SESSION ONE: A MOON FOR MY FATHER, MANIA AKBARI AND DOUGLAS WHITE
Date: Tuesday 26 March
Time: 20:30
Venue: ICA, Cinema One
Filmmaker Mania Akbari looks into the connection between her body and the political history of Iran, investigating the relationship between her own physical traumas and the collective political memory of her birthplace.
SESSION TWO: FAUSTO, ANDREA BUSSMANN
Date: Wednesday 27 March
Time: 20:45
Venue: ICA, Cinema One
This enthralling ethnographic essay film explores local stories and myths in Oaxaca, Mexico, connecting with wider themes of technology, perception and the self.
SESSION THREE: STILL/HERE + SUN SONG
Date: Thursday 28 March
Time: 20:25
Venue: ICA, Cinema One
Christopher Harris’s moving portrait of urban decay in St Louis, Missouri, is accompanied by Joel Wanek’s love letter to musician Sun Ra.
SESSION FOUR: SPEAKING IN TONGUES
Date: Friday 29 March
Time: 14:00
Venue: Birkbeck Cinema
In this session artist and filmmaker Christopher Harris will demonstrate and discuss his working method and creative process through a lecture-performance related to his as yet unfinished work, Speaking in Tongues.
SESSION FIVE: A FEELING GREATER THAN LOVE, MARY JIRMANUS SABA
Date: Friday 29 March
Time: 20:30
Venue: ICA, Cinema One
An essayistic enquiry into the political activism of factory workers, especially women, in Lebanon before the outbreak of the civil war in 1975.
SESSION SIX: GUNTER PETER STRASCHEK – EARLY FILMS
Date: Saturday 30 March
Time: 12:00
Venue: Birkbeck Cinema
This programme of short films is part of a two-day focus dedicated to the Austrian film director and historian Günter Peter Straschek (1942–2009). This session will be the first UK presentation of his radical short films made between 1966 and 1970, presented here alongside two short works by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet.
SESSION SEVEN: FILMS BY BO WANG AND PAN LU
Date: Saturday 30 March
Time: 16:00
Venue: ICA, Cinema One
A double bill of essay films by Bo Wang and Pan Lu exploring the colonial history and contemporary culture of Hong Kong.
SESSION EIGHT: SEGUNDA VEZ [SECOND TIME AROUND]
Date: Saturday 30 March
Time: 18:00
Venue: ICA, Cinema One
Dora García’s essayistic dialogue with critic and artist Oscar Masotta, known for introducing the work of Jacques Lacan to Argentina and Spain.
SESSION NINE: THE JOYCEAN SOCIETY
Date: Sunday 31 March
Time: 16:30
Venue: ICA, Cinema One
Dora García’s film documents a Swiss reading group which since 1985 has met every week to explore the mysteries of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
SESSION TEN: GÜNTER PETER STRASCHEK – FILM EMIGRATION FROM NAZI GERMANY
Date: Monday 1 April
Time and Venues: Birkbeck Cinema 11:00-17:00, Goethe-Institut 19:00-22:00
For the very first time in the UK, we will be showing in full Peter Straschek’s astonishing five-part film-historical series about film personnel working in the German cinema industry who were forced into exile during the Nazi period.
SESSION ELEVEN: YOU’LL NEVER WORK ALONE
Date: Tuesday 2 April
Time: 09:30-17:00
Venue: Birkbeck Cinema
This event focuses on Cinenova, a volunteer-run, non-profit collective based in London, and showcases their work in archiving and keeping in circulation a feminist film historiography.
SESSION TWELVE: DONAL FOREMAN WORKSHOP
Date: Wednesday 3 April
Time: 15:00
Venue: Birkbeck Cinema
In this special workshop, Donal Foreman will discuss the making of The Image You Missed (2017), his highly personal essay film about Northern Ireland, refracted through the films of his father, Arthur MacCaig.
SESSION ThirtEEn: NO DANCE, NO PALAVER, ONYEKA IGWE
Date: Wednesday 3 April
Time: 18:30
Venue: Birkbeck Cinema
In this session artist and filmmaker Onyeka Igwe presents a trio of works called No Dance, No Palaver. The trilogy emerges from research into the Aba Women’s War of 1929. This anti-colonial uprising serves as a starting point from which to explore archival images documenting Britain’s colonial history. Accompanying the screening Onyeka will deliver a lecture exploring the role of the essay film as an act of anti-colonialism.
SESSION fouRTEEN: BLACK POND, SARAH JESSICA RINLAND
Date: Thursday 4 April
Time: 18:30
Venue: Birkbeck Cinema
Black Pond is an odyssey across a common land in the south of England told through the hands of the members of the Natural History Society who currently occupy it.