Events (WC 30.01)
1. ICO Spring Screening Days 2023
Join Independent Cinema Office for Spring Screening Days 2023 – a hybrid event running at BFI Southbank, London and online!
Screening Days is a chance for cinema professionals to preview key upcoming films to aid their programming, marketing and audience development.
They are delighted to be returning to BFI Southbank for our flagship spring event, where they will be screening an array of the best independent films set for release in the months following so you can pack your programmes with new discoveries to delight your audiences.
This Screening Days is a hybrid (in-person and online) event. You can attend in-person at BFI Southbank from Sat 11 to Mon 13 March and/or watch a selection of films from the programme online from Tues 14 to Sun 19 March.
Registration
Which pass type should I buy?
Organisational pass (If you are attending on behalf of an organisation or film society)
- £70 to attend both in-person and online
- £50 to attend online only
Freelance pass (If you are a freelance worker)
- £35 to attend in-person and online / online only
Supported pass (If you are paying for your own pass and are currently unwaged)
- £20 to attend in-person and online / online only
Young Person’s (18-30) pass (If you are aged 18-30)
- £20 to attend in-person and online / online only
Find more details on the screenings, eligibility and bookings HERE
Support to attend Screening Days
They want to be inclusive across all the Screening Days events. They know people who can make a contribution to the event often do not have the money to spend on the costs of attending. If covering these costs yourself would prevent you attending or make it hard for you to prioritise attending, then please get in touch. You do not need to fill in a lot of paperwork or prove your status, just complete a short expense form with your bank details and provide us with relevant receipts. We will be able to repay you within 48 hours.
They can provide financial support towards:
- Event passes
- Travel/accommodation costs
- Digital attendance costs (e.g. mobile data package, WiFi upgrade)
Send them an email at info@independentcinemaoffice.org.uk stating which areas you need support in (pass, travel/accommodation and/or digital attendance). Support is first come, first served as they have limited funds, so applying promptly is advised.
2. Fragments: Burmese Identities In Between
Streaming 13 – 26 February 2023
A programme of contemporary Burmese cinema focusing on the search for self and new ways of belonging
The military coup in Myanmar has disrupted many pillars of selfhood for Burmese people. Yet in between the fragments of crisis, new experiences and identities can be formed.
Who are we to our families, communities, and to ourselves? Who are we without the places and people that once defined our lives? Through delicate and difficult journeys of self-reflection, these films are connected by their testament to the intersectional ways that Burmese people navigate identity, home, family and grief. To complement the films, we will host a poetry reading contemplating the fragments of one’s identity, and a live conversation between the poets and filmmakers contributing their perspectives to the questions raised in the programme.
Together, the films and conversations in this programme seek to explore the spaces in between and the dilemma of not quite being just one thing.
— ပုလဲ Pearl Fedele, programme curator
How to watch the event
Tickets for this programme are free, but we invite and encourage donations, which will go to Salween (သံလွင်), a non-profit fundraising group that supports participants of the Civil Disobedience Movement in Myanmar, as well as refugees and internally displaced persons. You can find out more about their work and donate here.
Film Programme
သူစိမ်းသုံးယောက် Three Strangers
(2021, dir. လမင်းဦး Lamin Oo)
On the western coastline of Myanmar, a queer couple and their adopted son build an unlikely family and navigate the complexities of belonging. Gwa To, a charismatic transgender man, and Ma Soe, his reserved but straightforward wife share their unconventional love story and the hurdles in creating their family. A touching and boundary-pushing story of negotiating one’s identity amidst societal reproval, multi-generations of parental sacrifices, and finding home in the people you love.
This Kind of Love
(2015, dir. Jeanne Hallacy)
After 24 years in exile, Burmese human rights and LGBT activist, Aung Myo Min returns home to Myanmar. Despite recalling his difficult youth during the military dictatorship and the sacrifices made by him and his family, Myo’s longing for home and eagerness to rejoin his country is a testament to the power of one’s sense of identity and belonging. Showing an insight into the lives of LGBT individuals in Myanmar and set against the country’s historical transition from half a century of brutal military rule, Myo shares his vision for equality for all – from children to transgender people to ethnic nationalities with his countrymen, to be part of his homeland’s emergence from the darkness of dictatorship.
