Press room

Highlights of Barbican Cinema’s January ScreenTalks and Live Events include director Laura Poitras talking about her new documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, and director Andrey Paounov and screenwriter, Alex Barrett in conversation, following the UK Premiere of January. The year’s first Silent Film and Live Music event, part of London International Mime Festival 2023, is the screening of The Unknown, accompanied by live music from Stephen Horne, on piano, and Martin Pyne, on drums.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (18) + ScreenTalk with Laura Poitras

New York 2022, Dir Laura Poitras, 113 mins
Fri 27 Jan, 6.30pm, Cinema 1

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras (Citizenfour, Risk) will be interviewed by Barbican Cinema Curator Sonia Zadurian to discuss her riveting documentary on the life and work of internationally renowned artist Nan Goldin, highlighting her activism against the Sackler family.

Winner of Best Film at the 79th Venice International Film Festival, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is an epic, emotional and interconnected story told through her slide shows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed pieces together fragments of Goldin’s life to create an intricate portrait of an artist who has spent a lifetime battling against social stigma and the powers that be.

Also in January:

UK Premiere: January (12A) + ScreenTalk with director Andrey Paounov and screenwriter Alex Barrett, New East Cinema

​​​​Bulgaria 2021, Dir Andrey Paounov, 110 min
Tue 24 Jan, 6:05pm, Cinema 2

Ahead of its general release, New East Cinema and the Barbican present a preview of Andrey Paounov feature film debut January, followed by a ScreenTalk with Paounoy and the screenwriter Alex Barrett.

Adapted from Yordan Radichkov's 1974 short story of the same name, Paounov's vision merges Bulgaria’s postsocialist legacy with that of global film history, offering a cinematic return to Radichkov’s once vibrant village – today an abandoned area long deprived of life.

The Unknown (PG) + Live Music, London International Mime Festival

​​​​US 1927 Dir Tod Browning 75 min
Sun 29 Jan 2023, 3pm, Cinema 1

Musicians Stephen Horne, on piano, and Martin Pyne, on drums, return to the Barbican to accompany this film live.

The famously versatile Lon Chaney (“The Man of a Thousand Faces”) is Alonzo the Armless Wonder, using his feet to perform a circus knife-throwing act. But Alonzo is not the amputee he pretends to be, and is in fact a killer on the run from the police. To act on his infatuation with the circus’ beautiful bare-back rider Nanon (Joan Crawford) would be to give himself away. The Unknown builds to a Grand Guignol finale that is truly breath-taking in its intensity.