Transcending the sound and visual of the drum, using nature’s most destructive forces fire and water as catalysts for destruction and creating a mood piece of raw, ritualistic, drumming phenomena.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Cult Strand
A meditative, immersive tribute to the astonishing work and achievements of naturalist, inventor and pioneering filmmaker F. Percy Smith. Smith worked in the early years of the 20th century, developing various cinematographic and micro-photographic techniques to capture nature's secrets in action. Working in a number of public roles, including the Royal Navy and British Instructional Films, Smith was prolific and driven, often directing several films simultaneously, apparently on a mission to explore and capture nature's hidden terrains.
This film is an interpretative edit that combines Smith's original footage with a new contemporary score by tindersticks to create a hypnotic, alien yet familiar dreamscape that connects us to the sense of wonder Smith must have felt as he peered through his own lenses and seen these micro-worlds for the first time. (LFF brochure)
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Sonic Strand - World premiere
Acclaimed documentarian Mark Cousins moves into fiction with this intriguing musical film, perhaps best described as a city symphony.
'Stockholm My Love' follows the footsteps of Alva Achebe (Neneh Cherry), a Swedish architect fascinated by the way buildings influence lives, but haunted by a tragic event in her past. One year ago, Alva was involved in a car accident, and ever since, her trauma has held her hostage in her daily life. On the anniversary of this shocking event, she’s at breaking point and can’t face the day ahead, so tries to get lost in the historic city of Stockholm. But her wanderings only draw her back towards her past, and the site of her tragedy. There she starts to take her first hesitant steps towards recovery.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Journey Strand - World premiere
An essay film analysing the space of the city as a product, its inhabitation – its spatial negotiation, its encoding by racial privilege, and who controls it. The city is Detroit and the economy of the car has been replaced by a spatial economy.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere
Taking its title from the French Surrealist artist, Claude Cahun’s (1894-1954) incomplete memoir 'Confidences au miroir', Sarah Pucill's film brings life to the photographic and written archive of Claude Cahun amidst a visual extravaganza of costumes and hand-made sets.
Following Cahun’s text, the film includes Cahun’s early and later life and work, including her political propaganda activity and imprisonment in Jersey with her partner Suzanne Malherbe during the Nazi occupation of the island. The tracing of a life is made conscious through the projection of images of the couples' home in Jersey into a domestic London setting.
As a sequel to director Sarah Pucill's previous film 'Magic Mirror' (2013), this film continues her experiment to bring cinematic life to the photographic and written archive of Claude Cahun. In this film Pucill animates re-stagings of Cahun’s black and white self-portrait and still–life photographs with voices from Cahun's text 'Confidences au miroir', collaging and transposing black and white stills and words, into colour and soundscape.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere
An intimate and vivid account of a young girl’s real and fantastical adventure in a remote forest one evening.
Glasgow-based artist-filmmaker Margaret Salmon's debut feature is not only a loving homage to classic children’s films such as Ray Ashley’s 'Little Fugitive', Jean Renoir’s 'The River' and Albert Lamorisse’s 'The Red Balloon', but draws from nature studies of the past, such as Mary Field’s 'Secrets of Nature' series.
Shot on 35mm in various locations around Scotland, Salmon draws inspiration from a range of cinematic movements as well as wildlife documentaries to produce a lyrical and sensual portrait of a child’s eye perspective on the natural world. (LFF brochure)
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere
Gertrude Bell was a pioneering English writer, archaeologist, diplomat and spy whose travels through the Arabian desert gave her local knowledge unparalleled by her British peers. Recruited by British Military Intelligence after World War I, she played a significant – often unrecognised – role in British imperial policy-making in the Middle East, notably Iraq. Openly critical of colonial practices, Bell’s insights are a singular, prescient prism through which to understand both the Middle East and the all-male inner sanctum of British colonial power. Directors Oelbaum and Krayenbühl weave together a rich tapestry of fascinating archive alongside Bell’s writings, letters to her parents, and testimony from peers including TE Lawrence and Vita Sackville-West. Though writing a century ago, the acute contemporary relevance of Bell’s words is astonishing – at times even chilling. (LFF brochure)
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Journey Strand
Using double screen, the filmmaker juxtaposes her domestic family history with that of Nelson Mandela prior to his arrest. The artist considers the roles that personal and political histories play in opening up the narratives of a place.
Liliesleaf Farm, located in Rivonia South Africa, was the headquarters of the military wing of the African National Congress, (‘Umkhonto we Sizwe') in the early 1960s. Nelson Mandela lived at Liliesleaf under an alias. ‘Operation Mayibuye’ was an ANC undercover campaign of sabotage intended to bring down the apartheid government.
Ideas for the film originated with 8mm film footage and photographs of
Gaal-Holmes’ immigrant family at Liliesleaf. Her German and Hungarian parents had recently moved to settle in South Africa, and Liliesleaf became their family home for a short time in the late 1960s.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere
Washed-up actor Richard Thorncroft peaked with hit 1980s detective show 'Mindhorn', playing the titular Isle of Man sleuth with a rather unique ability. As a captured MI5 Special Operative, Bruce Mindhorn's eye was replaced by a super-advanced optical lie detector, which meant he could literally 'see the truth'. Mindhorn escaped and fled to the Isle of Man, to recuperate in the island’s temperate microclimate, and became the best plain-clothes detective the island had ever seen...
Decades later, when a deranged Manx criminal demands Mindhorn as his nemesis, Thorncroft returns to the scene of his greatest triumphs for one last chance to reignite his glory days, professional credibility and even romance with former co-star/paramour Patricia Deville.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Laugh Strand - World premiere
The real-life episodes contributing to a devastating hate crime are powerfully told in one shot.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Debate Strand
New Year’s Eve in a Lesbos port. A filmmaker meets Noor, a young Syrian woman. They make a short film together with a phone.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Debate Strand - World premiere