တောင်ကျချင်း Underneath My Chin
(2020, dir. ဆောလ်ချမ်းထူးဆံ Saul Chan Htoo Sang)
While studying abroad, a Chin student attempts to make a documentary about the Chin refugee community in the Czech Republic. In the process, he ends up wrapped up in questions of his own ethnic identity and faces the disparities of how he is perceived by those around him. An introspective examination of how we define who we are, if we can at all.
မြစ်ဘယ်မှာဆုံး Where The River Ends
(2023, dir. ထက်အောင်လွင် Htet Aung Lwyn)
A soldier carries his lover’s body through a journey of self-reflection as he experiences the consequences of loss on one’s sense of self. With dream-like sequences and musings, this visual poem explores grief and loss through two thematically intertwined journeys, expressing the unspoken heaviness that never seems to lessen and the grief that never seems to subside.
About the Curator
ပုလဲ Pearl Fedele is a Burmese poet and emerging film programmer based in London. Born in Yangon and raised between Asia, Africa and Latin America, she is captivated by stories that attempt to untangle the complexities of identity and belonging. She has worked in film festivals across London and has a masters in Global Media from SOAS. With a desire to expand her sense of belonging as well as facilitate storytelling, Pearl is committed to highlighting queer stories and Burmese voices through film and poetry.
Find more details HERE
3. Right of Way: Ufuoma Essi, Dan Guthrie, Arjuna Neuman
Breakfast Opening: Wed 18 January 2023, 9 – 10.30am
Join us for a free breakfast opening and an opportunity to preview the exhibition, with coffee, tea and pastries in our conservatory. Learn more about the breakfast opening here
LUX is pleased to announce an exhibition of newly commissioned moving image works by Ufuoma Essi, Dan Guthrie and Arjuna Neuman exploring representations of the English rural landscape.
During the COVID-19 pandemic – as people realised anew the importance of nature and open spaces for our health and mental wellbeing – inequalities of access to rural land were being exposed, revealing the disconnect felt by millions of people towards the English countryside. A 2019 government review found that many Black, Asian and ethnically diverse people view the countryside as an ‘irrelevant white, middle-class club’, concluding that this divide is only going to widen as society changes and ‘the countryside will end up being irrelevant to the country that actually exists’. These new commissions interrupt and challenge the enduring perception of the rural idyll as an untouched and unchanging space where time stands still and asks how can our natural spaces be home to difference, protest, and activism.
Ufuoma Essi’s Pastoral Malaise explores the absences within the rural pastoral environments that are often framed by romanticism and picturesque conventions, constructed as tourist sites and refuges in rural landscapes across Britain.
Dan Guthrie’s black strangers seeks a man called ‘Daniel’ recorded on a bishop’s transcript held in Gloucestershire Archives, who was buried in Nympsfield in 1719 and described as ‘a black stranger’. Whilst walking, Dan talks directly to Daniel, speculating about the parallels between him and his namesake, and about how his experience in his hometown of Stroud mirrors that of ‘Daniel’.
Arjuna Neuman’s Syncopated Green reflects on the history of outdoor free parties in the English countryside, using rave music, past and present, to help forget the ‘official’ portrayal of England as picturesque, nostalgic, white, and rural. The film invites rave music into the English landscape – turning imperial history inside out. Somewhere between a music video, a memoir and an essay, it asks: how might our future be different if we had other histories to lean on – and dance with?
Right of Way has been commissioned with the Independent Cinema Office as part of an archival film touring project celebrating the history and legacy of the National Trails in England.
The exhibition is accompanied by a selection of related works from the LUX Collection.
Films in the screening:
black strangers, Dan Guthrie, 2022, 8 min.
