Press room

Barbican Cinema 1:

• Chronic Youth Film Festival 2020
• Emerging Film Curators: Enter the Brainbox
  & Dancing Nymphs and Nature: the cinema of Nao Yoshigai
• Highlights from the BFI London Film Festival 2020

Barbican Cinema On Demand

• Chronic Youth Film Festival 2020
• Emerging Film Curators: Dancing Nymphs and Nature:
  the cinema of Nao Yoshigai
• New releases: Beyond the Visible and Rialto
• Arts programme screenings: The Pan-African Festival of Algiers
  & Trances
• Forbidden Colours: Queer East Film Festival: screenings of Song Lang & Sisterhood
• Family Film Club: Jacob, Mimmi and the Talking Dogs

In Barbican’s Cinema 1 and on Cinema on Demand the October programme brings together a wealth of bold, international cinema, highlighting under-heard voices both on the screen and behind the scenes, plus a selection of the world’s best new films playing at this year’s  64th BFI London Film Festival,

Barbican Cinema 1:

Chronic Youth Film Festival 2020
Sat 3-13 October, Cinema 1 and Cinema on Demand

Originally scheduled to take place in March and delayed due to the pandemic, the Barbican Young Programmers (aged between 16 and 25)  have re-worked their programme to fit into a hybrid model of in-venue and online screenings and events, in Cinema 1 and on Barbican Cinema on Demand taking place between Sat 3 and Tue 13 Oct.

The festival highlights under-heard voices and explores how young people carve out spaces for themselves within communities, against hostile or indifferent social and political landscapes.

Programme highlights includes the UK premiere of Q’s Barbershop (Denmark 2019, Dir Emil Langballe), a captivating insight into black masculinity from a Danish barber shop, with Qasim Ahmen (the main subject of the documentary) and Peter Omo Atakpo (a London barbershop owner and one of the consultants behind the award-winning National Theatre production Barber Shop Chronicles) participating in a live online Q&A; Una banda de chicas (Argentina, 2019, Dir Marilina Giménez), a sonically charged exploration of all-women bands in Argentina; and Twilight City (UK, 1989), by Black Audio Film Collective, a poetic rumination on London’s rapid physical and social change during the 1980s, from the perspective of Black and Asian communities.

The film features personal recollections from journalists and academics including Homi Bhabha, Paul Gilroy and George Shire (the latter will be taking part in a Q&A).

Screening in the same programme is Dear Babylon (UK, 2019), by the promising young filmmaker and former Barbican Young Programmer Ayo Akingbade - who will also be taking part in the Q&A - which explores the current insecurities of social housing in London and its effect on young people.

Other highlights include A First Farewell (China, 2018,) the debut film from Xinjiang born filmmaker Lina Wang about two young Uighur children from North-western China who are experiencing their childhoods in a minority community and are already aware of the state policies working against them.

This will be followed with a post-screening discussion with Dr Rachel Harris, a professor at SOAS whose research includes Uyghur culture, and Rahima Mahmut, a Uyghur human rights activist.

Also in the programme is Reel Short Takes, an exciting collection of shorts (available for free on Barbican Cinema on Demand) invited to respond to the theme of Inside Out; an exploration of the relationship between our inner lives and outward expressions of creativity.

For further programme information:
www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/series/chronic-youth-film-festival-2020
To view the full press release:
www.barbican.org.uk/our-story/press-room/chronic-youth-film-festival-2020-0

Enter the Brainbox - Emerging Film Curators
24 Oct, 3.30pm, Barbican Cinema 1

As part of Barbican Cinema’s ongoing commitment to present the widest-possible range of voices and perspectives on screen, the Emerging Film Curators’ Lab is a new career development programme, giving young people a chance to establish themselves in the UK cinema exhibition sector.

Earlier this year, individuals and collectives of up to three people were invited to apply. Nine curatorial teams were shortlisted for the free four-day Lab which took place digitally in June, and four project curators have been selected to present their screening events to audiences in October and December.

The first Emerging Film Curators’ Lab screening event will take place on 24 October (3.30pm, Cinema 1), programmed by Bristol based animator and curator Christopher Childs, and will include a pre-recorded demonstration from Childs as he animates a paper cut-out character in real-time. Enter the Brainbox is a showcase of rare shorts and forgotten gems from the animation underground. From the candy-coloured worlds of legendary underground animator Amy Lockhart, to the thoughtful observations of filmmaker Joanna Priestley, the shorts in this series explore the dreams and nightmares of animation’s brightest minds.

