In London, four very different people team up to commit armed robbery, then try to doublecross each other for the loot.
Official Selection Berlin Film Festival 2020 - Berlinale Classics
Mona Hatoum left Beirut in 1975 for a short visit to London. When war broke out in the Lebanon she found it impossible to return. In this video, letters from her mother in Beirut, written in Arabic, move across the screen. They are read aloud, in English, by the artist. Hatoum's mother is also heard, speaking openly about her feelings and sexuality, accompanied by images of her in the shower.
Hatoum's video suggests exile and displacement. She has said it also challenges 'the stereotype of Arab women as passive, mother as non-sexual being'.
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
Ever wondered what your wardrobe is up to when your back is turned? A new version of this lively short, originally edited on analogue video.
BAFTA Film Awards 1988 - Nomination - Best British Short Animation
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Create Strand - Restoration World premiere
Young Cambridge graduate Maurice Hall is trapped by the oppressiveness of puritanical Edwardian society as he tries to come to terms with his sexuality. He must strive to realise his dreams.
The restoration, by the Cohen Media Group, used a 4K scan of the original camera negative. Director James Ivory gave the nod to the digitally restored version of his film, and cinematographer Pierre Lhomme supervised the colour correction.
Official Selection Berlinale 2017 - Berlinale Classics - World premiere (Digital Restoration)
The life and work of the painter whose death in 1610 followed years on the run as a murderer. The film links the characters in Caravaggio's art with the violent events of his career. On its initial release, Caravaggio won a Silver Bear for outstanding single achievement in visual composition at the 1986 Berlinale. To coincide with the 20th anniversary of Derek Jarman's death, the film has now been digitally restored.
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)
An epicene angel flutters its wings and smokes a cigarette in this ejaculatory study of frustration, torment, stupidity and insolence. With Cerith Wyn Evans as the angel and music by Michael Nyman. Made at the Royal College of Art in 1985.
New York. Desperate for work, Christine takes a job selling tickets at the Variety, a sex cinema. This somewhat alienates her boyfriend Mark, who is investigating a story about union links with the Mob at the wholesale fish market. Christine finds herself drawn towards events on-screen, and also follows one of the customers, Louie, when he enters a sex shop, apparently on business. Louie, who is clearly both wealthy and powerful as a result of his shady activities, takes her to a ball game at Yankee Stadium. When he is suddenly called away, she again follows him and observes him at work.
Variety inverts the traditional narrative structure of cinema – whereby a man watches and a woman is watched – without showing, and thus flaunting, the object of female desire. Creating a counter-narrative to Hollywood, Bette Gordon asks the same question formulated by Teresa de Lauretis in “Oedipus Interruptus”: “How did Medusa feel upon seeing herself in Perseus' mirror just before being slain?”
Official Selection Berlinale 2019 - Forum Archival Constellations
A vicarious night out lived through an animated sketchbook, laid down to a hypnotic post-punk beat performed by the filmmaker himself.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Create Strand - Restoration World premiere
Two British track athletes compete in the 1924 Olympics. Harold Abrahams, a Jew, spurred by prejudice, and Eric Liddell, a devout Christian, spurred by his love of God. Fired by their own purpose and inspired by their own dreams, both won gold.
Official Selection Cannes Film Festival 2017 - Cinéma de la Plage
A Victorian surgeon rescues a heavily disfigured man who is mistreated while scraping a living as a side-show freak. Behind his monstrous façade, there is revealed a person of kindness, intelligence and sophistication.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Treasures Strand - Restoration World premiere