Syncopated Green, Arjuna Neuman, 2022, 14 min.
Pastoral Malaise, Ufuoma Essi, 2022, 11 min.
Screening Schedule:
12:00 / 12:40 (with OC) / 13:20 (with AD)
14:00 / 14: 40 (with OC) / 15:20 (with AD)
OC: Open Caption
AD: Audio Description
Find more details HERE
4. A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT (15)
- DIRECTED BY: Ana Lily Amirpour
- CAST: Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Dominic Rains
- COUNTRY: USA
- YEAR: 2014
- DURATION: 101min
- CERTIFICATE: 15
- TYPE: Film
A girl walks home alone at night without fear, cataloguing the behaviour of her nocturnal neighbourhood. In seeing where their moral decisions lie, she makes her own: protecting the locals whilst collecting the music from the bad folk she removes from the town.
A crew of Iranian artists living in Europe and America helped to create Bad City, the fictional setting of the film, a place that speaks to their generation’s experience of Iran. Director Ana Lily Amirpour pours a lot of her upbringing and influences into the world, creating an accomplished, entrancing and thematically layered debut.
Part of our film season The Lay of the Land
All tickets are Pay What You Feel – £2 / £4 / £6 / £8
Tickets for this season are available on a sliding scale – choose what to pay based on your circumstances. If you can afford more, it helps us to give cheaper tickets to those who may not otherwise be able to attend.
Book your tickets HERE
5. Celebrating Jack Nicholson
Sat 07 Jan — Fri 24 Feb 2023
Praising Jack Nicholson’s acting talent in an interview with him in 1985, Roger Ebert points to his ability to go from one extreme to the other on screen while remaining comfortable. Jack Nicholson returns:
“I think by choice I protected that. The terrible thing for American actors is, if they have a success, everyone that they collaborate with wants them to repeat that success… By the third or fourth time, it begins to wear thin. So now they try a departure from the formula, and if it doesn’t work, they’re dead. They have to go back to repeating what they did that once worked… they may never get free again”.
But wasn’t Nicholson also afflicted by this illness he describes? By the early 90’s he had comfortably settled into the role of “Jack”, the mischievous middle-aged frisky man with the devilish eyebrows beneath his iconic Ray Bans. Those who were introduced to his work at that time could have easily underestimated him.
But Jack Nicholson is great in spite of his “Jack” persona. As Chuck Bowen writes in Slant:
“It’s startling to remember what a heartbroken live wire the actor once was, how often he chose characters that spoke directly to the baby-boomer fear that their various rebellions wouldn’t come to much. Every classic Nicholson film follows a strikingly similar trajectory of the outcast who either lives by settling for casual tragedy or dies out of wounded stubbornness. Of all the great actors to emerge from the rich period of American films that kicked off in the late 1960s and unceremoniously concluded in the mid-1970s, Nicholson stood apart as the ideal embodiment of that era’s weirdly sexy resignation”.
When we asked our members to suggest a season for The Garden Cinema, Jack Nicholson was by far the most popular choice. We would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to delve into Nicholson’s incredible career with a line-up of films chosen by you in our members poll. Nicholson is not only a great actor, but also a great artist who embodied the visions of directors like Stanley Kubrick, Milos Forman, Roman Polanski, Michelangelo Antonioni, Alexander Payne, and Martin Scorsese. Not to mention he invented “Jack” – our favourite artificial Hollywood persona of all time. We love every inch of him!
Find more about the screenings HERE
6. Glasgow Film Festival 2023
1-12 March
One of the UK’s largest film festivals, GFF23 will host 70 UK premieres, 6 World premieres, 16 European/International premieres and 6 Scottish premieres at Glasgow Film Theatre and venues across the city.
The festival opens with the UK premiere of Adura Onashile’sGlasgow-shot feature debut Girl and closes with the UK premiere of Nida Manzoor’s riotous action comedy Polite Society.
