film switches from archive footage to a stylized version of the jazz and blues era of Harlem to explore white society’s barriers against black homosexuality and self-imposed ‘discretion’.
Official Selection Berlinale 2016 - Panorama Teddy 30
Young men find themselves scattered and defencelessly exposed to a merciless sun. Their gaze moves off searchingly into the distance. Deserted places appear to offer vague promises of refuge. On a prison wall, an explosive image of desire emerges, full of hope for freedom. Constantine Giannaris relishes in mixing light and colour with the textures of Super 8 and video footage to express the thoughts of the poet Jean Genet. Greatly affected by the AIDS epidemic, he addresses the desire for love as well as the threat of isolation and death in a restless cinematographic delirium.
Official Selection Berlinale 2019 - Panorama 40
In their seminal, intersectional first feature, directors Maureen Blackwood and Isaac Julien incisively interrogate Black British experience, fusing dramatic scenes of family life with documentary and mystical elements, to give richly imaginative witness to a ‘post-colonial’ identity that encompasses generational, class, sexual and gender differences. Vividly manipulated footage of urban unrest, police brutality, gay rights marches and the miners’ strike, alongside chopped-up sequences showing a buzzing London night life, are intertwined, creating a penetrating example of Sankofa’s disruptive critique of 1980s Britain. And it looks fantastic. The film screens in a simultaneous transatlantic premiere with the New York Film Festival.
(London Film Festival)