Dancing Nymphs and Nature: the cinema of Nao Yoshigai
– Emerging Film Curators
25 Oct 2.45 pm, Cinema 1 

Screening on 25 October (and also available on Barbican Cinema on Demand until 1 Nov) is the UK premiere of a short film selection: Dancing Nymphs and Nature: the cinema of Nao Yoshigai programmed by the film writer and curator Serena Scateni.

A rising artist from Japan, filmmaker and choreographer Nao Yoshigai ‘choreographs image and sound’ to depict women confronted by societal limitations. Combining surreal settings with an experimental approach, she is an observer of the female body as much as an advocate of a more gentle ecology.

This shorts programme – which screens as part of the Japan-UK Season of Culture 2019-2020 – will also include a video introduction by Nao Yoshigai, followed by a video conversation between Serena Scateni and Dr González-López on gender issues and women in Japanese cinema.

For further programme information:
www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2020/series/emerging-film-curators-2020
To view the full press release:
www.barbican.org.uk/our-story/press-room/emerging-film-curators-lab

BFI London Film Festival 2020
in partnership with American Express
Wed 7 - Sat 17 Oct 2020, Barbican Cinema 1

Barbican Cinema is delighted to present a selection of films from the 64th BFI London Film Festival offering the chance to see the best new films first, from features, animations and documentaries.

Highlights from this year’s festival include Mangrove (UK 2019), a rousing tale of Black solidarity and resistance, by the multi-award-winning visual artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen, Ammonite (UK 2020), Francis Lee’s biopic about life of the 19th-century paleontologist Mary Anning (starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan); and Shirley (US 2020), Josephine Decker’s psychodrama (starring Elizabeth Moss) as the writer Shirley Jackson, who gets the inspiration she needs for her novel when two young newlyweds come to stay.

Other BFI London Film Festival delights include Nomadland (US 2020), Chloé Zhao’s cool, contemplative look at contemporary American outcasts (starring Frances McDormand), Supernova (UK 2020), Harry Macqueen’s sensitive portrayal of a long-term couple dealing with the onset of illness (starring Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci); and Herself (Ireland/UK 2020), Phyllida Lloyd’s uplifting drama about a young Dublin mother who refuses to be broken and decides to build her own home upon hearing that the local council won’t provide one for her.

For further programme information:
www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2020/series/bfi-london-film-festival-2020

Audiences returning to Cinema 1 will be welcomed back in the knowledge that safety and enjoyment are at the heart of the experience. Reduced seating will allow audiences to socially distance at two metres and fewer screenings overall will enable a regular deep-clean of the auditorium.

All audiences must wear a face covering in all areas of the Barbican. Cinema tickets will be available to purchase through the Barbican website and must be shown to staff at Barbican Silk Street entrance.
 

Barbican Cinema on Demand.

Between 2 October and 5 November Barbican Cinema presents new content to stream at home or on the move on Cinema on Demand.

This month’s programme features an array of world cinema, featuring films from Morocco, Algeria, France, Germany, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Macau. Among the highlights is The Pan-African Festival of Algiers (France/ Algeria 1969).

Filmmaker-photographer William Klein captures 1969’s Pan-African Cultural Festival, and adds posters, archival photos and film footage, bold graphics and interviews with activists. The result is a visual essay on colonialism, and the role of culture in the quest for freedom.

Trances (Morocco/ France 1981) is a music documentary focusing on the Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane. Opening on an eight-minute bravura set-piece whilst performing to a wildly enthusiastic audience, the film explores the band’s inspirations and outlook and, in the words of Martin Scorsese, is ‘a concert film like no other.’

Director Halina Dyrschka’s documentary Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint (Germany 2019) shows not only the life and craft of the trailblazing artist Hilma af Klint, but also the skewing of the history of art that would leave her astounding ouevre out of the narrative of artistic progress for so long. 

Two titles screen on Cinema on Demand as part of the Queer East Film Festival in October, Song Lang (Vietnam 2018, Dir Leon Lee), which combines romance and film noir in a visually stunning drama about the unlikely bond between an underground debt collector and his opera singer client, set in Saigon in the 1980s.

Complex relationships are also at the heart of Sisterhood, (2016 Hong Kong/ Macao & Taiwan), a haunting melodrama in which a woman returns to Macau and looks back at the intense relationship she had with a female massage parlour colleague. Director Tracy Choi adeptly mirrors the complex relationship between the two women with the handover of Macau back to China, and the film won the audience award at the Inside Out Toronto LGBTQ+ Film Festival.

Both Song Lang and Sisterhood are part of Forbidden Colours, the Barbican’s film programme celebrating rarely seen queer-focused films from places where LGBTQ+ people still suffer societal oppression and struggle for equality.