World and European premieres include Schitt’s Creek and The Rig star Emily Hampshire’s new romcom The End of Sex, the return of ‘the Springburn Scorsese’ James Price with Dog Days, and Jena Malone’s Isle of Skye-shot horror Consecration.
UK premieres include Kelly Macdonald and Monica Dolan in Carol Morley’s acclaimed Typist Artist Pirate King; Paul Mescal and Emily Watson disrupting a close knit community in God’s Creatures; Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton charting the rise and fall of a tech giant in Blackberry; Nicolas Cage as a seasoned buffalo hunter in Butcher’s Crossing; and electrifying climate crisis thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline.
Book your tickets HERE
7. Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival
3-5 March 2023
Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival has announced the full programme for its 18th edition, taking place 3 – 5 March. Festival passes are now available to purchase, with individual tickets going on sale 2 February.
8. Borderlines Film Festival , 3 – 19 March
OVER 250 SCREENINGS OF 65 FEATURE FILMS & EVENTS, CATCH PREVIEWS BEFORE THEIR CINEMA RELEASE.
22 VENUES ACROSS HEREFORDSHIRE, SHROPSHIRE, MALVERN AND THE MARCHES
Explore the program HERE
9. Shengelaia at 90
Garden Cinema and Klassiki, Date & time: Fri 10 Feb, 8:00pm
Klassiki, the world’s first streaming platform dedicated to classic and contemporary cinema from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, are proud to partner with the Georgian National Film Centre to program a five-film retrospective of Georgian auteur Eldar Shengelaia, running from 9 February to 2 March 2023. Highlights include cinema screenings of classic Shengelaia titles The White Caravan (1964) and Blue Mountains (1983) at the Garden Cinema, London, as well as the online premieres of both these films alongside An Unusual Exhibition (1968), Eccentrics (1974), and The Chair (2017). These films will then be available in the Klassiki library.
Find more information on the screening HERE
10. FILM SCREENING: SOUTH BY SOUTH: LOSING GROUNDWED
1 FEB 2023, 7PM – 9PM
Losing Ground (1982) is the second film by director Kathleen Collins. The film tells the story of a marriage of two remarkable people, both at a crossroads in their lives. Sara Rogers, a professor of philosophy, is embarking on an intellectual quest to understand “ecstasy” just as her painter husband Victor sets off on a more earthy exploration of joy.
Find more information on the screening HERE
11. London Film & TV Job Fair – Feb 18
If you’re looking for your next job in the Film & TV industry then come along to the London Film & TV Job Fair. There will be a range of 40+ stands including:
- Production Companies looking to hire
- Individual feature and short film productions looking to hire
- Film & TV Recruitment Companies
- Casting & Extras Agents
- Runner & Crew Agencies
- Further resources for finding work in the Film & TV industry
On the day you will be able to:
- Talk to employers, recruiters and agents face to face
- Have mini interviews on the spot and make an amazing first impression with your personality instead of relying solely on written CV
- Discover the range of options there are when looking for work in the Film & TV industry in London
- Network with hundreds of filmmakers and building lasting relationships that will help you build your career
- Have a professional take a look at your CV and give you tips on how to improve
In just a few hours you could walk out with a wide range of industry contacts to help grow your career, a better CV, knowledge of where to find work, potential interviews lined up, or even a job.
NETWORKING:
Come along to meet and network with like-minded filmmakers, actors, film financiers and indie-film marketing specialists. Whether you’re on the hunt for cast and crew, new projects, or are looking to explore your financing and marketing options, this is the perfect time and place to discuss all your current and future projects, with a drink in your hand and some great company! We welcome everyone to attend, whether you’re a filmmaker with heaps of experience or are completely new to the industry.
Below are some of the current confirmed exhibitors. We will be adding to do this list as we get closer to the event.
Mandy, Backstage, The Crewing Company, Art Department, Sara Putt, EMS Broadcast, Creative Mentor Network, Mama Youth Project, Searchlight, Acrew4U, Shy Films, IIPG and more.
More info about Cine Circle: HERE
Tickets start from £5.98, find more information HERE