Also streaming on Barbican Cinema on Demand is Peter Mackie Burns’ quietly affecting drama Rialto (Ireland/ UK 2020) about Dublin dock worker Colm who finds an unexpected connection with a younger man Jay.

Family Film Club in October presents Jacob, Mimmi and the Talking Dogs (Latvia / Poland 2019 Dir. Edmunds Jansons), a charming animation which was a highlight at last year’s BFI London Film Festival; cousins Jacob and Mimmi join forces with a team of canines to stop a skyscraper being developed in their neighbourhood.

Cinema on Demand is available to audiences across the UK with a rolling four-week programme of titles and events that reflect the Barbican’s bold and international cinema programme.

Launched in July 2020, it is the first-ever streaming service to be offered by the Barbican, and builds on the popular digital content programme available through Read, Watch & Listen.

Titles will remain available for audiences to stream for 48 hours from the time of purchase, and will include closed captions and audio description where available, continuing the Barbican’s commitment to access.

Barbican Cinema on Demand is supported by the BFI FAN Resilience Fund, awarding National Lottery funding, and the Mayor of London's Culture at Risk business support fund.

OCTOBER 2020 CINEMA LISTINGS:

CINEMA 1
Chronic Youth Film Festival 2020
Sat 3 Oct – Tue 13 Oct
Barbican Cinema 1
Standard ticket price: 
£12/ Members: £9.60/ Concessions: £11/ Young Barbican: £5

Emerging Film Curators Series:
Enter the Brainbox: animated shorts + animation demonstration (18*)
Curated by Christopher Childs
24 Oct, 3.30pm, Barbican Cinema 1

Dancing Nymphs and Nature: the cinema of Nao Yoshigai
Curated by Serena Scateni
25 Oct, 2.45 pm, Barbican Cinema 1
(This programme will also be available on Barbican Cinema on Demand,
between 25 Oct – 1 Nov 2020)

Ticket prices
Standard: £12/ Members: £9.60/ Concessions: £11/ Under-18s: £6/ Young Barbican: £5

BFI London Film Festival 2020
Wed 7 - Sat 17 Oct 2020, Barbican Cinema 1
Ticket prices
Standard: £13.50/ Members: £10.60/ Concessions: £11/ Under-18s: £7/ Young Barbican: £5

BARBICAN CINEMA ON DEMAND

The Pan-African Festival of Algiers 12A*
(France/ Algeria 1969, Dir William Klein, 102 min)
Available to stream: from 2 Oct, 10.00am – 30 Oct 9.59am
Pay per view: Full: £6.00 | Young Barbican: £4.00 | Barbican Members £4.80

Trances 15*
(Morocco/ France 1981, Dir Ahmed El Maanouni, 90 min)
Available to stream: from 2 Oct, 10.00am – 30 Oct 9.59am
Pay per view: Full: £6.00 | Young Barbican: £4.00 | Barbican Members £4.80

Rialto
(Ireland/ UK 2020, Dir Peter Mackie Burns, 90 min)
Available to stream: from 2 Oct, 10.00am – 30 Oct 9.59am
Pay per view: Full: £10.00 | Young Barbican: £4.00 | Barbican Members £8.00

Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint
(Germany/Sweden/Switzerland/UK 2020, Dir Halina Dyrschka, 94 min)
Available to stream: from 9 Oct, 10.00am – 6 Nov 9.59am
Pay per view: Full: £10.00 | Young Barbican: £4.00 | Barbican Members £8.00

Song Lang
Queer East Film Festival/ Forbidden Colours
(Vietnam 2018, Dir Leon Lee, 90 min)
Available to stream: from 23 Oct – 5 Nov, 10.00am – 30 Oct 9.59am
Pay per view: Full: £6.00 | Young Barbican: £4.00 | Barbican Members £4.80

Sisterhood
Queer East Film Festival/ Forbidden Colours
(2016 Hong Kong/ Macao / Taiwan, Dir Tracy Choi, 97 min)
Available to stream: from 23 Oct – 5 Nov, 10.00am – 30 Oct 9.59am
Pay per view: Full: £6.00 | Young Barbican: £4.00 | Barbican Members £4.80

Dancing Nymphs and Nature: the cinema of Nao Yoshigai
Available to stream: from 25 Oct, 10.00am – 1 Nov 9.59am
Pay per view: Full: £6.00 | Young Barbican: £4.00 | Barbican Members £4.80

FAMILY FILM CLUB
Jacob, Mimmi and the Talking Dogs
(Latvia / Poland 2019 Dir. Edmunds Jansons)
Age recommendation: 3+
Available to stream from 9 Oct 10.00 am – 6 Nov, 9.59 am
Pay per view: £2.50

Box office: 020 7638 8891
www.barbican.org.uk

ENDS